How Museum Teachers Scaffold Emergent Bilingual Learners’ Meaning-making During Field Trips

ABSTRACT

This study investigates museum teachers’ perceptions of instructional practices for emergent bilingual students (also known as “English language learners”) within a field-trip setting. Through a survey, focus group, and interviews we explore how prepared museum teachers felt to teach emergent bilingual learners and what type of museum practices and resources teachers described as best scaffolds for these students. Findings indicate that museum teachers did not feel confident in their abilities to serve the needs of emergent bilingual learners, but that artifacts and the dialogues surrounding them were perceived as important scaffolds. However, teachers also indicated the constraints of a field-trip setting made scaffolding difficult to enact. The study points to the need for museum teachers to be supported in consistently enacting best practices for emergent bilingual learners.

KEYWORDS:

• Museum education
• scaffolding
• emergent bilingual learners
• English language learners
• dialogue

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

About the authors

Johanna Tigert, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at University of Massachusetts Lowell, where she helps prepare pre-service teachers to meet the needs of emergent bilingual learners in grades K-12. Dr Tigert is a native of Finland and has taught Finnish and English as a foreign or second language in a variety of contexts. She taught English as a second language in Frederick, Maryland, public schools for nearly a decade. Her research spans a wide variety of issues related to language education, including effective instructional strategies for emergent bilingual learners and the development of the skills, knowledge, and identities of teachers who teach them. Her current project investigates how emergent bilingual learners can be best supported in non-school learning spaces such as museums.

Sheila Kirschbaum, Ed.D., is Director of the Tsongas Industrial History Center (TIHC), an education partnership of UMass Lowell’s College of Education and Lowell National Historical Park. The TIHC, a field-study destination for educators and students, offers hands-on, place-based experiences that develop understanding of the significance of the Industrial Revolution and its relevance today, using Lowell as a case study. In addition to its school programs, the TIHC provides high-quality teacher professional development, drawing national audiences to its institutes and workshops. Dr Kirschbaum’s experience as an educator ranges from high school and college teaching to writing consulting, museum education, and curriculum development. A priority in her work has been to engage Lowell Public Schools’ students with the Park’s and Center’s resources, building knowledge and skills in history and science as well as fostering pride of place. Sheila and her TIHC colleagues also strongly value their collaborations with UMass Lowell faculty and students on mutually beneficial projects that span a wide variety of disciplines.

ORCID

Johanna M. Tigert http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2642-7064

Notes

1 VTS is a technique where visitors’ engagement with a visual is initiated through three questions: “What is going on in this picture?” “What do you see that makes you say that?” and “What more can you find?” For more, see Yenawine, “Visual Thinking Strategies.”

2 Backward design is a method of lesson planning that begins with identifying learning goals, moves to determining acceptable evidence of learning, and concludes with designing activities and materials. See Wiggins and McTighe, “What is Backward Design?”

3 We use the term “emergent bilingual learners/students” to describe students who speak one or more non-English languages at home while developing their English proficiency. Although the terms “English learners” or “English language learners” are more common, our preferred term highlights the students’ linguistic assets.

4 Practitioner initiatives include curricula, programs, and guided tours aimed at emergent bilingual visitors; examples include the art enrichment curriculum by J. Paul Getty Museum, “Language Through Art”; foreign language tours at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, “Guided Tours”; the teacher materials about naturalization at the Smithsonian Institution, “Preparing for the Oath”; and tours led by language teachers at the British Museum, “ESOL Group Tours.”

5 Forums where museums’ services for emergent bilingual visitors have been described, discussed, and debated include the Museum Education Division of National Art Education Association and NAEA’s annual conference (www.arteducators.org); the homepage of this journal’s publisher, Museum Education Roundtable (www.museumedu.org); Connected Science Learning, a publication of the National Science Teaching Association (http://csl.nsta.org); and the Museum Magazine of the American Alliance of Museums (www.aam-us.org/category/museum-magazine/).

6 Various aspects of bilingual museum visitors’ experiences have been investigated in the following doctoral theses (among others): Alvarez, “Art Museums and Latino English Learners”; Armitage, “Planning for Inclusion”; Gill, “Toward Authentic Communication”; Ide, “Welcoming Change”; and Rodriguez, “Engaging English Language Learners.” Also see the following publications: Gutierrez and Rasmussen, “Code-switching”; Kanevsky, Corke, and Frangkiser, “Academic Resilience”; Lehman, Phillips, and Williams, “Empowering Identity Through Art”; and Shoemaker, “Art Is a Wonderful Place to Be.”

7 Vygotsky, “Mind in Society,” 24–30, 84–91.

8 Krashen, “The Input Hypothesis,” 4–9.

9 For more information about how dialogues, especially when conducted bilingually, can empower students, see Lehman, Phillips, and Williams, “Empowering Identity Through Art.”

10 See Alvarez, “Art Museums and Latino English Learners,” 169–70; and Gutierrez and Rasmussen, “Code-switching in the Art Museum,” 154–8.

11 Alvarez, “Art Museums and Latino English Learners,” 137, 156.

12 For more on the principles of effective PD, see Robinson, “Thoughts on the History,” 127–8.