This recorded session is the second session of our online webinar series, Where the Evidence Leads: Preliminary Findings From IES-Funded English Learner Research Studies, hosted by the National Research & Development Center to Improve Education for Secondary English Learners at WestEd.
Building upon decades of seminal work, researchers at WestEd are working to iteratively develop, implement, and estimate the impact of replacement educational materials for 8th grade English language arts. This IES-funded English Language Arts Study is being conducted for the dual purpose of:
- developing teacher expertise with quality curriculum and learning for students bureaucratically classified as long-term English Learners; and
- strengthening classroom learning opportunities for middle school English Learners.
During the webinar, WestEd researchers discussed the diverse factors at play in the development of teacher professionalism, how to navigate the complexity of supporting the development of teacher expertise, and how specific domains of teacher expertise such as reflection and quality interactions can guide future growth.
Speakers
Aída Walqui
Center Director and Principal Investigator
Dr. Walqui is the Center Director and Principal Investigator for all four studies. For the last five decades, Dr. Walqui has dedicated her professional life to improving the expertise of teachers and educational leaders to deepen and accelerate the linguistic and academic achievement of English Learners. Having taught at all levels, Walqui is the author and co-author of multiple articles and books, including The Amplified Curriculum: Designing Quality Learning Opportunities for English Learners, published by Teachers College Press, and Reconceptualizing the Role of Critical Dialogue in American Classrooms: Promoting Equity through Dialogic Education, published by Routledge. At WestEd, Dr. Walqui initiated the Quality Teaching for English Learners initiative. Among the several awards received during her career, in 2016, she was selected by the International TESOL Association as one of the 50 most influential world researchers in applied linguistics. A native of Perú, Dr. Walqui holds a PhD from Stanford University.
Lee Hartman
English Language Arts and English Language Development Specialist
Lee Hartman is an English Language Arts (ELA) and English Language Development (ELD Specialist on the Center’s Educative English Language Arts Curriculum Materials study. He is an Education Program Associate on WestEd’s English Learner and Migrant Education Services team. He creates and implements learning experiences for ELA and ELD educators in 4th through 12th grade schools through professional development and lesson design. Previously, he served as an English as a Second Language (ESL) instructional coach to teachers working with English Learners and was responsible for creating and implementing secondary ELA and ESL curricula. A former teacher of secondary students, he specializes in the education of language minority students with a particular emphasis on Newcomers.
Mary Schmida
Co-Principal Investigator
Mary Schmida is a Co-Investigator on the Educative English Language Arts Curriculum Materials study for the National Research and Development Center to Improve Education for Secondary English Learners, funded by the Institute of Education Sciences. In this capacity, Schmida is writing units for 8th grade English Learners that support their analytic, conceptual, and linguistic understandings and is designing teacher educative materials to support their theoretical understandings and implementation of the units in their classrooms.
About the Center
Since 2020, the National Research & Development Center to Improve Education for Secondary English Learners has sought to significantly advance the capacity of educators, policymakers, and researchers to serve students who are classified in school as English Learners by bridging research and practice bidirectionally.
Funded by a grant from the Institute of Education Sciences, the Center consists of a world-class research team from WestEd; the University of Oregon; Oregon State University; and the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST) at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The Center seeks to (a) identify and describe the systemic barriers that prevent secondary English Learner students from successfully accessing the general curriculum and (b) develop and test innovative, educative curriculum materials that enable these students to reach their full potential in community, college, and career.
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