Open Collections

Abstract

Rapid growth in school ESL populations has led to increased mainstreaming of ESL students in the regular classroom. These students require long term support to be able to reach a level of competence where they can successfully handle academic content. Thus content teachers are required to further expand their role to include taking responsibility for language development as well as content knowledge. However, research has highlighted the lack of positive attitudes on the part of content teachers towards changing instruction for the ESL student. This thesis examines the emerging process of collaborative planning between an ESL Resource teacher and content teachers with the aim of helping the classroom teacher adapt teaching processes for ESL learners in a way which is developmental, contigent and owned by the classroom teacher. A shared frame of reference of the need to integrate language and content instruction was the basis of this collaboration. Data is qualitative and includes observation, document collection and tape recordings made by the researcher who was a participant! observer. The particulars of this developmental process and the contextual factors which affected implementation are presented.