INTEGRATING CONTENT KNOWLEDGE AND ACADEMIC LANGUAGE: PERSPECTIVES FROM EXPERIENCED AND NOVICE TEACHERS

As a result of changing demographics and limited resources, teachers are now required to teach their content area as well as discipline-specific academic language to their second language and immigrant students. This research paper provides a brief overview of theoretical and research perspectives on teaching content knowledge and academic language simultaneously in the classroom and describes the results of two different qualitative case studies that researched this topic. The first study focused on strategies used by a practicing middle school science teacher and the second study researched the strategies used by novice elementary school teachers teaching math, science, or social studies during their student teaching experience. The results indicated that experienced and novice teachers incorporated many strategies to integrate language and content. Similarities and differences between the experienced and novice teachers' use of strategies to integrate language and content are explained.