Attending to science language demands in multilingual classrooms: a case study

ABSTRACT

This case study examines how three science teachers in a secondary school attended to the language demands of science through oral interactions in classes of multilingual students with diverse English proficiencies. It specifically unpacks the intricate role of language in science education, where teachers must address disciplinary-specific language demands as well as build academic language, within a policy environment that stresses English as medium-of-instruction for science education. Thirty-nine video recordings, comprising three full sets of lessons on the topic Human Circulatory System, were analysed. Instances of whole-class discussion during which an aspect of language (e.g. form, meaning or type) was addressed were the focus of analysis. The analysis shows some common features of language support across teachers, especially in terms of teaching scientific terminology, as well as features that provided additional support from one teacher. These features included unpacking the language demands of science beyond discrete terminology and use of students’ language. The article highlights interactions which can contribute to student opportunities for meaning-making in science.

KEYWORDS:

• Human circulatory system
• language demands of science
• multilingual classrooms
• teacher talk
• whole-class discussion

Acknowledgement

The authors are grateful to the teachers and students who participated in this project, and would also like to acknowledge the research team for their contributions to the project. The views expressed in this paper are the authors’ and do not necessarily represent the views of NIE.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 In this school system, students are ‘streamed’ based on prior academic performance, e.g. the academic high achievers, typically those in the ‘Express’ stream, sit for their ‘O’ Level Examination in four years; those in the ‘Normal (Academic)’ stream take the exam in their fifth year. Of relevance for this discussion, one teacher had previously taught this topic for those in Normal (Academic) which typically moves at a slower pace, but this was her first time teaching the topic to students in the Express stream.

2 The verbatim transcripts include some infelicitous utterances. As these are common in spontaneous speech, the linguistic ‘accuracy’ of the utterances is not part of the investigation, nor should they be taken as indicators of any issues in the teachers’ linguistic competence. Some of the quotations have been edited slightly to aid reading while retaining their intended meaning.

3 For example, T3 explained the Latin origin of ‘phago’, which means ‘eat’, when explaining ‘phagocyte’ and highlighted the presence of phosphate in enzymes that end with ‘kinase’ as in ‘thrombokinase’.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the Education Research Funding Programme, National Institute of Education (NIE), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, project no. OER 16/14 SLH. The views expressed in this paper are the authors’ and do not necessarily represent the views of NIE.