Integrating Academic Language into Content Methodology: Supporting Math and Science Teacher Candidates to Meet Students’ Language Needs

Abstract

This article describes how a teacher-education program (TEP), whose mission is to improve schooling for linguistically diverse students, develops its’ teacher candidate’s critical dispositions and pedagogy related to academic-language (AL) development and how candidate performance on PACT can help TEPs better assess and improve how AL development can be embedded in content methodology courses. We discuss (a) how TEP worked to embed AL into the program course of study, (b) how teacher education faculty support AL in their content methodology courses, (c) the ways in which teacher candidates demonstrate knowledge of AL in two exemplary PACT Teaching Events, and (d) how TEP used data analysis of PACT for program improvement.