Preparing Classroom Teachers to Succeed With Second Language Learners: Lessons from a Faculty Learning Community

This volume identifies resources, models, and specific practices for improving teacher preparation for work with second language learners. It shows how faculty positioned themselves to learn from resources, experts, preservice teachers, their own practice, and each other. The teacher education professionals leverage their experience to offer theoretical and practical insights regarding how other faculty could develop their own knowledge, improve their courses, and understand their influence on the preservice teachers they serve.

The book addresses challenges others are likely to experience while improving teacher preparation, including preservice teacher resistance, the challenge of adding to already-packed courses, the difficulty of recruiting and retaining busy faculty members, and the question of how to best frame the larger issues. The authors also address options for integrating the work of improving teacher preparation for linguistic diversity into a variety of different teacher education program designs. Finally, the book demonstrates a data-driven approach that makes this work consistent with many institutions’ mandate to produce research and to collect evidence supporting accreditation.

Thomas Levine is an Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction of the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut, where he teaches social studies methods courses for elementary and secondary educators at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.

Elizabeth Howard is an Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction of the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut, where she teaches graduate courses related to the education of English Language Learners (ELLs). Together with Julie Sugarman, she is the author of Realizing the Vision of Two-Way Immersion: Fostering Effective Programs and Classrooms.

David Moss is an Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction of the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut. His published books include Reforming Legal Education: Law Schools at the Crossroads; Critical Essays on Resistance in Education; Interdisciplinary Education in an Age of Assessment; Portrait of a Profession: Teachers and Teaching in the 21st Century; and Beyond the Boundaries: A Transdisciplinary Approach to Learning and Teaching.