Research grant will fund professional development to benefit English learners

Steve Amendum and colleagues from Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are seeking to develop a comprehensive teacher professional development (PD) program aimed at increasing collaboration between classroom and English-as-a-Second Language (ESL) teachers to benefit young Latinx English learners (ELs).  In the program teachers collaborate around a set of high-impact instructional strategies in language and literacy and work to incorporate students’ cultural wealth into classroom instruction.   The team has been awarded a 5-year, $3.3 million project, funded through a research grant from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) to implement instructional coaching at 70 elementary schools from 8 school districts in North Carolina.   Participants are ESL teachers and a team of kindergarten or first-grade classroom teachers from each school along with their students who are Latina/o English learners from schools in North Carolina.   Schools are selected if they have a population in which at least 10% of students are ELs; have kindergarten and grade 1 classrooms with at least three EL students each; and the administrators and a majority of kindergarten and first teachers are interested in participating.   In 2016, Amendum and colleagues were also the recipients of another $3.3 million IES grant to fund research into an early reading intervention program. Watch Amendum’s CEHD Talks video to learn what inspired him to undertake this research.