Session Information
31 ONLINE 25 A, Educational responsiveness to language diversity: What approaches are needed for evolving contexts?
Paper/Poster Session
MeetingID: 810 4757 8710 Code: rif6WL
Contribution
Due to new forms and dynamics of migration, learners from increasingly different language backgrounds populate German schools. This is particularly true for urban areas: In cities like Hamburg, more than half of all children are nowadays born into a migrant family (Behörde für Schule und Berufsbildung 2020). In addition to German, heritage languages play an important role in the everyday lives of many of these students; it is known that heritage languages remain vital across several generations (Strobel & Kristen 2015; Ilić 2016). The language expertise among multilinguals varies immensely: Recently immigrated children may have experienced monolingualism in a language other than German, some have developed reading and writing skills in German and other languages, and others have acquired conversational skills in the heritage languages. Appalingly, international and national large-scale assessment studies show that (multilingual) migrant pupils are still characterized by significantly lower levels of educational attainment than their non-migrant peers (Reiss et al. 2019; Stanat et al. 2019).
There is a broad consensus that the development of strong language skills is vital for academic achievement. Research indicates that it is not everyday language skills but academic language proficiency (Cummins 2000) that determines students’ success in school. The acquisition of academic language skills is especially challenging for German as a second language (GSL) learners and students growing up in low-SES families who do not receive an adequate and varied linguistic input at home (Heppt et al. 2014). In order to help these learners to master the dual challenge of learning the new language and learning in it at the same time, they need to be provided with systematic support (Gibbons 2002; Gogolin & Lange 2011). The latter includes that i) combined language and content learning is provided across the curriculum and ii) that students’ heritage languages are integrated into the learning process (Gogolin & Lange 2011).
The need for linguistically responsive teaching practices has been acknowledged by educational authorities in several German states: Teaching standards and educational curricula nowadays expect teachers of all subjects and grades to focus on the development of their students’ language skills (e.g., Behörde für Schule und Berufsbildung 2011). At the same time, the effectiveness of these teaching approaches has not been examined (Becker-Mrotzek et al., 2021). The described situation is the starting point of our project, which aims to develop exemplary teaching approaches for physics classes that take the linguistic diversity in classrooms into account and evaluate them.
With our intervention study, we aim to contribute to closing this research gap by investigating two main research questions: 1.) What effects do two teaching variations – an explicit focus on academic language (IV1), and the additional use of the students’ multilingual skills (IV2) – have on students’ physics skills in linguistically diverse classrooms? 2.) How are differences in the effects of the two interventions related to the students’ language skills in German and the heritage languages?
Method
Within the framework of an intervention study, lessons on the basic physics concept "energy" are developed and taught in three teaching variants. In the first intervention variant, we combine language and content learning (IV1). In the second intervention variant, language and content integrated learning is supplemented by the feature of multilingualism, i.e. multilingual learners are asked to actively use their heritage language skills in certain phases of the lesson (IV2). The control group (C) receives physics lessons in which academic language learning is not explicitly supported. The lessons are designed in parallel with respect to the subject content in all three teaching variants. The basic lesson script is based on recent research on learning about the energy concept and on the Hamburg educational plan for district schools (Behörde für Schule und Berufsbildung 2011). The instruction in all groups will meet the basic dimensions of teaching quality: strong student orientation, continuous cognitive activation in the context of open tasks and well-integrated experiments, teacher clarity, structured and disruption-preventive classroom management, a supportive social climate, as well as a discursive approach to errors are required. The sample will consist of 30 classes with a total of about 700 students from Hamburg district schools. The participating district schools are supposed to meet the following criteria: low SES of students, a high proportion of students with the heritage languages Turkish, Russian, Polish, and at least 4 parallel classes. The intervention (physics lessons on the topic "energy" in the variants C, IV1, IV2) consists of 6 lessons of 90 minutes each. The effect of the teaching variants on the students' energy competence will be tested longitudinally (pre-, post-, follow-up test). In addition, background information on cognitive (KFT 4-12+) and global language skills in German and selected heritage languages (C-Test), attitudes towards physics lessons (survey), and socioeconomic and language biographical aspects (survey) are collected as independent variables. Multilevel analyses (mixed or growth models) will be conducted for the examination of the intervention effects due to expected class and school effects and because linear mixed models have greater statistical power in the analysis of longitudinal (quasi-)experimental data compared to ANOVA or OLS regression and therefore a higher probability of detecting even small effects.
Expected Outcomes
Our poster will serve as an introduction to the project, inform about the design, the target sample as well as the methods and instruments that will be used in our study. We are currently in the process of developing and piloting the two teaching interventions and the physics competency test. The data collection process will begin in spring 2023. However we will be able to share information about challenges we experienced when piloting the lessons. In answering research question 1, we aim to clarify whether there are globally interpretable main effects of the two interventions on the dependent variable (energy competence of students) when controlling for background variables. We expect the learning gains in both intervention groups to be larger than those in the control group. Research question 2 aims to clarify whether the effects of the interventions on subgroups vary systematically: The first question to be examined is whether the effects of the interventions differ between mono- and multilingual students. We expect the effect of IV2 to be larger among multilingual students. We will also examine whether effects are moderated by the level of language proficiency in the heritage languages and German. It can be expected that especially monolingual students with low(er) academic language skills in German will benefit from the focus on academic language skills in German (IV1). Highly proficient heritage language speakers are expected to profit more from IV2 than their multilingual peers with low heritage language skills. We do not expect negative effects of the two interventions.
References
Becker-Mrotzek, M., Höfler, M., & Wörfel, T. (2021). Sprachsensibel unterrichten – in allen Fächern und für alle Lernenden. Swiss Journal of Educational Research, 43(2), 250–259. https://doi.org/10.24452/sjer.43.2.5 Behörde für Schule und Berufsbildung (2011). Bildungsplan Stadtteilschule. Physik. Jahrgangsstufen 7 - 11. https://www.hamburg.de/bildungsplaene/nofl/4327802/physik-stadtteilschule/. Cummins, J. (2000). Bilingual education and bilingualism. Vol. 23: Language, power, and pedagogy. Bilingual children in the crossfire. Clevedon, Buffalo: Multilingual Matters. Gibbons, P. (2002). Scaffolding language, scaffolding learning: teaching second language learners in the mainstream classroom. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Gogolin, I., & Lange, I. (2011). Bildungssprache und Durchgängige Sprachbildung. In S. Fürstenau & M. Gomolla (Hrsg.), Migration und schulischer Wandel: Mehrsprachigkeit (pp. 107–127). Wiesbaden: VS. Heppt, B., Haag, N., Böhme, K., & Stanat, P. (2014). The role of academic-language features for reading comprehension of language-minority students and students from low-SES families. Reading Research Quarterly, 50(1), 61–82. Ilić, V. (2016). Familiale Lernumwelt von Jugendlichen mit und ohne Migrationshintergrund. Opladen, Berlin & Toronto: Budrich UniPress. Reiss, K.; Weis, M.; Klieme, E.; Köller, O. (Ed.) (2019): PISA 2018. Grundbildung im internationalen Vergleich. 1st Ed. Münster: Waxmann. Stanat, P.; Schipolowski, S.; Mahler, N.; Weirich, S.; Henschel, S. (Hg.) (2019): IQB-Bildungstrend 2018. Mathematische und naturwissenschaftliche Kompetenzen am Ende der Sekundarstufe I im zweiten Ländervergleich. Münster, New York: Waxmann. Strobel, B., & Kristen, C. (2015). Erhalt der Herkunftssprache? Muster des Sprachgebrauchs in Migrantenfamilien. Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft, 18(1), 125–142.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.