New federally-funded UF study to examine how colleges prepare teachers for English language learners

A new study by three University of Florida education professors could cause a nationwide change in the way colleges prepare teachers to deal with students who speak English as a second language.

Assistant Professor Maria Coady and Associate Professors Ester de Jong and Candace Harper, all of UF’s College of Education, have been awarded a $1.2 million U.S. Department of Education grant for Project DELTA (Developing English Language and Literacy through Teacher Achievement), an ambitious project designed to assess the effects that UF’s own graduates from the elementary teacher preparation program (ProTeach) are having on English language learners in the K-12 classroom.

 

“Florida’s model for preparing teachers in this area is unlike any other state’s model,” said Coady, co-principal investigator for the study. “Other states are considering a similar model, but we lack the data to prove that our approach works.”

More than a decade ago, a coalition of Latin American groups sued the state of Florida, arguing that poor academic performance among immigrant children was due to a failure to provide adequately trained teachers for students who speak English as a second language (known in Florida as ESOL – or English for Speakers of Other Languages students). The state settled the case out of court, agreeing to make ESOL preparation a mandate for practicing and new teachers.

Rather than add a significant number of courses to their already tightly-regulated coursework, Florida’s education colleges adopted an ‘infusion’ model for initial teacher preparation programs requiring two or three ESOL-specific courses while including some ESOL content in its general teacher preparation classes.

“We believe our approach works,”Coady said. “But there hasn’t been enough follow-up to prove, with hard data, that the infused approach is effective.”

Coady and her colleagues will use the Florida K-20 Education Data Warehouse, a statewide database of public school records that is one of the most detailed education databases in the U.S. They plan to look at the educational outcomes of ESOL students who have been taught by a graduate of UF’s Elementary ProTeach program since 2002. In addition, follow-up surveys and case studies of teachers in the area are also part of the study

Finding students taught by graduates of the elementary ProTeach program does pose a challenge, Coady said. UF graduates between 220 and 250 elementary school teachers per year. Some will teach in all-ESOL classrooms. Others may have only one or two ESOL students per year — or none at all.

“We have no clear idea, as yet, of just how many ProTeach graduates work with ESOL students,” Coady said.

Once the research is complete, however, the impact on teacher training could be tremendous, Coady said. With immigrant populations growing across the country, a growing number of states are looking for new ways to give teachers the ESOL tools they need. Many are mulling an infusion approach based on the Florida model. Even so, the researchers are primarily concerned with improving UF’s own teacher education program.

“We want to know what we’re doing right and what we’re doing wrong,”Coady said. “Given the scope of the study and the detail of our data, we’re likely to find insights that will be of use throughout the field, not just here at UF.”