Teaching English Learners: Toward an Understanding of What it Means to Teachers

This study addresses the challenges teachers face in teaching English Learners, who are learning English as a second language while they are learning academic content in English. Many educational reforms have focused on how to teach them, including Proposition 227 in California in 1998. This study was conducted five years hence, as teachers interpreted, adapted, and implemented policies regarding the education of English Learners. To explore these topics, this study draws upon social and cultural theory, which considers the meaning that is made by humans and the context within which that meaning is made. As context also includes participants' identities, the study also draws upon theories of teacher identity. Thus, the questions that guided this study were: a) what effect, if any, does teaching English Learners have on a teacher's identity and social status in the school, b) what are the challenges teachers perceive in teaching them, c) how do teachers interpret, adapt, and implement English Learner policy, d) what, ultimately, does it mean to teachers to teach English Learners and how is this meaning connected to both the classroom and school and the wider social and political context.Using an ethnographic case-study approach, the researcher explored how teaching English Learners impacted teachers' identity and social status, the challenges teachers faced in doing so, and how teachers interpreted, adapted, and implemented English Learner policy, all within the social and political context of their local district and schools. Data included field notes from participant-observation and interviews along with institutional documents. Data analysis revealed that having an identity as a teacher of English Learners had the greatest impact on teachers' social status, yet not all teachers with English Learners were ascribed this identity. Each teacher also had to navigate challenges related to teaching English Learners, which also contributed to the meaning they made. This study suggests that their teacher identity and social status, intertwined with being deemed capable of meeting parental educational expectations regarding the education of their children, influenced the meaning they made of teaching English Learners and how teachers interpreted, adapted, and implemented English Learner policy in their classrooms