Perceptions of Elementary Teachers Who Educate Linguistically Diverse Students

In order to understand teacher practice and learning, teachers' social activities, previous experiences, and teaching context must be considered. Sociocultural theory (SCT) provides a lens to examine these interactions, founded on the belief that "higher-order mental functions, including voluntary memory, logical thought, learning, and attention, are organized and amplified through participation in culturally organized activity" (Lantolf & Thorne, 2007, p. 220). On a daily basis, teachers are participating in one of society's largest culturally organized activity--schooling. Nested within school cultures are diverse students and families, including those who are linguistically diverse. Therefore, teachers' perceptions are ongoing, derived from their interactions within their school context, which have particular implications for the linguistically diverse students (LDS) they educate. This article reports on the perceptions of elementary teachers from the same teacher education program that educates LDS. Definitions Before beginning a discussion about linguistically diverse students and the teachers who serve them, it is important to operationalize the definitions integral to this discussion. A linguistically diverse student (LDS) is defined as a student who, at the very least, speaks a language other than English. Some LDS also possess literacy skills in their heritage languages. Finally, a LDS is a student who is learning English in the U.S. educational system. Linguistically diverse students represent a group of high, middle, and low achieving students (Suarez-Orozco & Suarez-Orozco, 2001). Low achievers often perform much lower relative to their monolingual peers and higher achieving LDS show performance trends that are much higher than monolingual peers. Their presence in schools expand traditional notions of the normal distribution curve (Dudley-Marling & Gurn, 2010), meaning LDS under- and over-perform compared to their monolingual peers, expanding the tails of the curve. "Linguistically diverse" is an encompassing term that includes other, more narrowly defined terms. For example, LDS are often referred to as English Language Learners (ELLs), English as Second Language (ESL) students, bilingual learners (BLs), language minority (LM) students, and/or limited English proficiency (LEP) students. LEP refers to the limited English proficiency of a student, according to the U.S. Department of Education. BLs are defined as students who are developing proficiency and use of more than one language (Brisk & Harrington, 2000). All of the different definitions offered above are distinctive (e.g., not all BLs are ELLs), however, the term LDS provides a broader umbrella, a perspective characterizing the individuality of each LDS. Broader U.S. Context From 1980 and 2009, the number of school-aged (5-17 years old) students who spoke a language other than English at home increased from 4.7 to 11.2 million (U.S. Department of Education, 2011) and 21 percent of the school-aged population were defined as ELLs. These demographics and recent policy changes create additional layers of pressure and accountability for both teachers and students. For example, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001(NCLB) requires that immigrants be tested in English three years after their arrival to the U.S. Combined with the waning of native language (L1) instruction in states like Massachusetts, Arizona and California, NCLB creates an environment where teachers must provide the vast majority of instruction in English while preparing LDS to be successful with federal and state assessments. While bilingual education has been shown to have positive implications for both learning English and developing a student's L1 (Cheung & Slavin, 2005; Cummins, 2000; Krashen, 2003; Oller & Eilers, 2002; Rolstad, Mahoney, & Glass, 2005), public opinion of bilingual education continues to be negative (Crawford & Krashen, 2007). …