Running head: Why STEAM for ELLs 1

Why STEM for English Language Learners: A Review of the Literature

Andrea Miller

Lamar University
Why STEAM for ELLs 2

Introduction

In today’s school system English Language Learners (ELL) have made a dramatic

increase in the total percentage of school-aged population. It continues to increase every

year. By 2030 the ELL population is expected to be approximately 40 percent of the

school-aged children in the United States according to Lawson (2017). ELL students are

being mainstreamed into the classroom, which makes it vital for current teachers to be

prepared and to stay current with professional development and best practices towards

teaching students as the population continues to change. Teachers need to ensure they

are reaching the needs of every student while teaching to the curriculum adopted by their

Board of Education and the State and Federal mandates or requirements. It is even more

important that we get better at preparing teachers at the pre-service level so when they

enter in the field they will feel confident about teaching ELLs and not feel like they are

not meeting their needs. With the continuing increase of minorities, it is also becoming a

continued challenge for educators to produce America’s future scientists and engineers.

Fewer American students specifically English Learners and females are entering STEM

fields of study in higher education compared to other developed countries. STEM

fascination by students is not occurring and very few students are showing interest in the

fields, which are the most upcoming jobs, needed to fill in the 21st century. This paper

will review the literature on the mainstreaming of the ELL students into the classrooms,

the preparation teachers need to take in order to make sure they are encouraging ELL

students toward the STEM fields, how STEAM is student centered and the benefits of

student centered learning, and the career opportunities the ELL students have in the

STEM fields.
Why STEAM for ELLs 3

Mainstreaming English Language Learners

English Language Learners (ELLs) are being mainstreamed into classrooms

because of the elimination of specialized sheltered and bilingual instruction programs that

are intended to provide ELLs with access to content instruction in those states with the

highest populations of ELLs. When the ELLs are being mainstreamed the schools are

doing it with a “sink or swim” approach and they are not giving these students the best

possible solution. The teachers who are mainstreaming are not equipped with the right

tools to help them succeed according to standards and content instruction. This poses a

challenge to schools, teachers, and students, since ELLs are generally in the classroom

about 80 percent of the school day during which the core curriculum is being taught. To

help improve the struggling ELLs’ STEM performance it is important to emphasize on

the authentic STEM learning that results in the deeper understanding of science and

mathematics. Teachers are needing to bring in literacy to all subject areas and they are

not trained appropriately to know how to accommodate these literacy needs. It is very

imperative that when teaching core curriculum the ELL students are able to fully

understand the vocabulary in every aspects that relates to them allowing them to make a

connection to truly understand the vocabulary. There are numerous ways to teach English

to our students who aren’t native English speakers but knowing the best way is not truly

known. This uncertainty stems in part from the fact that researchers and policymakers are

not sharing a consensus on the ultimate goal of education for English learners according

to Barrow and Markman (2016).

Why STEAM for ELLs 4

Teacher Preparation

According to Lyon et al. (2014) the improvement of preparation of STEM

teachers in high need secondary schools with large numbers of minorities is the key to

increasing their successful participation in STEM careers and degree programs and it

should be a national priority. Research found that 77 percent of content-area teachers

have had no coursework or professional development addressing ELLs. They also

concluded that teacher preparation programs are not developing the skills that content

teachers need to address both the content and language requirements for the ELLs

(Alonao & DelliCarini, 2014). However, despite the achievement gap between

mainstream students and ELLs, which increases from elementary to secondary, few

teachers receive education on how to teach STEM subjects to students for whom English

is not a first language. Furthermore it’s not even surprising that tenured teachers or

experienced teachers are having difficulties or feel unprepared to teach these ELL

students. With each continuing year, new teachers are entering the teaching profession

feeling underprepared to teach this rapidly growing student population. Batt (2008) found

that one of the greatest challenges affecting the education of ELLs was the qualifications

of the mainstream teachers who are working with Ells. One way to help prepare our

teachers is through The SSTELLA Framework: Synergistic and Reciprocal Relationship

between Language and Science for Secondary Teachers. This framework provides a

much-needed response in science education to the many challenges that secondary school

ELLs face. The framework also addresses the capacity for inadequate teachers to improve

ELLs’ science achievement by advancing research-based instructional practices in the

classroom. Lyon et al. (2014) explains that SSTELLA reflects principles from the
Why STEAM for ELLs 5

Science Framework and is designed to prepare teachers to effectively integrate science,

language, and literacy instruction for ELLs by promoting the productive use of Science

language in authentic contexts, whereby “students are supported in using multiple

resources and strategies for learning science and developing English.” This framework

pushes the ELLs to come to an understanding of the relationships between school science

learning and their lived experiences outside of the school. Teachers when using this

framework promote scientific sense-making, scientific discourse, and English language

and literacy development through the contextualized learning experiences. A second

option on how to teach the STEM fields to ELLs is by teacher collaboration and two-way

content-based instruction (CBI). In this instruction the STEM teacher needs to work

collaboratively with the ESL teacher and together create a lesson that has language-

driven content objectives and content-driven language objectives that are complementary

in nature. This will eliminate the disconnection that often is present between language

and content in the classroom. Once completed it will meet the needs of the English

learners who are being mainstreamed in the content teacher’s classroom. The

collaboration piece is the key to making this option successful and when done correctly

both the teachers and the ELL students will benefit.

Student Centered Learning

STEAM education is more about how teachers are setting up their room to

accompany the needs of all students to be individuals and to bring out their curiosity to

learn. Through play the students will learn how to work collaboratively with each other

and learn how to problem solve. When students are learning through exploration the

teacher will provide students with some information but will mostly be facilitating the
Why STEAM for ELLs 6

students to find their solutions. In this way, students will learn both content knowledge

and the skills of learning, so that they will hopefully become self-directed learners. When

it comes to problem solving, students need evidence, but they also need the freedom to

interpret the evidence differently and to discuss why they think as they do according

to Shirley and Tee Ng (2017). Being in a student centered environment is very important

for ELLs because it helps give meaning to the learning and also helps them relate to the

understanding of what is being taught by allowing them to explore and learn through

direct involvement. As the teacher is facilitating it is very important that they are making

sure to use the vocabulary that is needed to be taught as well as making sure the students

are using the vocabulary when investigating.

Science

Science lessons are the perfect for way to help ELLs learn through language and

literacy. In inquiry science language is taught by being related to objects, visual

representations and pictures, hands on activities, and experiences with the outside

environment. ELLs need to have the language and literacy related to them through real

life objects, events and activities that they know so they can give true meaning to the

words. The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) have made science teachers and

teacher educators face new challenges in regard to the integration of the authentic

scientific and literacy practices in science classrooms. The NGSS identifies core science

concepts with crosscutting themes that allow the students to learn in a more rigorous and

relevant way as they progress through their science classes. The framework provides a

description of eight scientific and engineering practices in which four of them are

practiculary language intensive. However, according to Lyon, Solis, Stoddart, & Tolbert
Why STEAM for ELLs 7

(2014) integrating the teaching of science content with the development of English

language and literacy through contextualized science inquiry has been consistently shown

to increase ELLs’ achievement in both science and in the development of academic

language and literacy.

Technology and Engineering

Getting students to be interested in the STEM learning activities continues to be a

struggle because of the overreliance on inaccessible textbooks, lack of disciplinary

background knowledge, and the abstract problem solving procedures. Researchers are

looking to instructional technologies to support students’ engagement and content

acquisition in STEM areas. New research is finding that instructional technologies like

video games and computer simulations can support STEM instruction in a way that is

flexible, pedagogically sound, and motivating to students according to Basham, Israel,

Marino, & Spivak (2013). Basham et al., (2014) continue to say that some technology

developers have even started to involve students in the development/engineering of

technology-supported learning products through a user-centered design framework. User-

centered design cycles often involve the end users in evaluating and providing feedback

to the designers once a prototype has been developed.

Mathematics

The National Assessment of Educational Progress’ (NAEP) 2015 math results

revealed that only 11 percent of ELL fourth graders scored “at or above proficient” in

math as compared to 89 percent of their non-ELL (Shi, Qi 2017). Researchers predicted

that the performance in math is affected by the lack of mathematical English knowledge

known by the ELL students. Literacy needs to be intertwined with mathematics to allow
Why STEAM for ELLs 8

the ELLs to understand the vocabulary and relate to it on a personal note. Ells should be

given many opportunities to learn the vocabulary before they are expected to use it

accordingly. This is why even in math it is necessary to try to use different STEAM fields

to help understand math.

Career Opportunities and Readiness

The world is becoming more dependent on the advances in science, technology,

engineering, and mathematics (STEM) to support its technology-based economy. There is

an imbalance in STEM participation with female and minority students who enroll in

STEM courses and seek employment in the profession. “ In terms of racial disparities

among those who held a STEM Bachelor’s degree in 2010, White and Asians together

took 88.4 percent of STEM jobs while Blacks, and Hispanics only took 9.9 percent.

Another underrepresented group in STEM are English Language Learners, a sizeable

subgroup (5.3 million) among the country’s elementary and secondary (PK-12) students

and a subgroup whose growth is outpacing that of the overall PK-12 student population

(Shi, 2017).” According to the report published by OELA (2011), it strongly suggested

that the perceptions about English Learners must change. Don’t think of them as

academic underachievers, but as an untapped resource for developing a multilingual

STEM workforce that has the potential to keep the U.S. relevant in an increasingly

competitive global economy. Thus, ELL students can be an important target group to

increase the STEM workforce.

Conclusion

When reviewing the research, I found how this paper reviewed the literature on

the mainstreaming of the ELLs into the classrooms, the preparation teachers need to take
Why STEAM for ELLs 9

to be able to make sure they are encouraging ELLs towards the STEM fields, how

STEAM is student centered and the benefits of student centered learning, and the career

opportunities the ELLs have in the STEM fields. Because of the factors stated above we

need to start producing teacher education programs that provide explicit instruction,

modeling, and coaching of integrated pedagogy, that show preservice teachers the how

and why of integrating the development of academic language and literacy into the

teaching of rigorous science content (Lyon et al., 2014). In addition current models of

STEM teacher preparation not only focus on content knowledge, but on the idea that

literacy in STEM subjects means that students are able to be active participants in the

discourse community of that subject explains Alonao & DelliCarini, (2014). It is

imperative that secondary teachers do not departmentalize themselves to only science and

mathematics but also know they need to consider the role of language in science,

mathematics, and engineering instruction. Our ELL students need to be given the best

opportunity possible to succeed in our school systems. We need to start seeing an

increase in the ELL’s academics in the STEM fields in our schools and to do so teachers

and educators need to be given the right tools and materials needed to help them perform

to their highest potential if we are going to continue to mainstream these students.

Why STEAM for ELLs 10

References

Barrow, Lisa & Markman-Pithers, Lisa, (2016). Supporting young english learners in the

united states. The Future of Children: Vol. 26: No.2.

Basham, James D., Israel, Maya, Marino, Matthew T., & Spivak, Wenonoa, (2013). Fifth

graders as app designers: How diverse learners conceptualize educational

apps. Journal of Research on Technology in Education: Vol.46: No.1. 53-80

Batt, E. G. (2008). Teachers’ Perception of ELL Education: Potential solutions to

overcome the greatest challenges. Multicultural Education: 15(3), 39-43.

Bravo, Marco, Mosqueda, Eduardo, Solis, Jorge, & Stoddart, Trish, (2013). Restructuring

pre-service teacher education to respond to increasing student diversity. Research

in Higher Education Journal: Vol.19.

DelliCarpini, Margo & Alonso, Orlando B. (2014). Teacher education that works:

Preparing secondary level math and science teachers for success with English

language learners through content based instruction. Global Education Review,

1(4). 155-178

DiRanna, K., & Gomez-Zwiep, S. (2013). High-Quality Science Instruction: Building

Conceptual Understanding and Language Skills for English Learners. A report

from the Region IX Equity Assistance Center at WestEd.

Hallman, Heidi L., & Meineke, Hannah R., (2016). Addressing the teaching of English

language learners in the United States: A case study of teacher educators’

response. Brock Education Journal, 26(1).

Hayes, Shannon, (2017). Preparation matters most in STEM. ACT Research & Policy.
Why STEAM for ELLs 11

Keane, Linda, & Keane, Mark, (2016). STEAM by Design. Design and Technology

Education: An International Journal: 21.1.

Lawson, Molly, (2017). The relationship between English language literacy and ELL

student academic performance in mathematics.

Lyon, Edward G., Solis, Jorge, Stoddart, Trish, & Tolbert, Sara, (2014). The next

generation science standards, common core state standards, and English learners:

Using the SSTELLA framework to prepare secondary science teachers. Teacher

Education, Vol.23: No.1.

McDonald, Christine V., (2016). STEM education: A review of the contribution of the

disciplines of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Science

Education International, Vol.27: Iss.4. 530-569

Murphy-Judy, Kathryn (2016/17). STEMming the tide: STEAMing ahead by including

world language education. Learning Languages.

Shirley, D. & Tee Ng, P., (2017). Problem solving in education: A global

imperative. Unleashing Problem Solvers, 75(2).

Shi, Qi, (2017). English language learners’ (ELLs) science, technology, engineering,

math (STEM) course-taking, achievement and attainment in college. Journal of

College Access: Vol.3: Iss.2, Article 5.