Civics Teachers’ Perspectives on Linguistically Diverse Students’ Opportunities and Difficulties with Reading and Understanding Texts in Civics

Figures & data

Figure 1. The four-field model.

Figure 2. Overview of the results.

Table A1. Themes and interview questions.

Themes	Interview questions
Opening questions	What subjects do you teach? How long have you been teaching?
Difficulties with reading and understanding civics texts	3. Do you have any considerations or things you think about when teaching civics to L2 students? 4. When reading and understanding texts in civics, what challenges do you think your L2 students often meet? a. How would you explain these difficulties? b. Are some difficulties more problematic than others? c. What do you usually do to reduce these difficulties? d. What resources do you wish you had access to?
Teacher strategies and resources outside and inside the school	5. Can you give examples of contexts or activities both outside and inside the school that you think would benefit L2 students’ understanding of civics texts? a. In what way do you think knowledge acquired from these contexts/activities could be brought into civics texts to support L2 students’ understanding of them?
Difficulties typical of civics texts (civics-specific elements in the texts)	6. How would you describe a typical text in civics? Can you give examples of some elements in civics texts that make the reading of them more difficult for L2 students? a. What kind of teacher strategies would help L2 students to cope with these difficulties, do you think? b. What strategies do you think your L2 students usually use to deal with these challenges? c. How do you usually find out whether your L2 students have understood or learned what you wanted them to learn from the civics texts? d. What responses do you get from L2 students that indicate whether they found the text easy or difficult to understand?
Difficulties with learning new knowledge from the texts (content-area knowledge)	7. What are your favorite civics topics that you usually teach about within the subject of civics? a. What types of texts do you usually use to teach these? b. What aspects do you keep in mind when preparing and selecting these texts? c. What do you do first when you start working with these texts? d. What are you hoping that your L2 students learn from these texts? e. What goals do you think your L2 students set up when they read these texts? 8. Do you observe that certain civics topics within civics texts generate more interest among L2 students compared to others? a. What do you think is the reason for this? b. How do L2 students indicate their interest in these topics? c. Are there any civics topics in texts that L2 students are less interested in? d. What do L2 students do or say to demonstrate this?
Teachers’ recommendations and suggestions	9. How has your teaching practice developed or changed throughout your career as a civics teacher for L2 students? a. What specific elements do you find most beneficial or educational for your own teaching practice? b. What advice would you give to colleagues starting their career teaching civics to L2 students?
Teachers’ reflection on the four-field model	10. When it comes to L2 students’ reading and learning from civics texts, what components in the model do you think are more important than others? Why?
Final question	11. Is there anything else you would like to add that I haven’t asked you about?