Understanding Second Language Acquisition as a Means to Address the Latinx ELL Student Opportunity Gap

The Latinx English language learner (ELL) student opportunity gap is a persistent problem in the United States public school system that has spanned decades. Latinx ELL students graduate high school at lower rates than their English-proficient peers and their ELL peers from other ethno-linguistic backgrounds. Research indicates factors such as the dominant culture in the school setting, government policies, cultural mismatches, and teacher preparedness all impact mainstream teachers’ abilities to educate the Latinx ELL students in their classrooms. Metro High School is an English-Spanish bilingual public high school on the east coast of the United States. It is an AP for all, language and culture specialized, high school comprised of about 1,000 students, 38% of whom are designated as ELL students. A mixed methods needs assessment was conducted at Metro High School and found mainstream teachers were unprepared to meet the language needs of the ELL students in their classes. A partially mixed concurrent equal status design was used to conduct an intervention at Metro High School for 12 teachers in the English department who taught mixed classes of English-proficient and ELL students. The intervention was a 12-week professional development series rooted in second language acquisition (SLA) theory and the application of SLA in participants’ lesson plans. Using various comparative tests through SPSS, a priori coding, and emergent coding, the researcher found participants’ knowledge of SLA increased over the course of the professional development series, which led to an increase in SLA-based scaffolding in their lesson plans and an overall shift in teachers’ mindsets towards using scaffolding in their curriculum