Teaching Multilingual Students in a Composition Class

2019 ◽  
pp. 272-316
Author(s):  
Olga Griswold ◽  
John Edlund
1978 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 77
Author(s):  
James R. Nattinger

1937 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 235
Author(s):  
Willard C. Flynt

2020 ◽  
Vol 122 (11) ◽  
pp. 1-42
Author(s):  
Daniella Molle

Context The pervasiveness of deficit-based discourses about multilingual students has long been documented in the scholarly literature. Such discourses severely erode the learning and well-being of multilingual youth. One of the spaces in which deficit-based discourses about students may be transformed is professional development. Focus of the Study The study connects a key practice of high-quality professional development, the analysis of classroom evidence of student learning, to student-focused discourses about multilingual youth. The research questions the study addresses are: As they make sense of data together, (a) how do teachers discursively position multilingual youth? and (b) what factors reinforce and undermine assets-based discourses about multilingual youth? Research Design Leveraging a case study approach, I explore how a team of three middle-school teachers positions students while analyzing classroom evidence during a one-year professional development designed for educators of multilingual youth. I rely primarily on transcripts of professional development sessions to trace student positioning by the team over time as teachers analyze dissimilar types of classroom evidence. Findings The findings reveal complex mediational relationships among teachers’ data use, student positioning, and shared theories of student engagement. These co-constructed theories reinforce deficit views of students when student reasoning and participation in learning are obscured by the data teachers are exploring. When the data make the process of student engagement available for reflection, however, teachers shift toward assets-based discourses. In addition, the findings shed light on relationships between type of evidence and implications for classroom practice. The teachers in the study shift their focus from teacher-centered instruction to the scaffolding of student interaction when the data make visible student participation in learning. Conclusions The study contributes to a nascent knowledge base about the complex relationships between teacher analysis of classroom evidence and assets-based discourses about all students and multilingual students in particular. The findings expand current conceptualizations of teacher data use by foregrounding student positioning over time as a key element of teacher sensemaking, and revealing the significant mediational role that shared theories of student engagement play in teachers’ data use. In terms of practical implications, the study offers insights into the mechanisms through which assets-based discourses about multilingual youth can be fostered across learning contexts.


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Arne Krause ◽  
Jonas Wagner ◽  
Angelika Redder ◽  
Susanne Prediger

Abstract New adolescent migrants from Arabic-speaking countries face complex challenges when participating in regular mathematics classes in Germany: They have been educated in their family language(s) and are obliged to adapt to a new (second or target) language and to different styles of teaching. In contrast, 3rd generation multilingual students, who usually are schooled in German only, have rarely ever used their family languages in mathematics. This poses different challenges for the introduction of multilingual teaching and learning. By comparing German-Turkish 3rd generation students and adolescent refugees from Arabic speaking countries, both in 7th grade, this paper argues for the epistemic importance of considering “multilingual profiles” (i.e. including individual languages and history of migration) for linguistic analyses as well as for didactical designs of learning opportunities. For this purpose, a functional pragmatic discourse analysis of transcribed video-data from bilingual mathematics sessions with up to four multilingual students was conducted. This allows to characterize discursive multilingual profiles and to distinguish different perspectives on and verbalizations of mathematical concepts (in this case: fractions) in classroom discourse. Furthermore, language-specific interfaces of mental and linguistic processes are unfolded which enable new insights into conceptual understanding. The analysis focusses on the languages German, Turkish and Arabic and on 7th grade mathematics classes. The paper shows that the activation of multilingual resources in mathematics classrooms sets a promising approach for a sustainable integration of migrants, since they are enabled to use their subject-related knowledge which, in the long run, holds the potential support for the acquisition of the target language on a pre-academic level.


Author(s):  
Inese Žune

The aim of the article is to highlight the creative work of the outstanding 20th- century Latvian conductor and pedagogue Leonīds Vīgners in the field of composition. The facts are based on the materials of Leonīds Vīgners’s archives found in the Museum of Literature and Music, which allows tracing the entire, versatile activities of the musician. Leonīds’s understanding of music, much like that of his sisters Beatrise, Meta, and prematurely deceased brother Vitālis, developed early in childhood, when they became the examples of the success of the new practical method of absolute musical hearing championed by their father Vīgneru Ernests. Later, the talented musician received a comprehensive musical education at the Latvian Conservatory. In addition to conducting the orchestra, playing the organ and percussion instruments, he also graduated from the composition class of Jāzeps Vītols. In the 1920s and 1930s, Leonīds Vīgners composed a range of instrumental works, from simple minuets to an extensive form of a piano sonata. In total, the museum’s collection contains 16 manuscripts of his instrumental works. The largest part of Leonīds Vīgners’s work consists of his solo and choir songs composed or reworked in different periods of time. He has mentioned that he has composed about 80 solo and 300 choir songs, but some of them perished during the war. Examining the manuscripts of Leonīds Vīgners’s songs, as well as many drafts that have been included in the collection of the Museum of Literature and Music, it can be concluded that he attached great importance to the words that evoked his musical ideas. Leonīds Vīgners always remained himself, with his own views on music and Latvian nationalism. However, behind his seemingly harsh exterior, there was a sensitive and fragile soul, which is truly revealed in his compositions with the plastic, bittersweet sense of melody characteristic to the Romantics and at times the impressionistic freshness and subtlety of his harmonies.


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