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This article was downloaded by: [Van Pelt and Opie Library]On: 18 October 2014, At: 08:45Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
International Journal of ScienceEducationPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tsed20
Teaching Refugee Learners withInterrupted Education in Science:Vocabulary, literacy and pedagogyJennifer Miller aa Monash University , AustraliaPublished online: 11 Mar 2009.
To cite this article: Jennifer Miller (2009) Teaching Refugee Learners with Interrupted Educationin Science: Vocabulary, literacy and pedagogy, International Journal of Science Education, 31:4,571-592
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International Journal of Science EducationVol. 31, No. 4, 1 March 2009, pp. 571–592
ISSN 0950-0693 (print)/ISSN 1464-5289 (online)/09/040571–22© 2009 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/09500690701744611
RESEARCH REPORT
Teaching Refugee Learners with Interrupted Education in Science: Vocabulary, literacy and pedagogy
Jennifer Miller*Monash University, AustraliaTaylor and Francis LtdTSED_A_274416.sgm10.1080/09500690701744611International Journal of Science Education0950-0693 (print)/1464-5289 (online)Research Report2007Taylor & Francis0000000002007Dr. [email protected]
With the globalisation of education, large numbers of students with interrupted schooling and lowEnglish literacy levels represent both a quantitative and qualitative shift in the kinds of studentsfaced by teachers in classrooms. In Australia, after a year in an intensive English languageprogramme, immigrant and refugee students are placed in the mainstream, where they face enor-mous challenges in content areas such as science. The complexity and specificity of science termi-nology pose a serious barrier for students. This article reports on a research project to supportvocabulary learning in mainstream science for Year 8 refugee students (n = 23) in one high school.Data sources included teacher interviews, student journal writing, and the science text itself. Theauthor demonstrates why science content language is inaccessible to many students through anextensive review of the literature, and then juxtaposes the views of students and teachers with theactual demands of one chapter from the Year 8 Science textbook on states of matter. The finalsection presents the response of the researchers to help scaffold vocabulary learning for this topicand a trial of the materials. The study highlights the links between conceptual and linguistic under-standing. Given that students identified vocabulary as a major barrier to learning, and that thescience teacher tended to assume rather than to explain new terminology, the language-focusedapproach outlined to support vocabulary was seen as one way to address an urgent problem.Implications for professional development and teacher education are also addressed.
Introduction
As classrooms around the world become more culturally and linguistically diverse,there is a growing awareness in education research of the difficulties faced bystudents with limited English language literacy in mainstream education. Theproject reported here is part of an ongoing study into the challenges faced by refu-gee students and their teachers in Melbourne high schools. The paper therefore
*Department of Education, Monash University, Building 6, Clayton Campus, Wellington Road,Melbourne, Victoria 3800, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]
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572 J. Miller
focuses on a very specific group of learners facing the compounded difficulties ofminimal literacy in their first language, learning complex content in a new languageand struggling with limited science vocabulary and conceptual development due tointerrupted schooling. Previous studies have indicated that dealing with the needsand expectations of these students creates a new and challenging set of pedagogicaldilemmas for teachers. These students struggle with the cultural, social andacademic demands of school and mainstream subjects, inappropriate resources andtexts for low literacy learners, and at times their own unrealistic expectations(Miller, Mitchell & Brown, 2005). The students stressed that the language ofsubjects such as Science and Social Science was extremely difficult, the textbookstoo hard, and that their content area teachers did not help them with the language(Brown, Miller & Mitchell, 2006). But the teachers were also struggling. Oneteacher commented:
and the problem is with science, how can you teach them ecology or evolution whenthey don’t even know what is a male or a female, sperm or egg? You know it’s so hardfor us and I advise them to bring a dictionary with them. Only one girl brought it andthe rest no. They just kept asking me, ‘how do you spell this and what is the meaning ofthis’, just all the time. (Maths/Science teacher) (Miller, Mitchell & Brown, 2005, p. 30)
English as a second language (ESL) teachers at two schools requested that theresearchers return to talk more about science with the mainstream science teachers,and that we develop material that would be accessible to low literacy learners in Year8 science, and specifically that would scaffold their learning of science vocabulary.While the study above looked at a range of teaching and learning challenges acrossthe curriculum, this paper focuses specifically on the subsequent project on a peda-gogical approach to address some of the challenges raised. In this paper the term‘literacy’ refers not to scientific literacy but to English language literacy.
There are six sections in this paper. First, I provide some background on theselearners. This is followed by an overview of the literature on ESL learners in main-stream content areas, on the interrelationship between scientific knowledge andlanguage proficiency, and specifically on vocabulary learning in science. In the thirdsection I outline the methodology of the study briefly and fourthly, present theperspectives of the teachers and students on vocabulary and science. The responsesof the researchers to the problems identified by participants are provided in the fifthsection. These included an analysis of the vocabulary of one chapter of the Year 8science textbook, the creation of a simple ‘dictionary’ for the chapter and the devel-opment of vocabulary support materials on the topic for low literacy learners. A trialof the materials in one classroom is presented in the sixth section, followed by someconclusions.
Background Context for these Learners
Between 2003 and 2005, Australia granted 23,898 humanitarian visas under theUNHCR programme. 16,839 of which were for refugees from African countries.
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Vocabulary, Literacy and Pedagogy 573
Around half of this group were born in Sudan (Department of Immigration andIndigenous Affairs (DIMIA), 2005), identified as the ‘major source country bybirthplace’, with numbers dramatically increased in the past four years. In Victoria,the Australian state where this study took place, there were 3762 newly arrivedstudents in 2005, including a substantial increase in numbers of students with ‘little,no or severely interrupted schooling’ (Department of Education and TrainingVictoria, 2005, p.22). The top five language groups amongst the new arrivals were‘Other African’ (460 students), Arabic (412), Mandarin (333), Tagalog (193) andFarsi/Persian/Dari (156). The largest group of new arrivals (19% or 714 students),were born in Sudan (p.11). Around 900 of the total new arrivals (roughly 25%), hadlimited or interrupted education.
Large numbers of refugee students with interrupted schooling represent both adramatic shift in the kinds of students now entering Australian schools. Thesechildren experience compounded difficulties in achieving academic success, forreasons widely recognised in the research literature (Collier 1995; McBrien, 2005;Rutter, 2006; Fantino & Colak 2001). Language is a major part of the problem.Although African students, for example, typically speak a tribal language and someArabic if they have lived in Arabic speaking countries or refugee camps, many havelittle or no literacy in any language.
In Victoria, students with interrupted schooling receive up to 12 months in anintensive English language programme, after which they enter mainstream schools,with limited support from ESL specialists. A body of research and evidence nowestimates that in optimum circumstances, it takes three to five years to develop orallanguage proficiency and four to seven years to gain academic English proficiency(Collier, 1989,1995; Hakuta, Butler & de Witt, 2000). These times are much longerfor disadvantaged children, those in poor schools and those with interrupted school-ing, with some studies suggesting it takes up to ten years for such students to acquireacademic proficiency and to compete with native speakers on standardised tests (seeGarcia, 2000).
In spite of the numerous complex challenges confronting high school agedstudents arriving with minimal or no schooling, some quickly acquire functionaloral skills. Apparent oral fluency however can be highly misleading for mainstreamteachers, who expect transfer to and similarly ‘smooth’ acquisition of academicskills (Hakuta, Butler & Witt, 2000). However, many studies have demonstratedthe complexity and specificity of cognitive academic language use in schools, andby the middle years of schooling, the nature of classroom instructions and textsbegin to change and literacy practices become increasingly specialised within thesubject areas (Carrasquillo, Kucer and Abrams, 2004). Students with interruptededucation lack the topic-specific vocabularies of academic subjects, understandingsof register and genre, cultural background knowledge to scaffold their understand-ing and learning strategies to process content. Cognitive development and literacyin the first language have also long been acknowledged as critical to secondlanguage acquisition and school learning (Collier, 1989, 1995; Carrasquillo &Rodríguez, 2002).
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574 J. Miller
ESL Learners in Mainstream Content Areas
Although there is no shortage of literature on ESL learners in mainstream contexts,or learning English through content areas, several serious gaps emerge from a reviewof the research. First, there are relatively few studies on ESL learners in specificsubject areas such as science, social studies or mathematics. Second, studies tend notto differentiate ESL learner groups, specifying the category ‘ESL’ or ‘second languagelearner’ rather than ‘immigrant’, ‘refugee’, ‘international fee-paying’, or ‘literate/lowliteracy’—all of which have a dramatic impact on learning. McBrien (2005) stressesthat there is insufficient literature ‘separating the needs of immigrant students fromthe needs of refugee students’ (p. 356). Third, studies on learning English throughcontent areas rarely focus on vocabulary as an area of interest or importance. Finally,in the literature on vocabulary, there is generally an assumption that students canread, can use dictionaries, or at least have literacy in their first language.
Research on the English proficiency of English language learners in mainstreamsubjects does not usually identify specific content areas, but presents case-studies ofparticular schools and classrooms (Arkoudis & Davison, 2002), or recommendationsfor whole school and teacher practice (Brown, 2004; Nam & Lewis, 2000; Thomas,2004; Watts-Taffe & Truscott, 2000). Some studies have focused on learners andteachers in specific subjects such as maths, science or geography. In a study of tworural elementary science classrooms, Brown & Bentley (2004) found that Englishlanguage learners were consistently ignored by their teachers, who did not take upstrategies suggested by ESL specialists for working with these students (see alsoCreese, 2005).
The benefits of and strategies for content-based instruction, that is, teachingEnglish through topics of science or social studies, is reflected in many studies in thepast decade (Brown, 2004; Carrrasquillo, Kucer & Abrams, 2004; Crandall, 1994;Echevarria, Vogt & Short, 2000). A recent shift entails extending these strategies andpractices to broader mainstream teaching contexts, namely suggesting that allteachers need language focused approaches in their pedagogy. Such studies suggest,for example:
● encouraging students to use their native vocabulary and social language to scaf-fold the development of academic language (Watts-Taffe & Truscott, 2000;Buchanan & Helman, 1997);
● building on prior knowledge and student confidence (Thomas, 2004; Watts-Taffe& Truscott, 2000);
● systematic collaboration between ESL specialists and mainstream teachers(Brown, 2004; Thomas, 2004; Arkoudis & Davidson, 2002, Buchanan &Helman, 1997; Creese, 2005);
In research on specific content areas, there is an increasing focus on the role oflanguage in the construction of subject specific discourse, and on the need to analysethe texts of the subject to work out how they should be taught to second languagelearners, and science related studies are outlined below.
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Vocabulary, Literacy and Pedagogy 575
Scientific Knowledge and Language Proficiency
The construction of science content and the use of language are critically interre-lated and interdependent (Huang & Morgan, 2003). In science, understanding themeaning of a word often entails grasping a concept. Words like ‘density’ or‘compression’ are not simply a matter of translation from another language (lowliteracy students often do not have these words in their first language in any case).Understanding these words requires the learner to understand the concept of densityor the process of compression, what it looks like and how it happens. Consequently,some researchers argue that a language focus should be used to structure content inmaths and science. An analysis of the language of the subject discourse is needed tofacilitate students’ understanding of the content and to develop their abilities tothink and reason scientifically and mathematically (Buchanan & Helman, 1997;Dong, 2002; Fang, 2006). Staples & Heselden (2002) also stress that science has itsown language, and advocate structured group work in which students ‘talk science’as it were, specifically focusing on vocabulary. Cooperative learning activities,including class and peer group discussion and problem solving tasks, providestudents with opportunities to ‘speak’ and to ‘write’ their subject content (Case,2002).
The underlying assumption in this work is that explicit teaching, and language useand practice are fundamental to the development of the reasoning and problem-solving skills needed for conceptual understanding in science. Fang (2006) arguesconvincingly that explicit attention to the language of school science is essential forEnglish language learners, particularly given the gaps between scientific andeveryday meanings of many words, the level of abstraction, and the complexity ofgrammatical forms in science texts. Fang suggests a range of strategies for teachersand learners.
The studies cited above focus on pedagogical strategies which encourage theactive use of language and cater to the needs of students who are not proficient inliteracy or who have limited conceptual background in a content area. The literatureon scaffolding (see for example Gibbons, 2002; Hammond, 2001) provides exten-sive guidelines on these strategies. They include identifying and drawing on theresources of students’ language and prior knowledge; linking oral language to subjectcontent in relation to experimental work; the explicit teaching of words andconcepts; picture dictionaries; collaborative group and project work; journal writing;and discussion templates.
One problem in science is that meanings in scientific discourse may differ fromcommon meanings in everyday usage (Bowering, 2005; Dawes, 2004; Dong, 2002;Case, 2002; Fang, 2006; Jaipal, 2001). These researchers encourage teachers tomake the patterns of scientific discourse more explicit, and to have students identifythe disparities between scientific and everyday English usage of words and concepts.The study presented here identified many such words in just one Year 8 sciencetopic, including model, mass, matter, attract and many others. The final section of theliterature review looks now at the specific area of vocabulary in science.
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576 J. Miller
Words as Barriers—Vocabulary and Science
A serious gap in the research into vocabulary learning is that it rarely focuses oneither specific content areas like science vocabulary, or on low literacy ESL learners.However, a number of studies report on learners in multilingual classrooms. Nation(1995–1996) advises that explicit vocabulary instruction is essential for secondlanguage learners, pointing out that there is ‘a very rapid drop-off in frequency ofoccurrence of vocabulary after the most frequent 2,000 to 3,000 high frequencywords of the language’ (p. 8). That is, it is highly unlikely that learners would everencounter most science words, for example, in the course of general reading. Forlow literacy learners this is clearly the case—where would they ever encounter scien-tific apparatus, processes, concepts or elements? Researching in the context ofprimary science, Wilson (1998) argues that the methodical teaching of vocabulary isthe most effective way of improving student attainment. He advocates a sequencedapproach to vocabulary learning, which assesses the value of using particularscientific terminology on the basis of three criteria: whether the term is necessary toenable students to understand a particular concept; whether the students haveexperience of the phenomenon to which the term relates; and whether the termenhances students’ ability to learn new concepts. In other words, each term must filla gap and have a purpose that cannot be met by an alternative word.
For some years science curriculum writers have advocated the use of structuredoverviews or graphic outlines, visual representations of the key concepts andvocabulary and the relationships between them. Staples & Helselden (2002) alsoreport a very comprehensive set of strategies to learn vocabulary in the mainstreamscience classroom, many of which have a visual element. In addition to text-based‘teacher generated’ activities for scaffolding vocabulary learning, they argue thatexploratory dialogue between students is conducive to vocabulary and contentlearning.
Another recommendation identified in the literature on science vocabulary learn-ing relates to the use and construction of dictionaries and/or vocabulary notebooks.A study by Taylor (2004) revealed the false assumption held by educators thatstudents already know how to use a dictionary. Findings from Taylor’s study showedthat 31 out of 32 ESL students in a Canadian university had not learned formallyhow to use either an English-English dictionary or an L1 dictionary. To help teach-ers build glossaries, Taylor demonstrated that as well as contextualised examples,structure and layout, a key issue was to avoid definitions that contained furtherwords that would be unfamiliar to students, necessitating an endless cycle of lookingup new words. In a school context, Miller, Mitchell & Brown (2005) also found thatlow literacy students were unable use dictionaries effectively, but that their main-stream teachers did not understand this. In language learning contexts, teachermodelling of dictionary use is therefore imperative to establish it as a classroompractice (McWilliam, 1997).
Student construction of dictionaries and vocabulary notebooks has been suggestedby Fowle (2002), Staples & Helselden (2002), Bradley & Bradley (2002) and Ali
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Vocabulary, Literacy and Pedagogy 577
(2000). Bradley & Bradley emphasise three processes to make vocabulary clear andaccessible in the construction of student dictionaries: simplification; expansion ofideas; and direct definition. Part of our mandate in the project described below wasto develop a simplified ESL science ‘dictionary’ or glossary for one Year 8 sciencetopic. Below I briefly describe the methodology of the project and then turn to datafrom teachers and students, the materials developed as a result, and the trial of thesein one class.
The Science Vocabulary Project
The science vocabulary project was a response to an earlier study of the social andacademic experiences of refugee students with interrupted schooling in high schools(Miller, Mitchell & Brown, 2005). The initial study had shown that many studentsdid not have first language literacy and could not cope with the language ofmainstream subjects, and that their teachers did not know how to adapt materials forlow literacy learners. Teachers reported that students found science the mostdifficult subject at school, and requested help to develop an approach to make thelanguage of science more transparent. Participants were from one of the samegovernment high schools as in the first study, in a disadvantaged outer metropolitanarea of Melbourne. They included two ESL teachers, one science teacher and 23ESL students. The school had large numbers of refugee students with interruptedschooling, so it is useful to look at a sample of students’ backgrounds (names arepseudonyms).
All of the participants had experienced significantly disrupted education accompa-nied by a number of changes in the language of instruction. Students were generallynot literate in their first language. In this school more than 55 nationalities and 35languages were represented.
With the ESL teachers it was decided we would address the language of Year 8Science, producing both a dictionary and support materials for the textbook, whichwould eventually be offered to the whole Year 8 Science class, not just the ESLstudents. The teachers stressed that all students could benefit from scaffolded activi-ties with a language focus, and that many other low literacy students in the schoolswere in fact native speakers of English. For this phase of the project, there were tworesearch questions:
1. What might an ‘early literacy’ Year 8 science dictionary look like, and howwould it be constructed?
2. What types of activities are appropriate to scaffold vocabulary learning for lowliteracy learners in science?
The materials were then trialled by one science teacher in one school. The topic‘What things are made of’ was taught over five weeks by a male teacher, with threelessons per week to two classes, 8A (n = 22, a stronger group with only five ESLstudents) and 8B (n = 19, mostly ESL and low literacy students).
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578 J. Miller
Tab
le 1
.S
tude
nt p
arti
cipa
nts
Nam
e(M
/F)
Age
Dat
e of
en
rolm
ent
Cou
ntry
of
bir
thP
rior
sch
oolin
gL
anga
uge
scho
olL
angu
ages
spo
ken
Oth
er
Sah
al(M
)18
Mar
04
Sud
anS
udan
: 2 y
rsK
enya
: 6 y
rs
(int
erru
pted
)
Ove
r ag
e:
no in
tens
ive
cour
se
Din
kaS
wah
iliC
an r
ead
and
wri
te S
wah
ili a
nd
Din
ka; l
ives
wit
h ol
der
brot
her
&
youn
ger
sist
er.
Den
g(M
)15
Feb
02
Sud
anS
udan
: 3 y
rsC
airo
: 2 y
rs6
mon
ths
Din
kaA
rabi
cL
ives
wit
h m
othe
r an
d fa
ther
, and
yo
unge
r br
othe
rs &
sis
ters
.W
ael
(M)
17F
eb 0
4S
udan
6 yr
s(i
nter
rupt
ed)
9 m
onth
sD
inka
, Ara
bic,
Eng
lish
Yr
10L
ives
wit
h m
othe
r an
d si
blin
gsJa
ckie
(F)
20A
ug 0
2S
udan
6 yr
s12
mon
ths
Tig
riny
a A
mha
ric
Eng
lish
Yr
10L
ives
alo
ne.
Sun
day
(F)
17Ja
n 03
Sud
anK
enya
: 3 y
rsT
augh
t ot
hers
to
spea
k E
nglis
h &
Sw
ahili
.
9 m
onth
sD
inka
Sw
ahili
Liv
es w
ith
mot
her,
sis
ter
and
her
child
. Has
bro
ther
in U
S.
Lua
l(M
)15
1999
Sud
anK
enya
1-2
yrs
Cou
ldn’
t sp
eak
Eng
lish
on a
rriv
al.
4–6
mon
ths
Din
ka(u
nder
stan
ds a
litt
le
Ara
bic)
7 br
othe
rs a
nd s
iste
rs, w
ith
mot
her.
Liv
ed in
Eth
iopi
a, t
hen
in r
efug
ee
cam
p in
Ken
ya.
Gat
kath
(M)
17S
ept
03S
udan
Ken
ya a
s a
baby
, the
n U
gand
a.6
yrs
inte
rrup
ted
6 m
onth
sD
inka
, und
erst
ands
so
me
Ara
bic,
Sw
ahili
Liv
es w
ith
mot
her
and
sibl
ings
Jane
(F)
19?
2002
Sud
anC
ompl
eted
Yr
10?
in
Sud
an, t
hen
Egy
pt f
or
3.5
yrs
– no
sch
ool
6 m
onth
sA
rabi
c (l
iter
ate)
Lea
rned
bas
ic E
nglis
h fo
r 4
year
s in
Sud
an
Liv
es w
ith
her
fam
ily(2
par
ents
).
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Vocabulary, Literacy and Pedagogy 579
Data Sources
Data sources for the project included focus group interviews with three teachers(two ESL teachers and one science teacher), student journals on learning science,the science textbook itself, and following the trial, a student questionnaire andteacher interview. The group interviews focused on the needs of students, the use ofthe textbook and teaching strategies used. We also negotiated a consultative processto develop the materials, and provided a set of guidelines for journal entries forteachers to give to the students. The guidelines contained a cartoon about diary writ-ing and also the questions below to prompt several diary entries.
A. What do you like about science?Is there something you don’t like?
B. What would help you learn science better?C. Describe a science lesson you had this week—what did you learn?D. Is science an important subject? Why / why not?E. What are some words in science that you don’t really understand very well?
Interviews and journal entries (n = 23) were analysed to identify and code keythemes and issues, which were then mapped to find interrelated suggestions fromteachers and students (Miller & Glassner, 1997). A chapter on particle theory fromthe Year 8 science textbook, Scienceworld 8 (Englert, Stannard & Williamson, 2000),entitled ‘What things are made of’ was chosen by the science teacher as the pilot foranalysis and materials development. The chapter was analysed by the researchers interms of its linguistic demand, layout, and approach. Words identified by theresearchers were crosschecked against the selections made by the science and ESLteachers. Criteria used included the importance of the word in grasping the concept,complexity, science specificity and likelihood that the word was new or difficult (seeWilson, 1998).
The ‘dictionary’ and the support materials for the chapter were developed by ateam including the researchers (both ex-ESL teachers), and two research assistantswho had science teaching backgrounds, but also some ESL knowledge. In the brieftrial of the materials, each student in the two Year 8 classes was given the unit‘dictionary’ and a workbook of activities. The unit finished with a test, and aquestionnaire on the materials. The teacher was also interviewed.
Textbooks, Teachers and Vocabulary
In an earlier study, Science teachers emphasised that students’ language difficultiesfaced created challenging new problems for them as teachers (Miller, Mitchell &Brown, 2005). The science teacher quoted in the Introduction who wanted studentsto bring their dictionaries to look up words like ‘sperm’ and ‘egg’ did not see herselfas a teacher of vocabulary or spelling and felt the problem resided with the lack ofdictionaries and the students’ compliance in bringing them. However the ESL
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580 J. Miller
teachers knew that literacy rather than recalcitrance was the problem. One of themtold us:
A number of students this year, again for the first time that I can remember, have notbeen able to grasp how to use a dictionary—just throw it in the air and hope it lands ona page where ‘v’ might be. I’ve four year 10s this year, I’ve had to write the alphabet upon the board most days when I go into the class, so the kids when they are doing theirwork can look up and see where ‘f’ might be and then we would put it against the word.But many students just flick around and just hope—they have very little understandingthat ‘a’ is first. (Miller, Mitchell & Brown, 2005, p. 30)
In the focus group, the ESL teachers and the science teachers took different posi-tions on the textbook, as shown in the following interchange. Note the interjectionsof Lesley and Sarah, the ESL teachers as Mark, the science teacher, speaks. Thesymbol [ indicates an overlapping comment.
Mark This is our book, and I think it is a really good book, because if weLesley [but it’s difficultMark Oh well the concepts are difficult. There’s no doubt about itLesley [And it’s not written for low literacy studentsMark No. Not at all. Because it’s really jam-packed. We just did the density thing.
This really confused them—really confused them—because they had to workout the densities of certain objects. No idea. They’re still struggling
Lesley [But they’ve got to read.Mark so we’re still struggling, and you see water is a density of one, and I said
anything higher than that, any number bigger than that, it is going to sink inwater. And
Lesley [Oh my GodMark or smaller than that number is going to float. … Then there’s the exercises.
Again very wordy, a lot ofSarah [There’s too much on the page hereMark calculations. The kids cannot do this by themselves. I do this with them, one
by one, on the board, every one of them, and I guarantee that only five or sixof them would understand it.
Mark agrees that the book is ‘difficult’, ‘jam-packed’ and confusing and thatstudents can not do the exercises independently. His assessment of the bookhowever is that it is ‘really good.’ Lesley and Sarah are concerned not with the topicof ‘density’ but with the density on the page and the inaccessibility of the text. Sarahwas frustrated that teachers taught quite inflexibly to the text, but conceded thatscience textbooks were not written for the most of the students in this school. Shesaid:
You see, the science teachers here so heavily teach to the textbook. They won’t adaptthat much at all, so what they give kids for revision they might give them the exact samething for the test, but the kids still can’t do it. So the science teachers are grappling withthat so I think the dictionary would assist the science teachers. Because, let’s face it,when you’re writing a textbook you’ve got to write it to the mainstream audience.Nobody is writing textbooks for the ESL kids.
Her hope here is that the science teachers would also learn from the developmentof the language-focused materials. What were students gaining from lessons with
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mainstream textbooks written for literate native speakers who have over seven yearsprior schooling? The following section uses data from the students’ journals.
‘The Words are Really Hard’
The students’ journal writing produced almost unanimous consensus that the‘language’ and the language and specifically the ‘words’ of science were a majorbarrier to learning. They constantly identified the science as ‘big’, ‘hard’, or ‘difficult’.Here is what some of them wrote, without changes:
The luangueg is hard about science when you founds big words you can [can’t]undresant it.
I really don’t like science because I don’t understand some of the words. I want to beable to understand the words.
I don’t like theory in science because it is boring and difficult e.g. difficult vocabulary.When the vocabulary is difficult I ask the teacher or I use a dictionary to find the wordand then understand it. I write down the difficult words and go home to learn them andremember them.
The student was aware of vocabulary as a factor in his learning and had severalstrategies to tackle the problem words, including asking the teacher. However somestudents claimed teachers did not explain things clearly, if at all, a finding whichechoed that of Brown and Bentley (2004). They wrote:
I think the projects are hard and I think the teacher should explained me hard wordespecially in books, and because the langauge a hard the teacher talks Last I think sheshould slow and more explainion of the words she said.
I don’t like about science is that you have to really write about Result, Aim, conclusionand the vocabulary I wouldn’t understand at all. Sometime our teacher never tell uswhat the word mean I just had to asked my friend for help.
The hard thing about science is the words are really hard you can’t understand thewords and some times teacher tells you what does it mean and some times not.
The three quotes above reveal that in the students’ perception at least, teachers werenot focused on explaining or teaching terminology in an explicit way. We can inferthat some teachers simply assume students understand what is being said. Over halfof the students reported that the teachers talked too much, some adding a fervent wishthat they would stop talking and let them do something. The journals indicate clearlythat for most students, the materials (and the teaching) of science was not helpingthem. Several complained they did not understand the homework. One wrote:
Science homework is the most boringest Homework ever because mostly I don’t get thequestions and when I copy from Peter [pseudonym] because he got dictionary at homeshe tells me off. I allways fail science never past science in my life. The most boringestsubject.
Repeatedly from teachers and students we heard that the language, and specificallythe vocabulary of science were major stumbling blocks. Students said that the
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teachers talked too much, yet didn’t explain things clearly. There are two issues ofconcern here, one relating to the difficulty of the science text itself, and the otherrelating to pedagogy, specifically the linguistic knowledge needed by science teachersto apprehend the problem, and then to adapt and to generate texts and explanationsthat are accessible to low literacy learners. Both involve assumptions about language.The textbook itself provides some insight into such assumptions, and the problem.
A Typical Science Chapter
An analysis of the chapter, ‘What things are made of’ (in Englert, Stannard &Williamson, 2000) was important as part of this project. The chapter, 23 pages long,would normally be allocated around four weeks of teaching time. The chapter hadthree sections, namely Properties of matter; Solid, liquid, gas and Using the particletheory. For students to read a text with ease, and with some help from the teacher,students need to recognise over 90–95% of the vocabulary (Nation, 2001;Westwood, 2003). When students face large amounts of unknown vocabulary,Nation (2001) stresses that they cannot do meaning-focused work. Westwood citesresearch showing that a ‘whole language’ approach has proved unsuccessful for lowliteracy learners and that an explicit focus on vocabulary, particularly on buildingsight vocabulary is critical. He also elaborates the connection between readingcompetence and oral language competence, including vocabulary knowledge (seealso Huang & Morgan, 2003).
In this chapter, we identified 300 words, phrasal verbs, concepts or technicalformulaic phrases that would be very challenging to low literacy students with inter-rupted schooling. These were the ‘hard words’. We identified these words using ourexpertise as ESL specialists, and the criteria outlined in the methodology sectionabove. The ESL and science teachers at the school agreed with most of the selectionand some changes were made. In the table below I show some of the categories ofvocabulary identified with brief examples. In the third column I have also related theexamples to criteria suggested by Wilson (1998) in regard to identifying sciencevocabulary for teaching.
The notion of teaching or explicating 300 new items of vocabulary on one scienceunit in not remotely viable. We elected 50 of the more common science terms fromthe initial lists. Part of our next task lay in choosing words from the list identified, todesign a useable tool for students in the form of a glossary, and support materials forthe text which would be would be both readable and doable.
Scaffolding Science Vocabulary Learning for Low Literacy Learners
Combining the literature on scaffolding and on vocabulary learning (Hammond,2001, Nation, 2001) we developed a set of principles to create a brief illustratedglossary and a set of activities, which included a set of 25 black line masters, flashcards, and vocabulary cards for games, together with ideas for using these. The prin-ciples included the following: an explicit focus on meaning; the move from concrete
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to abstract language wherever possible; comprehensible input and output practice;simplified instructions; the repetition and recycling of vocabulary across activities; avariety of tasks; the use of illustrations; clear formatting; and the inclusion of cooper-ative learning, as the possibility for negotiation of meaning in groups was also impor-tant (see Dawes, 2004; Dooley, 2002; Staples & Heselden, 2002). Before looking atthe typology of activities we created for the activity book, it is important to commentbriefly on the ‘dictionary’ part of the project.
Make a Dictionary? No Problem
Most of the students in this study can not rely on bilingual dictionaries, since thosewho speak Arabic can not read it, and dictionaries in their tribal languages are notavailable. Furthermore, in science they encounter many complex words andconcepts for the first time in any language. It is not a question of ‘What is the wordfor chemical bonds in your language?’ This is a new concept as well as a new word. Asin any research, the issue of ‘how to’ emerged as soon as we attempted to build thedictionary. In a ‘rich instruction’ of vocabulary, Nation (2001) stresses the impor-tance of three elements, namely form, meaning and use (pp. 97–99). These wereessential in both the glossary and the activities developed, as shown in the followingsection.
Table 2. Problem vocabulary in science
Categories of vocabulary presenting difficulty Examples Category of problem
Difficult distinctions compress vs squeeze; processed vs synthetic
Concept
Non-scientific low frequency words
jewellery, woven, leather, plumbing
New vocabulary
Scientific elements copper, nitrogen, oxygen, argon
Scientific specificity + new vocabulary
Scientific processes occupy space; dissolve, condense, contract, displace, predict
Scientific specificity + new vocabulary
Scientific apparatus gauze, flask, fume cupboard, tripod
Scientific specificity + new vocabulary
Common scientific terms volume, inference, density, generalisation, synthetic, extract
Concept, scientific specificity, complexity, new vocabulary
Words which have different everyday and scientific meanings
mass, state, matter, attract, model
Concept, scientific specificity
Cultural references Ancient Greece, Democritus Concept, unfamiliarityDifficult conceptual phrases states of matter; spread evenly
throughout; attractive forcesConcept, scientific specificity
Measurements cubic centimeter; 100 mls Concept, complexity
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Every element needed for the glossary definitions entailed lengthy discussions inteam meetings. These included a way to represent the pronunciation of the word, itsword class, the ‘ESLified’ definition, indication of number, word-building possibili-ties, a simple sentence to provide context, decisions on which words made the ‘cut’,the formatting of entries, and sequencing (in topics or alphabetical). The examplesentences alone necessitated long debate about whether sentences were bothconcrete enough in terms of ESL scaffolding, and scientifically accurate. We alsowanted pictures where possible for as many terms as we could. For this chapter weincluded only 50 key words in the glossary, with a view to modelling an approach forthe teachers to use with future units. Below is a brief example of these definitions.An image of a car crash was used to illustrate ‘collide.’
Chemical bonds [kem-ik-ull bons]
1. (noun); Strong forces called that keep the particles together in a solid.2. Chemical bonds are also called attractive forces.
Collide [kul-lyde]
1. (verb); To run into or hit something.2. The particles in a gas move faster than in a solid and collide with each other.3. Word building: Collision [kul-lishen] (noun)
Density [den-siti]
1. (noun); How much mass fits into a measured volume.2. A large mass in a small volume has a bigger density than a small mass in a
big volume.3. A 1kg bar of gold has a bigger density than a 1kg bag of feathers.4. Word building: Dense (adjective); Gold is more dense than feathers.
Processed [pro-sest]
1. (adjective); Changed from a natural state by people or machines.2. Cheese is a processed food.
We opted for Australian phonetic representations (see Fraser, 1997), and tried tokeep meanings and sample sentences as simple and relevant as possible. Colourimages from clip art or the web were added for half of the words. In fact theimportance of visuals in learning cannot be overemphasised for these students.
The Textbook Support Materials
Both the textbook and its workbook were considered by teachers to be far too hardfor students to read. We wanted to generate comprehensible material on the topic,and to situate the material within a teaching and learning framework, specificallyusing the scaffolding principles outlined above. That is, these activities were not
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designed as an add-on, but as part of the way the science teacher teaches the topic‘What things are made of’ so that the language of the chapter was tied to the teach-ing the concepts and content, with the form, meaning and use of vocabulary(Nation, 2001) all in focus. However given the literacy and social needs of manystudents in these schools, it was decided that ESL students would not be singledout for the ‘treatment,’ but that the teacher would use the materials with the wholeclass.
The activities listed below have been divided into three categories: form, meaningor meaning + use, although clearly there is a great deal of cross-over between these.For each activity idea listed below, there were up to 10–15 items per worksheet.
Focus on form
● Sorting a ‘box of science vocabulary’ into word classes,e.g. nouns, verbs and adjectives;
● Add the missing letters, e.g C__MPR__SS;● Circle the correct spelling from a list of three possibilities;● Here is the answer. Formulate the question, e.g. The ice melts;● Jumbled letters (which form a word);● Find-a-word puzzles.
Focus on meaning
● Word list → write the meaning → write a sentence;● True/false statements;● Completing an incomplete table e.g. using the headings ‘material’, ‘properties’
and ‘uses’;● Cut up sentences (large font sentences cut up in envelopes which the students
arrange to form a sentence);● Jumbled lines (which must be sequenced to make a paragraph or procedure);● Match the two halves of the sentence (2 columns, A and B), then rewrite the
sentence;● Cloze exercises● Labelling a diagram, or set of apparatus;● Match the word to its meaning.
Focus on meaning and use
● Paragraph writing, using words from a short list;● Word list → negotiate and write definitions in groups;● Use a sequence of pictures to describe a process orally and in writing;● Fifty word cards with a picture on one side and word on the other + a set of
suggestions for games that could be played with these.
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The textbook was the primary source of these language-based tasks, all of whichaimed to provide doable activities in the science classroom, understandable home-work, and extensive practice in recycling the vocabulary and concepts of the unit.Such work is critical for low literacy learners to increase comprehension and uptakeof content (Nation, 2001). What remains to be investigated is whether such highintensity content language activities can be integrated into already content-heavyscience programmes. Less content, and more support seems urgently needed bystudents who are learning English and struggling with literacy.
The Trial of the Materials
In the data below I focus on data from 8B students, which the teacher reported ‘havegot a lot more difficulties across the board. ESL kids and just kids that are—lowliteracy and low language skills and a lot of other low skills as well.’
They received an average of 20/45 on the test, which consisted of questionsdirectly from the textbook and looked nothing like the workbook materials we hadprovided. The teacher maintained that although the scores were low, students didbetter than he had anticipated after doing the activities. For example, he said:
One little guy got 18 for his test, an African kid, and he’s really keen but strugglinglanguage-wise and he said, ‘Look this book was just terrific, it really helped me’. Hedidn’t get a score to quite pass the test but he was very, very close. He would have goneI expect far far worse without that extra help so he really found it useful and he enjoyedthe diagrams, enjoyed the activities.
Students reported that they had found the workbook and dictionary useful or veryuseful, as shown in the table of results from the teacher-designed class questionnairebelow. The least positive rating (on the materials as homework) reflects partly thatthese students generally find homework difficult, and there is no-one at home tohelp them, but also that in this class the teacher used the materials primarily in class.
Note that the teacher questionnaire does not allow a fine-grained analysis of thetypes of language activities students found most useful in relation to form, meaningand use, and an expanded study is needed to look at this. Five specific themes wereidentified in the students’ comments from the questionnaire emerged. Below I
Table 3. Results of teacher questionnaire on the materials (n =19)
Workbook Very useful Useful Not much help
As homework 6 8 5Additional explanation 8 11 0Diagrams 6 12 1As backup to textbook 8 10 1Word activities 9 9 1Other activities 4 13 2The dictionary Very often Sometimes Not at all
3 14 2
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outline these themes, indicate the number of students who made similar comments,and provide a sample comment.
● The value of the dictionary for pronunciation (4 students)The good things are the break-up of the words was really helpful in prenouncing thewords.
● The value of pictures in grasping a word or concept. (7 students)The design was very nice and good. The pictures were helping us to learn the shapes ofliquids, solids and gas.The not so good thing is that the explaining needed more sentences but the pictures werereally good and helpful.
● The appreciation of materials pitched at this level (8 students)I enjoyed using the workbook in class because it was not hart to completed because all thetime I get stuck with the textbook.
● Requests for more similar material (7 students)
I want you’s to make the dictionary a bit biger and put some more words.I think it would be great if you do a workbook for every subject.I enjoyed using the workbook and the dictionary because it helped me with some of thework specially with my test. I didn’t past my test in term 1 & 2 but when they broght thisworkbook and dictionary I past the test. I caun’t belive it so I am happy with thatbook & dictionary. I hope you will make us a new dictionary and workbook with moreinformation.
Almost a third of the students wanted an expanded dictionary for the unit with morewords and longer explanations. The repeated mention of the value of the pictureswas a clear indication that more visual representation of vocabulary and concepts iscritical for these learners, a finding that reflects much of the research cited above onscience learning and language proficiency.
The Teacher’s Perceptions
In this section I look briefly at how the teacher used the materials, what he perceivedas the student response, and what constituted his own professional learning from theexercise. The teacher had students bring the workbook and dictionary to eachlesson. For 8B, he stated that he used them in conjunction with the textbook, andthat students found them accessible and doable:
I relied very heavily on them with 8B and they enjoyed the activities, and they wereenthusiastic about doing them. They were a really good extra aid and one of thecomments coming back from quite a few of them was it actually was much easier thanthe textbook and it helped them to get the ideas rather than out of the textbook. So asan adjunct it was very good.
The teacher’s assessment was that such highly scaffolded and language-focusedwork was not needed with the more able class, who could ‘cover the chapter’. Spacedoes not permit a detailed analysis of the 8A data here, but its weaker students made
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similar comments to the student comments above. When asked if the languagefocused materials had changed his approach, the teacher stated:
With 8B yes. With 8A not so much—as I said I used it most of the time for homeworkwith them. But with 8Bs it definitely changed the approach. I tend to assume an awfullot and I think this has shown that I probably assume too much. They seemed to strug-gle with some of the things that I thought would be very easy. They struggled and I hadto sit there and work with them. So from that point of view, yes—it was very useful.
For this teacher, ‘sitting there and working with them’ entailed a change in his prac-tice, in which he was responsive to where the students were at, rather than where hewas in the curriculum or the textbook. One specific element he assumed too muchabout was vocabulary knowledge:
The assumptions weren’t necessarily correct especially in the connections between wordsand the use of words. I just assumed kids understood because I used them and they werein the textbook and they were in our class notes and I used them everyday in conversationwith the students. So I assumed they knew them but they didn’t.
Here he specifies four instances of use (in his teaching; the textbook; the class notes;and in talking to students) that are typical in content teaching. However, they didnot mean uptake of vocabulary as he had assumed—the students still did not knowthe words. Langman and Bayley (2007) also demonstrated in a study of an ESLstudent in science that exposure to new terminology did not lead to acquisition. Butcritically, the teacher stressed that while the language materials worked well, he didnot have the time to develop similar activities for other units. The demands of thecurriculum and teaching loads are implicated in what is a bind for teachers, eventhose who acknowledge the benefits of language work that targets the needs ofstruggling students. In the teacher’s words:
I really appreciated them. The kids really appreciated them. Working together with thedictionary and the workbook was great and it tied in so well with the textbook. I thoughtthey were great. The only thing is perhaps the time involved. We only have a shortamount of time. I only have them three periods a week so you have to move throughthings quickly and that approach is time-consuming which is why I gave them to 8A forhomework. But look—it was terrific, it was great. 8B was much better with this stuffthan the textbook.
It can be seen from these comments that the teacher felt the language and vocabu-lary activities generated enthusiasm in 8B, were far more accessible than the text,and caused him to rethink his assumptions about what students know and can do,particularly in relation to words and meanings. But the reality (and drawback) wasthat these materials had taken four researchers many weeks to develop—time theteacher just did not have. It—but he cannot do it for each unit he teaches.
This trial had several limitations. Due to unforeseen staff changes, the scienceteacher who used the materials was not the one who had been involved in earlierphases of the project. His lack of direct investment in the project was possibly adrawback. The lack of classroom observation meant we had no clear idea of how thematerials were actually integrated into the pedagogy, or the degree of language focus
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in the lessons. A larger study would be needed to explore the potential of the explicitvocabulary materials for students and for pedagogical change. On the other hand,most science teachers are similar to this one in that they do not have ESL training orcommitment to language teaching and learning through content. Many mainstreamteachers are driven by institutional imperatives to focus on coverage of content andassessment. A number of researchers have identified the need for closer cooperationbetween mainstream and ESL teachers, but found that such collaboration is difficultto sustain in most school environments (Brown & Bentley, 2004; Creese, 2005).This was also our experience.
Conclusion
For most learners, the language of school science is a new and challenging discourse(Fang, 2006). For low literacy learners, or those with interrupted education, theproblem is even more acute. For these students (and many others), an explicitlanguage focus needs to be an essential part of science pedagogy. It is hoped theproject described above will begin to fill a gap in the research identified by McBrien(2005), who stresses in her recent comprehensive analysis of the literature that ‘theliterature on refugee children and adolescents does not specify ways to boost refugeestudents’ achievement in required school subjects’ (p. 365). At the same time,Settlage, Madsen & Rustad (2005) emphasise that research in science education‘seems unable to come to terms with disparities in science learning of students fromdifferent cultural groups,’ implicitly accepting the huge divide between Whitestudents who are ‘favourably disposed toward the subject’ and all others (p. 39).
The connection between knowledge structures and language difficulties is clearlydemonstrated in the literature, and on a daily basis in multilingual classrooms.Nation (1995–6) states that vocabulary learning through meaning-focused input is‘fragile’, in that ‘it depends heavily on the quality of the learners’ control of the read-ing skill’ (p. 8). At the same time, ease of reading depends on vocabulary knowledgeand conceptual development. It is pointless asking a child who has spent ten years ina Kenyan refugee camp, ‘What is the word for chemical bonds in your language?’However, realising in advance that this term is going to be a stumbling block, anddevising ways to help students to decode and to practise using it, form a critical partof the language-savvy science teacher’s work. The project described above is justone attempt to break the low comprehension and limited vocabulary cycle, and tomake the ‘hard words’ a little easier for students struggling with science contentlanguage.
The implications of this research are threefold. First, science teachers need anawareness of the language aspects of their specialist area. In addition to the highconceptual demands posed by science content, the vocabulary itself poses majorbarriers to students. Consequently for students struggling with literacy, most sciencetextbooks are wildly inappropriate resources. Second, in many schools there is anurgent need for collaboration between science teachers and ESL or literacy special-ists. To build science literacy for all students who are not ‘favourably disposed
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toward the subject’, both scientific and linguistic knowledge is needed. Intensivepractice and recycling of language structures in activities that make scientific senseare essential. The third implication involves a need for both professional develop-ment and teacher education. Developing science language awareness and specificstrategies to scaffold the development of students’ science content language gener-ally lies outside of science teacher education programmes. With the growth ofculturally and linguistically diverse classrooms, teachers can rarely assume studentsunderstand ‘the words’ in the texts, tasks or indeed in their own explanations. In2009, Australia will implement a national assessment of students’ ‘science literacy’,which aims to measure students’ capacity to use scientific knowledge andapproaches. To help all students develop such literacy, urgent attention to thelanguage of scientific knowledge and approaches is also required as part of sciencepedagogy in everyday classrooms.
Acknowledgements
I wish to acknowledge the very constructive and specific suggestions of the anonymousreviewers of this paper and of the Editor of IJSE. I am also thankful for the invaluablecontribution to the project of my colleagues and co-researchers at Monash, Jill Brown,Katrina Markwick and Colin Browne, as well as the generous participation of the ESLand science teachers at the Melbourne high school involved.
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