The discourse of explicitness: Mathematics explanatory talk and self-assessment by Spanish-speaking emergent bilingual students in elementary classrooms

ABSTRACT

This article addresses the importance of supporting specific language practices of emergent bilingual students in classroom settings that are tied to the development of disciplinary knowledge. The author focuses on explanatory talk support in teaching by contingent responding and encouraging children to make meaning of mathematics concepts and procedures through student self-assessment of their language use. The author also makes a case that an emphasis on explicitness in explanatory talk is compatible with developing critical awareness of language features and uses in classrooms. The author concludes with ways both teachers and students can develop a “critical consciousness” toward academic language pedagogy that supports students, growing awareness and autonomy regarding the ambiguous nature of making meaning in content classrooms.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional Resources

1. The Dynamic Language Learning Progressions Project website.Retrieved from www.dllp.org.

This resource provides students and teachers with audio samples and transcriptions of explanations to build familiarity with the variations in oral language at different grades and degrees of emergent bilingualism.

2. Bailey, A.L. & Heritage, M. (2019). Progressing students’ language day by day. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

This book documents how teachers use Dynamic Language Learning Progressions to formatively assess elementary students’ development of explanatory talk during content lessons.

3. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Consensus Committee. (2018). English learners in STEM subjects: Transforming classrooms, schools, and lives. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

This report reviews studies of STEM learning and assessment of EL students, as well as district- and state-capacity building needed to facilitate greater access to STEM subjects and bolster teacher professional development.

Notes

1. Examples of explanatory talk were collected from 354 students in grades K-6 across nine schools as part of a professional learning project to create and implement empirical language learning progressions for formative assessment purposes (Bailey & Heritage, 2014). Seventeen teachers and three administrators from five of the schools participated in monthly communities of practice meetings and periodic classroom observations that guided the project and provided insight into support for student explanatory talk across the curriculum.

Additional information

Funding

The collection of the data reported here was supported by the WIDA Consortium at the Wisconsin Center for Educational Research and the WIDA ASSETS Enhanced Assessment Grant from the U.S. Department of Education. However, the content does not necessarily represent the policy of the U.S. Department of Education and you should not assume endorsement by the federal government. Alison Bailey also acknowledges serving as a consultant and advisory board member for WIDA projects.