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Abstract
The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) call for students to exhibit an in-depth understanding of scientific inquiry practices, including direct observation, creative design thinking, and argumentation based on evidential learning. To support academic equity for multilingual learners, these new expectations require reconceptualization of science teacher education and classroom instruction, whereby emphasis is placed on incorporating the linguistic and cultural repertoires of learners through multimodal and open-ended learning activities. To support this shift in practices, this paper presents a culturally sustaining systemic functional linguistics (CS SFL) framework for science teachers and multilingual classrooms. CS SFL praxis emphasizes three intersecting areas: language development, knowledge development, and cultural sustenance.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 A wide variety of terms are currently in use to describe individuals who are being educated in predominantly English language settings, but whose home language is other than English. We have currently settled on the term multilingual learners because, for us, it represents a non-hierarchical perspective that, as learners, we always flexibly use the full range of language resources we have available to make and communicate meaning.
2 All names of teachers and students are pseudonyms.
3 Our project provided participating teachers with Language Boosters to provide a short (15 min), high interest science text aligned with the science standards and concepts to get students interacting in dynamic and multimodal ways. We also provided them with concept cards in English and Spanish to support deconstructing the language in new investigation along with investigation guides and kits for each embodied inquiry.