Who Educates Teacher Educators About English Language Learners

AbstractWith the increasing numbers of English language learners (ELLs) in schools across the United States, most teachers will have these students in their classrooms in the near future if not already. Due to the wide diversity of ELL students, all classroom teachers must be equipped to work with these students. This study presents the findings of a survey on the preparation of teacher educators in the literacy field for preparing general education English language arts teachers to work with ELL students in their classrooms. Since part of the preparation includes access to academic journals that address the teaching of ELL students, the survey also identified the general education journals which these teacher educators utilize and the coverage of ELL students in these journals. This article considers the implications of these findings for teacher educators and researchers in the literacy field.Recently a teacher shared with me that while she was working on a graduate degree, the administrator in the school where she worked asked her to teach a high school class of English language learner (ELL) students. The administrator then went on to add that it should not be a lot of work as it would be similar to a study hall. I have heard countless stories of teachers giving ELL students things to color or draw, or worksheets which they could not complete, while proceeding with their lesson for the rest of the class. These classroom teachers did not know what to do with the new ELL students with whom they could not communicate. With the increasing numbers of ELL students in schools across the United States (U.S.) these scenarios may be more common than we would like to admit, as increasing numbers of general education teachers are likely to have ELL students in their classrooms at some point (Ballantyne, Sanderman, & Levy, 2008a). Consequently, the need to prepare classroom teachers to effectively work with this population of students is imperative.Several studies have highlighted the inadequate preparation of general education teachers for teaching ELL students (Abbate-Vaughn, 2007; Curran, 2003; Karabenick, & Noda, 2004; Lucas, Villegas, & Freedson-Gonzalez, 2008; Olsen & Jimenez-Silva, 2008; Roseberry-McKibbin, & Brice, 2005). One of the reasons for this insufficient instruction would appear to be that educators who prepare these teachers do not provide them with this knowledge because they themselves have not received this preparation. Howard's (2006) contention that teachers can't teach what they don't know could also be applicable to teacher educators.This article focuses on literacy educators, in particular teacher educators who prepare teachers of English Language Arts (ELA). It provides a window into how literacy educators who have not been formally prepared for teaching English language learners (ELL) prepare their students in teacher education programs for working with ELL students. It reports on the findings of a survey about what literacy educators know about working with ELL students, how they have come to know it, and their perceptions of how they prepare students in their programs to meet the literacy needs of ELL students. Additionally, positioning academic journals as a viable resource for preparing teachers for this responsibility, the study identifies journals these educators indentified as ones they use in their work and considers the extent to which these journals include articles that address the needs of ELL students.I begin this article with an overview of the context of the study, the heterogeneity of the expanding English language learner school population, which implicates the conceptual frame of this study. Next, I provide a brief discussion of literature that addresses the importance of teacher preparation for meeting the needs of ELL students and the inadequacy of general education teachers' preparation for this responsibility. I, then, describe and present the survey findings, with a consideration of academic journals' attendance to the topic of ELLs. …