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However, the sense of efficacy on which community participation rests is nurtured at home, in one's family. People learn first at home that what they do or say can affect their environment. Learning at school is informed and supported by family lessons in responsibility, caretaking, and negotiating, among other things. The choice of a good life that includes "subcommunities...that impart identity" may be governed in language minority groups by proficiency in a primary language. Proficiency in primary languages and in English contributes to the attainment of the goals of public education of language minority children. Their overall well-being depends in part on the resources they acquire at home; hence, the strategies schools use to achieve their mission should reflect a concern with maintaining children's capacity to benefit from their family life.
Supporting academic achievement. Four dimensions of educational programs bear directly on students' success: (1) the quality of lesson content; (2) the extent of students' productive engagement; (3) the accessibility of the curriculum, that is, the degree to which students are able to make sense of what is taught; and (4) the school climate. These dimensions may take on distinctive shapes in programs for LEP students.
First, lesson content must be substantively adequate and relevant to the appropriate educational goals. Recent critiques of the content of instruction in some subjects--notably math and science, but few disciplines are free of criticism--reveal that deficiencies in curriculum materials or teachers' knowledge or both create misconceptions among students. Too much emphasis on lower-level skills and mistaken notions of content "hierarchies" restrict what students can learn. In good lessons, students encounter solid material that takes into account the disciplines' requirements and students' knowledge and skills. (Research on these issues is summarized in USED, 1987; USED, 1993; and Walberg, 1988.) Substantive rigor in lessons for LEP students may be compromised on two counts. First, streamlined or alternative teacher education programs having the primary aim of filling bilingual or ESL teaching slots in the fastest timeframe may shortcut subject matter preparation, particularly at the elementary level. Second, teachers conversationally fluent in a non-English language may not be fluent in the technical terms associated with content areas. Their primary-language explanations of content in math, science, and social studies, for example, may suffer from limited vocabulary. Professional development programs for teachers of LEP students must attend to these potential obstacles to substantively adequate instruction.
Second, the learning processes must engage students productively; their effort must be applied diligently to mastering lesson content. (See Brophy, 1987, and Tomlinson, 1990, for discussions of research on this topic.) What--and how much--students learn depends in part on how hard they work and what they study. Even given a substantively compelling lesson (that may reflect the teacher's hard work), students will learn only if they work hard at learning. The nature of their learning task also controls the extent of their learning. Copying verbatim the dictionary definitions of words from a speller and then writing the words correctly 10 times may keep students engaged for a whole period, but evidence does not suggest that it improves anything other than penmanship. Computing the answers to 50 two-digit multiplication problems for homework may confirm mastery of the algorithm without ensuring mastery of the mathematical concepts or applications. Productive engagement means working on tasks that lead to new learning built on the solid foundation of prior knowledge. In posing learning tasks of appropriate levels and kinds, bilingual teachers of LEP students face the same challenges as other teachers. However, ESL teachers--especially those who have multilingual classes or who do not speak the students' home language--face communication difficulties that make it more challenging to frame tasks that engage students and extend learning. Their professional training has to provide strong support for this area of practice.
Third, students must be able to understand what is presented to them in school. The words, examples, models, and demonstrations used in lessons must communicate information to students. Lessons must build on the language, skills, and concepts that students already know. A college course on nuclear engineering may be substantively well developed, have well structured and engaging learning activities, and feature a welcoming social climate, but it would be wasted on first graders or even high school freshmen who do not understand its basic premises. It would likewise be wasted if presented in Arabic to a French-speaking college engineering class. A successful lesson is taught in terms that students understand. In classrooms where teachers and students share a language and culture, a great deal of their communication about content is verbal; when students are unfamiliar with a particular term or concept, the teacher can--and usually does--use words to bridge back to a familiar idea or experience. When language and cultural differences limit the communicative power of words, nonverbal communications and hands-on learning assume greater importance.
In a conference on educating linguistically diverse students, sponsored by the National Center for Research on Cultural Diversity and Second Language Learning, McLaughlin (1994) summarized results of several studies on the cognitive challenges of learning to read in one's second language. Briefly, reading involves mastering a set of sound-symbol correspondences, applying those rules automatically to decoding new words, and rapidly processing text and extracting its meaning. Automaticity in decoding and speed in processing in a second language take time to acquire. In addition, the metacognitive skills used by good readers--such as scanning ahead, pausing to reflect and evaluate, and rereading hard passages--may be unfamiliar to novices. For LEP students, their lack of fluency in English may make it especially difficult to acquire skills that rely on detailed knowledge of syntax and different kinds of background information than what they have. In related ways, writing in English may not come easily to LEP students. If the body of their experience--including conversations and thoughts about their experience--occurs in another language, then the cognitive "data base" of words, concepts, and communication structures that English speaking students use to inform their writing is not available as a resource. No real or imagined conversations offer a bank of words, phrases, and sentences for LEP students' writing in English. Hence, neither reading nor writing in English may be assumed to provide the same resources for learning to LEP students that it provides to others, and this may interfere with progress in core subjects.
Several studies indicate that LEP students progress more rapidly in all core subjects when taught in their primary language, and some evidence suggests that effective primary language instruction in early life produces overall cognitive advantages for bilingual children that are not experienced by comparable monolingual students. (Cummins, 1991, and Willig, 1985, offer comprehensive analyses of research on this issue.) Recent assessments of the evidence regarding the effectiveness of primary language instruction reveal trends that support claims of its superiority in helping LEP students achieve regular academic goals, including learning English (Meyer & Fienberg, 1992). Primary language use in early schooling promotes basic language development and creates a strong foundation that facilitates second language learning. (Among the compelling discussions of this topic are Cummins, 1991; Nieto, 1992; Olsen & Mullen, 1990; and Wong Fillmore & Meyer, 1992.) With respect to students' self-esteem and sense of belonging in school, when the languages of instruction include the students' own, the answer to the question "Is education intended for people like me?" must obviously be "yes." Because the social costs of school failure are so high for individuals and the community, and the dropout population of LEP students is so disproportionately high, strategies promoting LEP students' success must be supported. Primary language instruction is such a strategy, but acquiring the language skills that provide the necessary foundation for teaching in two languages adds to the requirements of professional preparation.
When students of more than one language group study together, comprehension is promoted by multiple representations of content--pictures, demonstrations, experiences, and other methods that temporarily circumvent the differences in language. Talking more loudly or slowly or teaching for a longer time in an unfamiliar language does not make presentations more comprehensible. Using methods that reduce initial reliance on language to communicate content enables students to make sense of a lesson and to build a shared vocabulary based on it. Teachers must extend presentation modes to include more sensory experiences and different methods of communication. Second-language educators refer to these rich, multidimensional forms of communication as "comprehensible inputs" (Krashen, 1991). Teachers and others report that acquiring the skills to offer comprehensible inputs extends the period of professional development as well as the time and resources it takes to prepare lessons.
Even in ESL classes, however, encouraging the use of primary language to develop concepts and introduce related ideas remains important. When the lesson must be presented in English, bilingual teacher assistants and parent volunteers can make a powerful contribution to students' understanding. Circumstances may make it difficult to foster primary language maintenance at school, but the fact remains that proficiency in a non-English language is an asset to individual students, inasmuch as it strengthens their connections to their families and friends, and to the larger community, which recognizes bilingualism as a social and economic advantage (see Met, 1988). Teaching methods that rely on "comprehensible inputs" and nurture primary language development promote students' academic achievement while preserving their connections to the language, culture, and people that are part of their identity. These methods do not replace methods that are effective in mainstream classrooms; rather, they function as extensions of ordinary good practice.
Fourth, students must experience the classroom as a hospitable social environment (Nelson-LeGall, 1990). Their hard work in school is predicated on a positive and strong sense of identity and feelings of personal efficacy. Much of students' learning is mediated through interactions with peers and others whose explanations of content serve as a bridge between what students already know and what they want to learn. The effectiveness of students' efforts to learn is influenced by how well they use available resources. Their willingness and ability to use these resources depend on their confidence in applying themselves to learning tasks and initiating contact with others who can help, as well as on their conviction that people like them are expected to master such tasks. For LEP students, these aspects of efficacy may be at risk; factors in their environment may erode confidence and conviction. Others' inability to communicate in the students' primary language--or disapproval of such communications--may discourage students from asking questions that they can express only in their primary language; it may limit students' active engagement in learning.
Furthermore, where language minority communities are also disproportionately represented among the economically disadvantaged, a school environment implicitly portraying language minority status as problematic and speaking English as the only way to be "normal" may cause students to become alienated from their families (Wong Fillmore, 1991a and 1991b). They may refuse to speak their primary language--sometimes the only language parents know--and they may devalue their families' guidance on important life choices, including whether to apply themselves to schoolwork. Because members of language minority communities are twice as likely as English-speaking students to suffer the stresses of poverty and, because in some language groups, many are refugees traumatized by repeated dislocations, teachers' direct experience may not provide a good model of the features of language and culture that are sources of pride to the community itself, although such information is essential.
Socially, teachers' respect for the students' home is the basis for desirable collaboration between parents and teachers on the students' behalf. The customs and values that govern family life may not match those that govern behavior at school or in the larger community. For example, at home, rules of discourse and good manners may require silent attention to adult conversation, while at school assertive interaction with peers and teachers is expected. At home, taking personal responsibility for younger siblings may be the older child's duty, while at school students are expected to let teachers take care of problems. Doing homework independently may be the parents' definition of good student work habits, while engaging parents in assignments may be the teachers' goal. If teachers fail to interpret students' behavior appropriately, consequences may range from being unintentionally insulting to mistakenly placing students in remedial classes. Such consequences create a dilemma for students, who may feel obliged to choose between their family identity and the school's "ideal"--a choice that may leave them psychologically ill-prepared to succeed as adults (Wong-Fillmore, 1991).
In hospitable classrooms, students' distinctive attributes are treated as resources, and family differences are assumed to have merit, while shared academic work and goals generate a separate school culture that may not be the same as the culture at home (Nieto, 1992). Teachers of LEP students must have opportunities to learn about students' cultures and languages and to become proficient in adapting lessons and routines to make good use of children's cultural resources. In addition, teachers must be able to recognize the cultural origins of their own behavior and to respond reflectively to students who might be acting under the influence of an alternative, culturally based expectation. These demands add still another dimension to their professional training. However, acquiring simplified versions of general cultural or linguistic attributes that may or may not apply to a given student contributes more to the problem of ignorance than to its solution. One review of studies of the effects of multicultural training for teachers concluded that such activities often leave teachers with new misconceptions and biases (National Center for Research on Teacher Learning, 1992). Skillful cultural inquiry and analysis coupled with a well-informed disposition to use the results of such efforts to modify instruction make classrooms more hospitable for students; more flattering but still heedless assumptions about attributes, such as diligence and gregariousness, and their association with certain cultures add nothing to teachers' effectiveness.
To summarize, our interpretation of the existing research on effective educational practices and their special adaptations for LEP students and analyses of the issues that affect LEP students' academic success leads to the conclusion that they are best served by programs that:
For such programs, adding solid proficiency in English at a pace consistent with satisfactory progress in core subjects while maintaining primary language proficiency is a key long-term goal, viewed as a high priority by educators and language minority parents alike.
This vision of instructional quality shapes the notions of effectiveness that guided this study's search for programs that cultivate the professional workforce serving language minority populations. All effective teachers stimulate learning by engaging students in hard work on academic tasks derived from the school's historic mission. Effective teachers for LEP students need special skills and knowledge to help students overcome the obstacles presented by an English-dominated educational system without losing the resource of fluency in a second language. Expertise in this particular arena (as in others) can be cultivated at many points in a professional career.
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[Overview of Projects with Promising Practices]