Abstract
Recent initiatives in teacher education, encouraged by implementation of Common Core Standards and revisions of requirements for teachers working in linguistically diverse environments, have been eagerly pushing for a central role for language sensitivity in academically demanding educational practices (Zwiers, O’Hara, & Pritchard, 2014). In particular, teachers that work with English learners have a unique task to include these learners in mainstream academic work, while supporting these students to become successful in school. In spite of these efforts, historically, instructional practices aimed at teaching English as an additional or new language in secondary public schools are often marked by the existence of self-contained or special
courses on English language development and basic literacy skills, on one side, and other content-area courses, such as history, mathematics, and science, on the other side (Valdés, 2001).