TY - JOUR

T1 - Teachers’ professional knowledge in scaffolding academic literacies for English language learners

AU - Early, M.

AU - Potts, Diane

AU - Mohan, B.

PY - 2005

Y1 - 2005

N2 - ‘Broadbanded’ concerns about mainstream literacy standards ignore Englishas a Second Language (ESL) students’ need for language support anddevelopment; for example, schools expect learners to write about narrativesbut provide little systematic attention to the language needed. This articlepresents the collaborative efforts of an ESL professional and a mainstreamclassroom teacher, drawing attention to their sophisticated design of a unit ofwork, a novel study, that scaffolds ESL (and non-ESL) students’ content andlanguage development.Mohan’s ‘Knowledge Framework’ (Mohan 1986, 2001) was used as aheuristic tool to analyse and discuss the ‘what’ of the unit – that is, thelanguage and content demands – and the neo-Vygotskian Early and Hoopermodel (Early and Hooper 2001) was used to analyse the ‘how’. The teachersintegrated language and content by creatively extending and varying thesebasic heuristics, systematically relating meaning in discourse to wording, at themacro-level of activity/social practice, at the micro-level of written and oralexpression, and points in between.

AB - ‘Broadbanded’ concerns about mainstream literacy standards ignore Englishas a Second Language (ESL) students’ need for language support anddevelopment; for example, schools expect learners to write about narrativesbut provide little systematic attention to the language needed. This articlepresents the collaborative efforts of an ESL professional and a mainstreamclassroom teacher, drawing attention to their sophisticated design of a unit ofwork, a novel study, that scaffolds ESL (and non-ESL) students’ content andlanguage development.Mohan’s ‘Knowledge Framework’ (Mohan 1986, 2001) was used as aheuristic tool to analyse and discuss the ‘what’ of the unit – that is, thelanguage and content demands – and the neo-Vygotskian Early and Hoopermodel (Early and Hooper 2001) was used to analyse the ‘how’. The teachersintegrated language and content by creatively extending and varying thesebasic heuristics, systematically relating meaning in discourse to wording, at themacro-level of activity/social practice, at the micro-level of written and oralexpression, and points in between.

M3 - Journal article

VL - 20

SP - 63

EP - 76

JO - Prospect: An Australian Journal of TESOL

JF - Prospect: An Australian Journal of TESOL

IS - 3

ER -