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Teaching and Teacher Education 29 (2013) 197e207

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Teaching and Teacher Education

journal homepage: www.elsevier .com/locate/ tate

Facilitating professional development for teachers of English language learners

Daniella Molle*

University of WisconsineMadison, Wisconsin Center for Educational Research, 1025 W. Johnson St., MD #23, Madison, WI 53706, USA

h i g h l i g h t s

< I examine facilitation practices in the context of professional development.< I illustrate how recommendations about teacher learning can be put in practice.< I demonstrate how a facilitator promotes a collaborative learning environment.< I illustrate how a facilitator disrupts negative discourses about students.< I show how a facilitator helps foster political awareness in participants.

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 8 May 2012Received in revised form4 October 2012Accepted 8 October 2012

Keywords:Professional developmentTeachersEnglish language learnersFacilitation processesDiscourse analysis

* Tel.: þ1 608 265 3768; fax: þ1 608 263 3733.E-mail address: molle@wisc.edu.

0742-051X/$ e see front matter � 2012 Elsevier Ltd.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2012.10.002

a b s t r a c t

The study explores the process of facilitation in professional development for educators. The study relieson discourse analysis of interaction among K-12 teachers and administrators in a Midwestern U.S. stateduring a semester-long professional development program especially designed for educators workingwith English language learners (ELLs). The study examines the facilitation practices employed by the leadfacilitator of the professional development program from three analytical lenses: context as participa-tion, context as ideology, and content. The paper provides an empirical illustration of howrecommendations in the literature about professional development for educators of ELLs can be put inpractice.

� 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

In the 1980s and 1990s, policymakers around the world foundthemselves pressed to respond to intensifying demands foreducation reform (e.g., Dawkins, 1987; ECLAC, 1992; Gardner, 1983;OECD, 1997). Improvement in educationwas seen as key to nations’success in a global knowledge economy (UNICEF, 1990). As timepassed and it became apparent that topedown approaches toregulating teaching had done little to improve student learning,reformers “abruptly turned to teachers as the agents of schoolimprovement” (Johnson, 2005, p. 78). The idea that teachers are keyto the success of any educational reform made professional devel-opment, or the opportunities for professional learning available toschool staff, a prominent topic in policy documents as well as theeducation literature (Wilson & Berne, 1999). In the US context,

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educators look to professional development for solutions topersistent inequities such as the differences in achievement amonggroups of students. One set of students that has recently becomethe focus of many reform initiatives is English language learners(ELLs), due in part to their rapid growth in the country.

As the focus of research has broadened to include not only theformal curriculum but also the ways in which this curriculum isenacted (Clandinin & Connelly, 1992), researchers internationallyhave begun to pay increasing attention to the role of the facilitatorin the success and quality of professional development opportu-nities (Grossman, Wineburg, & Woolworth, 2001; Meyer et al.,2010; Tripp, 2004). Scholars have identified facilitation as one ofthe key elements in any professional development system(Borko, 2004; National Education Forum & DEET, 1995). Facilitatorsare viewed as essential because they structure and guide thelearning experience of the participants in a professional develop-ment initiative (Loucks-Horsley, Stiles, Mundry, Love, & Hewson,2009; Meyer et al., 2010; Oberg & Underwood, 1992; Poekert,2011; Remillard & Geist, 2002; Tripp, 2004). Facilitators can be

D. Molle / Teaching and Teacher Education 29 (2013) 197e207198

responsible for (a) setting up the professional developmentopportunity (Jenlink & Kinnucan-Welsch, 2001), (b) beginning theprocess of professional inquiry as well as seeing it through(Kosmidou & Usher, 1991) and ensuring sustainability (Richmond &Manokore, 2011), (c) managing the flowand direction of interaction(Richmond & Manokore, 2011; Tripp, 2004), (d) helping create anenvironment in which inquiry can take place and tension isaddressed (Grossman et al., 2001; Kosmidou & Usher, 1991; Loucks-Horsley et al., 2009; Seago, 2004), and (e) building coherencebetween the professional development initiative and otherendeavors in which school staff may be engaged (Slavit & Nelson,2010). The multifaceted nature of facilitation encourages ambi-guity and complexity in the relations between facilitator andparticipants as well as among participants, which in turn can giverise to challenges in the facilitation process (Drennon & Cervero,2002; Tripp, 2004). Researchers have highlighted the dilemmasthat facilitators face as a result of the sometimes conflictingresponsibilities and expectations to structure the learning experi-ence of participants on the one hand and let participants takecharge of their own learning on the other (Davies, Howes, & Farrell,2008; Grossman et al., 2001; Jenlink & Kinnucan-Welsch, 2001).

Despite the accumulating evidence that the facilitator playsa significant role in shaping the professional learning environment,few studies of professional development address this dimension oflearning. The present article contributes to the emerging literatureon facilitation processes but focuses on a particular type ofprofessional development: a program specifically designed forschool staff working with English language learners in the US. Iembrace a sociocultural perspective on professional learning foreducators of language minority students.1 This perspective iselaborated in the following section. I then examine the practices ofone facilitator through the lenses of participation, context, andcontent in order to illustrate empirically how she fosters the kind oflearning environment that is seen as essential in promoting equityin our schools.

2. Professional development for teachers of ELLs

Despite the fact that US schools are becoming more culturallyand linguistically diverse (NCELA, 2011), national surveys showthat “minority teachers were even more underrepresented in2007 than they had been two decades earlier” (Villegas, Strom, &Lucas, 2012, p. 296). It is widely acknowledged that the linguisticand cultural distance between predominantly White, middle-class, monolingual teachers and their students presents theseteachers with “enormous challenges” (e.g., Téllez & Waxman,2006). These challenges are primarily a result of a technicalapproach to teaching that ignores the ways in which long-standing unequal social relations among different racial andlanguage groups in the United States have shaped schools(Bartolomé, 1994), and a dominant discourse in the country thatconstructs language minority students as deficient (Gutiérrez,Morales, & Martinez, 2009).

An important tool for addressing such challenges is professionaldevelopment. As the education literature demonstrates, however,there are divergent approaches to defining high-quality profes-sional development for teachers of ELLs. Some researchers

1 In this paper, I use the terms “English language learners,” “linguistic minoritystudents,” and “culturally and linguistically diverse students” interchangeably. Theterms complement each other by emphasizing different characteristics of thispopulation of students: that they are still learning academic English, that outside ofschool they may be immersed in speech communities that use languages otherthan the dominant one, and that as a group the students are highly heterogeneous.

highlight the importance of knowledge and skills related to theacquisition of additional languages (e.g., Fillmore & Snow, 2002).This line of research tends to privilege the adoption of particularinstructional techniques by teachers, and view effective teaching asinstruction that helps ELLs become proficient in academic Englishand acquire the content appropriate for their grade level(e.g., Echevarria, Short, & Powers, 2006).

Approaches that focus on educators’ use of instructional strat-egies have been critiqued because they tend to depoliticizelanguage teaching by separating teacherestudent relationshipsfrom the history of relations among dominant and marginalizedgroups in the United States (Bartolomé, 1998; Gutiérrez, Asato,Santos, & Gotanda, 2002). A divergent point of view is rooted insociocultural and critical theories and highlights the ethical, polit-ical, and ideological dimensions of language teaching. According toNieto (2006), the relationship between teachers and studentsshould be at the forefront of discussions about professional devel-opment. Professional development should foster a commitment toredressing the inequalities that limit the learning opportunities ofparticular groups of students by privileging the quality of life in theclassroom over specific educational outcomes (Allwright, 2005;Meyer et al., 2010).

In addition to the ethical dimension of language teaching,researchers have emphasized the significance of “political andideological clarity” for the practice of teachers who work withlanguage minority students (Trueba & Bartolomé, 2000). Truebaand Bartolomé define political clarity as “the process by whichindividuals achieve a deepening awareness of the sociopolitical andeconomic realities that shape their lives and their capacity totransform them” (p. 278). Ideological clarity complements politicalclarity by acknowledging the fact that the existing relationshipsbetween social, political, and economic forces on the one hand, andschool systems and practices on the other, are not neutral but oftensupport the interests of dominant groups. Trueba and Bartolomé donot reject the importance of knowledge about second languagelearning in helping teachers meet the needs of ELLs, but theycontend that in the work with culturally and linguistically diversestudents “the need for clarity of political beliefs, practices, andcommitments is as important as the actual pedagogical strategiesused in instruction” (p. 278).

The present paper is rooted in a sociocultural approach toteacher learning both in terms of the focus of analysis (whichincludes a discussion of participation patterns) and in terms of datainterpretation (which views the facilitator’s efforts to foster ideo-logical and political awareness as desirable). The paper provides anempirical illustration of the ways in which one facilitator appliesseveral recommendations for high-quality professional develop-ment for educators of language minority students. In particular, Idemonstrate how the facilitator fosters political and ideologicalawareness in participants within a context of collegial andrespectful social relations. The analysis is divided into threesections: context as participation (Section 4.1), which discussesways in which the facilitator handles tension among the commu-nity of participants; context as ideology (Section 4.2), which illus-trates the actions the facilitator takes to disrupt negative discoursesabout language minority students; and content (Section 4.3), whichdescribes how the facilitator creates spaces for political discussionswith participants.

3. Methodology

The analysis reported here is based on a subset of data collectedduring a comparative research study that investigated two itera-tions of the same professional development program at differentresearch sites in the Midwestern region of the US. The current

D. Molle / Teaching and Teacher Education 29 (2013) 197e207 199

analysis uses the findings of the larger study as background infor-mation and focuses on one site and one specific feature of thelearning environment: facilitation processes.

3.1. Setting and participants

The professional development program I investigate, Contentand Language Integration as a Means of Bridging Success(CLIMBS�), was recently developed by scholars at the Center forApplied Linguistics on behalf of the World-Class InstructionalDesign and Assessment (WIDA) Consortium of states. CLIMBS isa professional development opportunity that targets teams ofadministrators, general education teachers, and ESL/bilingualteachers. The program consists of five monthly meetings, each ofthem a day long. The program has two main objectives: (1) tofacilitate the formation of communities of practice among theparticipants, and in particular among participants who work at thesame school or district; and (2) to increase educators’ capacity tomeet the academic language and literacy needs of their ELLstudents, primarily through the implementation of the WIDAEnglish language proficiency standards.2

At the focus research site, the CLIMBS program was madeavailable to educators through a regional educational servicecenter that provides professional development to more than 30surrounding districts. The program meetings took place on thepremises of the service center, in a suburban town I call Plane-view.3 During data collection, the CLIMBS program in Planeviewwas offered to 21 K-12 teachers and administrators fromdifferent districts. Five teams of educators attended CLIMBS: fourfrom elementary schools and one from a middle school. Two ofthe teams included an administrator (an elementary team andthe middle school team). Five district administrators were alsopresent.

The CLIMBS program was facilitated by two facilitators (alead and an associate) who knew each other well even thoughthe associate facilitator lived and worked out of state. The leadfacilitator, Gabriela, was an employee of the service center whohad retired but had been called back to help provide profes-sional development focused on ELLs. Gabriela was bilingual andhad moved to the United States from Puerto Rico in her earlytwenties. In her lifelong career as an educator, Gabriela hadworked as a teacher, school administrator, and an administratorof a welcome program for newly arrived immigrant students.The associate facilitator, Alma, worked in the Northeast butcame to the Midwest every year to co-facilitate the CLIMBSprogram. Alma was a sixth-grade general education teacher inan elementary school and her area of expertise was reading.Before facilitating CLIMBS, she had taken part in the CLIMBSprogram as a participant. Alma was monolingual and of Irishbackground.

The present analysis focuses exclusively on the actions of thelead facilitator, Gabriela. As lead facilitator and an employee of theservice agency, Gabriela was responsible for all the logistics relatedto the running of the professional development program (includingadvertising the program, recruiting participants, securing mate-rials, and collecting evaluations). Although planning for theprogram was done collaboratively with Alma (the associate

2 The WIDA English language proficiency standards were first developed in 2004and served as the basis for the PreK-12 English language proficiency standardsadopted by the nation’s leading organization for teachers of English as an additionallanguage, TESOL. The WIDA Standards have been adopted by 29 U.S. states.

3 The name of the research site as well as all names of research participants arepseudonyms.

facilitator), Gabriela was the onewho during the programmanagedthe social interaction of the group, responded to emerging tensions,and altered the flow of topics in response to participants’ needs anddesires. By virtue of her long experience as an educator andprofessional developer in the area, Gabriela was also seen as theexpert on all local issues, such as state and district ELL policies,ESL/bilingual program services provisions, and demographictrends. Almawas chiefly responsible for introducing new content tothe participants.

3.2. Researcher role

My role in the program was that of a participant-observerand assistant to the facilitators. I helped the facilitators withusing technology, handing out papers, making copies, and so on.I also assisted the facilitators by finding research materials onparticular topics and compiling participant evaluations. At theend of each day, I debriefed the program session with the twofacilitators.

As a participant-observer, I completed all the professionaldevelopment activities along with the educators enrolled in theprogram except for the activities assigned for homework. I hadfrequent informal conversations with participants about theprogram, the materials, their learning, and the contexts in whichtheyworked. As a member of the academy and an ELL, I was usuallyperceived as an expert on second language acquisition. I was alsoemployed by theWIDA Consortium at the time of data collection soI was referred to by the facilitators as the expert on WIDA products(such as language proficiency assessments and standards). In sum, Iwould characterize my role as an inside outsider. As a researcher(albeit with several years’ experience teaching ELLs) rather thata teacher or administrator, I was an outsider. My participation in allthe sessions, however, gave me an insider status within theprogram itself.

3.3. Data sources

The data used in this article were collected as part of thelarger comparative research study. The data collected for thelarger study include audio-recordings and transcripts of the fiveprofessional development sessions, program documents, assign-ments and other documents produced by the participants(including visuals, lists of points, etc.), semi-structured inter-views with participants after the end of the program, pre- andpost-program surveys, and researcher field notes. The analysisreported here relies primarily on transcripts of group interac-tions. Gabriela had minimal contact with the program partici-pants outside the day-long sessions so the transcripts capture allthe learning opportunities that she provided to the educatorsenrolled in CLIMBS. Transcripts are particularly suitable for thekind of illustrative empirical exploration that this article aims toprovide because they offer an unbroken record of the facilitator’sinteraction with participants and make it possible to look forpatterns in that interaction.

3.4. Data analysis

The research methodology that serves as the foundation formy analysis is microethnography. Microethnography analyzesdiscourse and tends to situate interaction within a particular socialcontext and pay particular attention to the relationships amongparticipants (Fitch, 2005).

The type of microethnography I use is based most closely on theresearch methodology employed by Bloome, Carter, Christian, Otto,and Shuart-Faris (2005) to analyze classroom talk. Bloome et al.

D. Molle / Teaching and Teacher Education 29 (2013) 197e207200

make it possible for the researcher to view the norms of discoursethat become established in a professional learning community notas given but as social constructions that need constant reinforce-ment and validation in order to continue to exist. Such a theoreticalorientation underscores the significance of facilitation for teacherlearning. Although the facilitator’s power is negotiated, she hasa special responsibility for continuously modeling and fosteringparticular norms of discourse. She is also the one who ultimatelydecides which spaces for discussion to open and close, the one whomanages the flow of interaction, and the one who most often hasthe final word.

Microethnography allows researchers to make inferences aboutthe shared meaning constructed by a group of people by analyzingthe flow of interaction. As Bloome et al. (2005) point out, “languageis fundamentally a material response, not only to what has beensaid or done before but also to what will be said or done in thefuture” (p. 11). Thus in constructing meaning, the researcherexamines sequences of interaction involving several interlocutorsfor cues, or warrants, that support or undermine particular inter-pretations. Such an analytical approach enables the researcher todescribe understandings created by the group and made availableto its members. The extent to which these understandings becomeappropriated by individual members is often beyond the scope ofethnographic microanalysis.

The data analysis presented in this article was recursive innature. It was rooted in the investigation carried out as part ofthe larger comparative study of the norms of discourse inPlaneview and the kinds of learning that these norms fostered.The focus on facilitation necessitated a return to the transcriptsfor a closer exploration of exchanges in which the lead facilitatorwas one of the main interlocutors. Some of the themes thatemerged in the larger study and that were highlighted in theliterature as key features of professional development forteachers of ELLs were used to develop codes. All instances ofwhole-group interaction were then systematically coded usingNVIVO. Specific codes were chosen for further analysis based ontheir prevalence in the data.

The instances selected for detailed analysis represent socialevents and are presented in this article as cases. Social eventsare “bounded series of actions and reactions that people makein response to each other at the level of face-to-face interac-tion” (Bloome et al., 2005, p. 6). The boundaries of social eventscan be determined by looking at thematic shifts as well ascontextual cues (Gumperz, 1982) that signal a shift of collectiveattention, an introduction of a new theme, or closure. Aninvestigation that focuses on social events offers contextualdetail that can inform the analysis and description of facilita-tion practices.

The data excerpts included in the sections that follow werechosen because they exemplify the lead facilitator’s practices.

Table 1Tension in Planeview.

Time Day 1 Day 2

Context Case 1: disagreement over thecontribution that the researchon the culture of poverty by RubyPayne can make to a school’scapacity to meet the needs of ELLs

Case 2: disagreementhe purpose of educawith relation to bilin

Main thematic focus Provision of services to ELLs Provision of servicesFacilitator’s response Highlighting common ground Highlighting commo

Challenging the basis of anargument

Challenging the basiargument

Steering away from consensus Steering away from

Where possible, larger excerpts of conversation have been includedto give the reader a sense of the social interactions at Planeview. Insome cases, however, only the facilitator’s voice has been includedfor space reasons.

4. Findings

4.1. Context as participation

In the education literature, conflict is often seen as bothunavoidable and desirable for learning (e.g., Borko, 2004). Thekey question then is not whether tension exists in a professionalcommunity, because it always does if dissenting voices are notmarginalized, but instead how that tension is handled. Thisquestion is particularly relevant to professional learning oppor-tunities for teachers of ELLs for two reasons. First, professionaldevelopment opportunities for teachers of language minoritystudents often bring together a heterogeneous group of stake-holders who vary in multiple ways, including their areas ofexpertise, responsibilities, emotional commitments, and ideolo-gies related to ELLs. Second, high-quality professional learningfor teachers of ELLs often involves “ethical dilemmas” (González,Moll, & Amanti, 2005), “ideological conflict” (English, 2009), andother “shifts in perspective” about the abilities of languageminority students and the contexts of teaching and learning inU.S. schools (Bartolomé, 1994). The heterogeneity of the groupand the shifts in perspective the facilitator aims to foster (for ananalysis of one such shift, see Section 4.2) augment the centralityof tension in professional learning opportunities for educators ofELLs.

I characterize tension as extended interaction involving at leasttwo interlocutors inwhich the opposition among divergent views ishighlighted, and which is not shared in a private conversation butcan be heard by everyone in the room. Evidence of mountingtension includes moves by the interlocutors that signal disagree-ment (such as the use of “but” after a pause), comments by thefacilitator on the contested nature of the discussion (such as“debate,” or “passionate topic”), and contextual cues (such asa raised voice and a more rapid than expected speed of talk).Extended talk refers to interaction that consists of several turns byeach interlocutor.

At the Planeview research site, there is evidence of conflictamong participants on the first, second, and fourth days of thefive-day professional development program. On Day 1, the leadfacilitator (Gabriela) is involved in a conversation that createstension between herself and her interlocutor as clear differencesin their positions emerge. On Days 2 and 4, Gabriela steps in toresolve tension that has been building up among the partici-pants in the professional development program. In all casesexcept the one in which she is one of the main actors, the

Day 3 Day 4

t overtiongualism

Case 3: disagreement overwhen (in terms of languageproficiency) ELLs can beheld responsible for knowingcontent area language

Case 4: disagreement over theextent to which the teacher isresponsible for knowing andtaking into account a student’scultural background

to ELLs Equity and high standards Education and diversityn grounds of an Challenging the basis of an

argumentconsensus Steering away from consensus Steering away from consensus

Excerpt 1. Finding common ground. Note: Ramon is a district coordinator of ESL/bilingual services.

D. Molle / Teaching and Teacher Education 29 (2013) 197e207 201

facilitator makes repeated attempts to control or re-direct theconversation before she intervenes more decisively to resolvethe mounting tension.

The four cases in which tension arose in Planeview are similarthematically: the topics discussed in each case deal with ques-tions about how language minority children should be educated.As Table 1 shows, Cases 1 and 2 are related to issues that impactboth the provision of services at the school or district level andthe instructional practices of educators in the classroom. On thesurface, Cases 3 and 4 appear to deal exclusively with instruc-tional practices. A closer examination of the extended discussionin Case 3 reveals, however, that the issue of whether ELLs at alllevels of English language proficiency (including beginners)should be taught academic vocabulary is constructed by partici-pants not as a question of instructional strategies but rather asa question of equity and high standards. The issue of culturallyrelevant pedagogy discussed in Case 4 is one that can beembraced by a single teacher as well as reflected in the organi-zation and attitudes of the staff in a school or district. In all fourcases, tension arises because of differences in the attitudes andbeliefs of educators regarding the purpose and means ofeducating ELLs well.

Gabriela uses several approaches to resolve the tension in thefour cases, and she employs most of these approaches in more thanone case. These approaches include

� building common ground in divergent opinions,� challenging the basis on which an argument is founded ratherthan the argument itself, and

� promoting the coexistence of divergent views.

The first approach involves highlighting the common groundin widely dissimilar opinions. Gabriela employs this techniqueboth in Case 1 and in Case 2. In Case 1, she and Paul (a principalof an elementary school) differ in their beliefs about theexplanatory power of the research on the culture of poverty byRuby Payne. Paul believes that this research is key to enabling hisstaff to understand and meet the needs of the school’s changingstudent population. Gabriela, on the other hand, asserts that theresearch highlights only one factor that affects the academicperformance of ELLs and so serves to overshadow a multitude ofother factors which are equally important. In her effort to end ona conciliatory note, Gabriela builds common ground betweentheir divergent opinions by pointing out that Ruby Payne’sresearch indeed makes a contribution to the professional growthof school staff (see Excerpt 1, Case 1). This common groundallows the interlocutors to save face and conclude the conver-sation as respectful colleagues. In Case 2, Gabriela againconstructs common ground among widely dissimilar views onthe purpose of the education of ELLs. The divergence in this caseconcerns the preservation and enhancement of ELLs’ proficiencyin their home language, and the main interlocutors are JoAnne(an elementary ESL teacher) and Francisco (an elementarybilingual teacher). Gabriela shifts the conversation away froma debate on language and makes a statement with which it isdifficult to disagree (see Excerpt 1, Case 2, lines 52e53). This isa strategic move away from the highly contested topic of homelanguage instruction and toward agreement on abstract, foun-dational values. In making this move Gabriela does not maskexisting differences (see the Discussion of consensus later in thissection) but she changes the tone of the conversation and bringsthe participants together by giving them something aroundwhich they can unite.

Another approach used by Gabriela in both Case 1 and Case 2 isto create distance between an individual’s opinion and the groundsfor his/her opinion. In Case 1, she does not imply that Paul’s opinionis wrong; rather, she states that the research he is using ismisleading because it cannot account for differences in achieve-ment among ELLs. The bulk of the discussion thus centers not onPaul’s reasoning but on the power of Ruby Payne’s scholarship toexplain the educational challenges of ELLs. Similarly, in Case 2,Gabriela refrains from adjudicating who is right and who is wrongby pointing to research findings that have shown consistently thatsupporting the primary language of ELLs increases their academicachievement in the long run (see Excerpt 2, lines 14e18). Thisstrategic move allows Gabriela to discuss divergences not at the

D. Molle / Teaching and Teacher Education 29 (2013) 197e207202

threatening and emotional level of personal belief but at the moreabstract and impersonal level of expert opinion.

Excerpt 2. Making the argument impersonal and steering away from consensus. Note:Chloe is an ESL teacher who works at the same elementary school as JoAnne.

Excerpt 3. Steering away from consensus.

The third approach employed by Gabriela to resolve tension inall four cases is an open acknowledgment of the coexistence ofdivergent views. She shuns away from consensus by constructingopposing opinions as equally valid and by showing that there isdisagreement even among experts. In Case 1, she invites Paul tovoice his disagreement with her by stating that she is not“conceited.” This social positioning allows her to create a context inwhich the facilitator’s point of view is worth as much and can be aseasily challenged as the opinion of any participant.

In Case 2, Gabriela refuses to commit herself to describing theconsequences of the lack of support for a student’s home languagedevelopment in the primary grades, although at a previous point inthe professional development program (onDay 1) she blames exactlythis lack of support for the limited academic language proficiency ofELLs in both their home language and in English. In order to resolvethe conflict between JoAnne and Francisco in this particular instance,Gabriela states that the outcome is uncertain (see lines 21e23 inExcerpt 2). By constructing the situation as unpredictable, sheprecludes the necessity of agreement on the issue.

In Case 3, Gabriela enables opposing views to coexist byexplaining how they can both be true depending on the context.The tension in Case 3 is between Paul, who claims that ELLs at alllanguage proficiency levels should be taught and held responsiblefor understanding content-specific academic language, and severalother participants who claim that the academic language for whichELLs are held responsible should depend on their English languageproficiency level. Gabriela resolves the tension between theparticipants by pointing out that they can both be right dependingon the purpose for which the student is assessed, and whether the

teacher is evaluating the student’s command of academic languageor content knowledge. Since the discussion concludes with Gabri-ela’s statement, it is unclear whether the interlocutors agree withher and accept each other’s opinion or not. What seems evident,though, is that Gabriela demonstrates successfully that opposingviews can, and do, coexist.

In Case 4, Gabriela summarizes the research on culturally rele-vant pedagogy by highlighting disagreement among experts andthe validity of opposing claims (see Excerpt 3, lines 8e21).

Gabriela resolves the disagreement about the extent to whicha teacher is responsible for incorporating a student’s culture intohis/her teaching by lifting the argument from the level of personalopinion to the level of expert opinion (amove already discussed), andby reinforcing the possibility for and the value of disagreement ineducation. In doing so, Gabriela signals that it is impossible to arriveat one “truth” about howculturally and linguistically diverse childrenshould best be educated. When she offers her opinion, she not onlyopenly encourages disagreement (lines 23e24) but also presents it ascontextually-bound rather than universal (lines 24e30).

As the data analysis demonstrates, conflict is not only possible butalsonecessary in the context of professional learning opportunities foreducators of language minority students. I thus propose that facilita-tors of professional development specifically designed for teachers ofELLs need to be able to apply a range of approaches to handlingtension in order to create a generative learning environment.

4.2. Context as ideology

Scholars consider the development of ideological clarity to beessential in the context of professional learning opportunities forteachers of ELL. At Planeview, Gabriela fosters the development ofideological clarity in participants by systematically disrupting nega-tive discourses about language minority students. Such discourses

Table 2Disrupting deficit discourses about language minority students.

Time Participant claim Facilitator’s response Focus of response

Day 1 Case 1: students talk too much to eachother if they work in groups

Positive interpretation of student behavior: if students speak in English,that is good for their language development

How teachers can think about students

Case 2: poverty affects studentachievement

Emphasis on the potential of students: it is dangerous to put labels onstudents

How teachers and administrators canthink about students

Day 2 Case 3: there is a difference betweenthe development of social and academiclanguage

Emphasis on the responsibilities of schools and teachers: it is importantto provide adequate support for the development of ELL students’literacy

What schools can do

Emphasis on the effects of lack of support: students’ languagedevelopment may be interrupted when they enter school

What the repercussions of lack ofadequate language support are

Case 4: the range of abilities in today’sclassrooms is very large

Emphasis on the responsibilities of teachers: teachers need to learn howto meet students where they are

What teachers can do

Day 3 Case 5: the range of languageproficiency levels in classrooms is verylarge

Emphasis on the responsibilities of teachers: teachers need to learn howto meet students where they are

What teachers can do

Case 6: students are too social whenworking in groups

Positive interpretation of student behavior: if students speak in English,that is good for their language development

How teachers can think about students

Day 4 Case 7: students cannot speak their firstlanguage

Emphasis on what the student brings: there is a difference betweenknowing a language and being literate in it

How teachers can think about students

Excerpt 4. Emphasizing students’ potential. Note: Sandra is an elementary schoolmainstream teacher and Merna is an ESL/bilingual teacher in training who works inthe same school district as Sandra but serves the high school.

D. Molle / Teaching and Teacher Education 29 (2013) 197e207 203

are dominant in the U.S. sociocultural and sociopolitical context(Bartolomé,1994;Gutiérrez et al., 2009). Their constraining poweronteachers’ abilities to perceive their students’ academic knowledgeand skills, especially when it comes to language development, havebeen documented repeatedly in the literature (Escamilla, 2006;Gebhard, Demers, & Castillo-Rosenthal, 2008). The negative effects ofdeficit discourses on students’ self-image, efficacy, and behavior havealso been discussed (Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco, 2001).

Gabriela’s verbal actions to undermine negative discourses aboutlanguage minority students can be described as systematic for twomain reasons. First, repeated examples of such disruptions occur on alldays of the CLIMBS professional development program except the last(Day 5, which is shorter than the rest and intended as a consolidationof previous learning). Second, my analysis of the data shows thatGabriela challenges interlocutors on all occasions on which negativeviews of ELL students are publicly voiced. As Table 2 demonstrates,Gabriela disrupts deficit views of ELLs by using twomain approaches:

� affirming the potential and resources that ELLs have, and� emphasizing the responsibilities of schools and teachers tosupport the academic language development of linguisticminority students.

Gabriela fosters a positive view of ELLs by providing alternativeinterpretations of student behavior and emphasizing the potential ofall students. On the twooccasionswhenCLIMBSparticipants describetheir students as “too social” during group work (see Cases 1 and 6),Gabriela shifts the focus away from disruption by saying thatstudents’ conversations with peers are valuable from the point ofview of their acquisition of a new language. Gabriela demonstratesher belief in the potential of all ELL students to succeed academicallyby resisting the labeling of students as “poor” (and so disadvantaged)during Day 1. She uses herself as an example of someone who wasable to go to college and succeed in life because her teachers judgedher according to what she could do rather than based on theeconomic and social circumstances of her family. Another instance inwhich Gabriela emphasizes the potential of ELLs is on Day 4 (seeExcerpt 4). She takes issue with Sandra’s claim that her student“didn’t knowSpanishwords and couldn’t read Spanish” (lines 35e36)by drawing a distinction between knowing one’s language and beingable to read it. Such framing of the situation supports a view of thestudent as having some resources at her disposal (knowledge of herhome language) but not others (knowledge of how to read), ratherthan as having access to no relevant resources and so being someoneelse’s responsibility and belonging in “a special school” (line 28).

D. Molle / Teaching and Teacher Education 29 (2013) 197e207204

The second approach that Gabriela uses to disrupt negativediscourses about language minority students is framing the chal-lenges that ELL students face in school not as the result of short-comings of individuals or groups but rather as natural consequencesof the processes of language development. She shares with partic-ipants the emerging consensus among scholars in the field of secondlanguage learning (e.g., August & Shanahan, 2006; Genesee,Lindholm-Leary, Saunders, & Christian, 2006) that first languageinstruction supports the development of ELL students’ academicliteracy in English and so is essential for their academic success.Gabriela also differentiates between social and academic languageand refers to research about the time it takes students to acquire thelatter (e.g., Cummins, 2008). She thus builds a foundation thatencourages participants to view the academic achievement of ELLsin particular ways. In discussions of the struggles of ELLs in bilingualas well as mainstream classrooms, Gabriela makes use of thisfoundational knowledge to emphasize the responsibilities of schoolsand teachers to provide the language support students need in orderto be academically successful (Excerpt 5, lines 11e25).

Excerpt 5. Consequences of interrupted language development. Note: Mary isa mainstream eight-grade teacher in a secondary school and Sandra is a mainstreamfirst-grade teacher in a K-8 school.

Table 3Policy-focused discussions.

Time Day 1 Day 2

Focus of discussion Case 1: establishment of policyas not being a worth-whiletopic for discussion

Case 2: discussion of critwhich ELL students can eprogramsCase 3: discussion of wain conversations regardinCase 4: discussion of theand the district in determon annual content assess

By redirecting the conversation from the lack of achievement ofELLs to the responsibility of educators to provide adequate languagesupport, Gabriela contextualizes the academic learning of languageminority students in a way that encourages teachers and adminis-trators to shift from conversations about the shortcomings of indi-vidual students to discussions about the relationship betweenextant practices in schools and student learning. Gabriela does notdeny that ELL students struggle in U.S. schools but she offersa conceptualization of this struggle that makes blaming the studentsfor their lack of success difficult to sustain. The discourse ofresearch-informed practice, which is explicitly differentiated froma discourse of blaming, is also the context inwhich Gabriela and herco-facilitator introduce the instructional tools included in theprofessional development program, such as the English languagedevelopment standards and language scaffolding techniques. Inother words, discussions of teaching strategies are situated ina discourse that emphasizes the responsibility of educators tosupport ELL students’ language development and fosters a positiveview of the potential and abilities of language minority students.

4.3. Content

The third notable feature of Gabriela’s facilitation approach isher willingness to make space for political discussions. Thisapproach has been emphasized in the literature (see, for example,Trueba & Bartolomé, 2000). In Planeview, most such discussionsfocus on policy related to the educational services provided to ELLs.Although Gabriela makes space for political discussions grudginglyand limits them in duration, she allows the conversations to takeplace repeatedly (see Table 3). Such discussions are an importantfeature of professional learning because they have the potential toaccomplish the following:

� increase educators’ capacity to advocate for ELLs, and� help educators transform their professional relationships topeers as well as superiors (such as district staff).

Gabriela attempts to resist the pressure from participants toengage in political discussions because she draws a sharp boundarybetween policy and practice (Day 1, Case 1). This boundary is basedon a distinction between factors shaping student learning that arewithin educators’ direct control and factors that lie outsideeducators’ immediate sphere of influence. My data analysissuggests, however, that the boundaries of the sphere of influence ofan educator are often difficult to determine. Classroom teachersserving on committees, for example, seem to have the power toshape students’ learning experiences in ways that extend beyondthe teacherestudent interaction in the classroom.

An example in which an educator’s understanding of statepolicies about services ELL students receive seems to have a directimpact on a student’s school experiences was shared with meduring an interview (see Excerpt 6). At the time of the interview,

Day 3

eria used to determinexit ESL/bilingual

ys to get involvedg policy for ELLsrole of the stateining accommodationsments for ELLs

Case 5: discussion of the mechanisms throughwhich decisions are made at the district andschool level about which ELL students shouldreceive ESL/bilingual services and which should not

D. Molle / Teaching and Teacher Education 29 (2013) 197e207 205

Becky was an assistant principal at a K-8 school. In Excerpt 6, shedescribes how her knowledge of state policy allowed her to advo-cate that a student should continue to receive ESL/bilingual supportin order to develop his/her writing skills. In the CLIMBS profes-sional development program she learned that her state’s policy wasthat ELL students can exit ESL/bilingual programs only if theyreceive an overall (“cumulative” in Becky’s words, line 12) score of4.0 on the annual standardized English language proficiencyassessment required by the federal government (see Table 3, Case2). The interview excerpt reveals that Becky used this knowledge tosuccessfully challenge her colleagues’ decision and ensure that thestudent would continue to receive language support. The interviewexcerpt also suggests that the information shared during policy-related discussions may have helped Becky establish a relation-ship with her peers which allows her to position herself as anexpert on matters related to ELL assessment and placement.

Excerpt 6. Exiting students from an ESL/bilingual program.

Cases 3 and 4 on Day 2 provide additional examples of ways inwhich political discussions have the potential to increase educators’capacity to advocate on behalf of language minority students. InCase 3, Gabriela responds to pressure from participants to discussstate policy by pointing out two mechanisms through whicheducators’ voices can be heard during the legislative process. InCase 4, Gabriela describes the role that a district can play indetermining what types of accommodations are available to ELLswhen they take standardized state achievement tests in readingand mathematics. She is able to shift a discussion among severalparticipants that is derisive of state-sanctioned accommodations,such as giving students additional time and providing them withglossaries, in a more constructive direction. Gabriela challenges thecontemptuous tone of the discussion by arguing that accommo-dations cannot be judged as useful or useless across the board butthat the value of each accommodation should be determined on thebasis of students’ needs as indicated by their English languageproficiency level. The discussion provides one of the main inter-locutors, who is a district coordinator of ESL/bilingual programsand services, with guidance on how to make state-sanctioned testaccommodations available to ELL students in his district.

Another example that complicates the boundary between policyand practice comes from a discussion that took place among severalof the CLIMBS participants on Day 3 of the program (Case 5). Thediscussion’s focus is again on the decision-making mechanismsregarding which students should receive ESL/bilingual services andwhich should not. On the several occasions when Meghan, a first-grade mainstream teacher, constructs a tension between the judg-ment of classroom teachers and that of district staff, Gabriela

describes ways in which the classroom teachers’ knowledge can bemade to count. The specific suggestions shared by Gabriela for waysin which teachers can advocate for students provide an importantresource on which not only Meghan but also all the participants inthe CLIMBS program can draw in their practice. In addition, Gabri-ela’s contributions transform discursively the relations betweenteachers and district administrators by affirming the relevance ofthe classroom teachers’ judgment and contradicting statementsmade by district administrators.

The data from Planeview indicate that the tension in the CLIMBSprofessional development community between policy and practiceis negotiated sometimes in favor of political discussions andsometimes against such discussions. It is a productive tensionbecause it allows participants to address issues of great urgency tothem at the same time as it provides opportunities for the group asa whole to re-establish its common purpose in working together.Even as political discussions are collectively constructed asmarginally relevant to the learning endeavor in which the partici-pants are engaged, space for such discussions is made repeatedly.The policy exchanges captured in the data concern state and districtguidelines for providing services to and assessing languageminoritystudents. These policies represent highly political negotiationsbetween federally-mandated obligations to support ELL students’learning and local allocation of scarce resources to the education ofchildren of immigrants. The examples of the ways in which educa-tors’ familiarity with such policies has the potential to impact thelearning experiences of ELLs demonstrate the importance of polit-ical discussions for any professional learning opportunity specifi-cally designed for educators working with culturally andlinguistically diverse students.

5. Discussion

In this article, I examine the practices of one professionaldevelopment facilitator from three lenses: participation, ideology,and content. The practices I discuss are important for the quality ofany professional development opportunity but are particularlyrelevant to professional learning designed for educators of ELLs. Iillustrate empirically how the facilitator fosters a generativelearning environment by (a) navigating tension in a way thatencourages collegial and respectful relationships among partici-pants, (b) systematically disrupting negative discourses aboutlanguage minority students, and (c) making space for politicaldiscussions around policies pertaining to the provision of educa-tional services to ELLs. The analysis adds to a small but growingbody of international research about the significance of the facili-tator in structuring and guiding adult learning.

Gabriela helps foster norms of discourse among participantsthat create a generative learning environment. For instance, sheprecludes the necessity of consensus and repeatedly appreciatesthe co-existence of opposing views among practitioners as well asresearchers. Her actions support collegial participation that is notfocused on agreement but whose purpose is to interrogate ideas. Asocially acceptable move away from consensus invites disagree-ment and allows for the respectful acceptance of divergent views.Such norms of interaction have been identified in the literature asan important feature of high-quality professional development(Crabbe, 2003; Little, 1993). In addition, Gabriela’s systematicdisruption of negative views of students facilitates a shift indiscussion from the shortcomings of individuals or groups ofindividuals to the responsibilities of educators to provide adequatesupport for the learning of ELLs. Such a shift is constructive forteacher learning because it encourages educators to think abouttheir schools and classrooms as spaces inwhich changes in practicecan lead to improvements in student academic success (Gutiérrez &

D. Molle / Teaching and Teacher Education 29 (2013) 197e207206

Larson, 2007). The shift is constructive also in the sense that itallows educators to acknowledge and build upon the resources thatlanguage minority students bring to school (August, Goldenberg,Saunders, & Dressler, 2010). Finally, Gabriela’s tolerance for politi-cally charged discussions allows participants to learn about ways inwhich they can advocate for their ELL students (Trueba &Bartolomé, 2000).

The article provides examples of how a facilitator enactsrecommendations in the education literature about professionaldevelopment for teachers of ELLs. Such contextualized illustrationsof social actions complement international scholarly discussionsabout what facilitators of professional development should striveto accomplish by demonstrating how particular goals may beachieved. The purpose of this approach is to provide guidance toteacher educators and professional developers working withcurrent and future teachers of culturally and linguistically diversechildren. The analysis helps connect general principles to specificinstances of practice and can thus serve as a reflection tool (Horn &Little, 2010) about facilitation processes. Just as an approach topractice that emphasizes what students bring, rather than whatthey lack, is more constructive for teacher learning, so the presentdiscussion of practices can serve as a resource for how the learningof teachers of language learners can be enhanced.

The analysis of facilitation practices presented in this article isby necessity limited in nature. Although the paper reports on thesocial construction of shared understandings during the profes-sional development program, it cannot reveal the extent to whicheducators appropriated these understandings. One way to gainfurther insight into educators’ responses to the professionaldevelopment is to conduct teacher interviews. I was not successful,however, in collecting enough interview data from the partici-pating educators at the Planeview site to conduct such an analysis.

Another limitation of the analysis is that it represents a casestudy of one facilitator in a single context. The illustrations offacilitator practices are thus context-bound and should by nomeans be treated as generalizable. While the descriptions provideexamples of desirable facilitation practices, I do not want to suggestthat this is what facilitation should look like. Further research willno doubt illuminate other ways in which facilitators can put inpractice recommendations in the literature about the types oflearning opportunities that are particularly important for educatorsworking with language minority students.

6. Conclusion

In the past decade, U.S. schools have become increasinglyculturally and linguistically diverse and there is no indication thatthis trend will change in the near future. Such demographic shiftshave created a sense of urgency around helping educators supportthe academic success of language minority students. Professionaldevelopment is one of the institutionalized practices that provideopportunities for educators to acquire tools and habits of work andmind that can help them better meet the evolving and varied needsof their students. This article discusses facilitation practices thatfoster a generative learning environment for educators workingwith ELLs. It contributes to the small but growing knowledge baseabout facilitation of professional development in general, and addsto our understanding of facilitation processes within the context ofprofessional development specifically designed for teachersworking with ELLs.

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