Investigating the Enactment of Core Teaching Practices for Multilingual Learners Across Teaching Contexts: A Case Study

Scholarship in language education has produced a specialized knowledge base for educating multilingual learners (MLs) that encompasses what teachers should know, i.e., the knowledge of learning a new language, and what teachers should be able to do with this knowledge in the classroom, i.e., effective pedagogical practices. In this article, we argue that it is important to identify pedagogy that has been proven to be effective in educating MLs and explore ways to engage pre-service and practicing teachers in using it in the classroom. We present examples of two specific core-teaching practices derived from research in language education and explore what they look like in the enacted practice of an individual during her pre-service preparation and first four years of teaching. Findings from this longitudinal case study investigation illustrate how personal and teaching contexts inform instruction over time and can have implications for how teachers are prepared to work with MLs