CHAPTER 1: Reading, Writing, and Talking Science with English Learners

The preparation of mainstream, general education teachers to work with English learners has deserved special attention in recent years (Lucas, 2011; Nutta, Mokhtari, & Strebel, 2012). The number of students in K–12 classrooms in the United States who speak home languages other than English has increased dramatically over the past several years, and in states that had not experienced a significant growth in their English learner populations. States such as Arkansas, Alabama, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Nebraska, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont, and Virginia have experienced more than 200% growth in the numbers of English learners in schools from 1995 to 2006 (National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition,(NCELA), 2006). The need to prepare teachers to work with these students in all U.S. states, then, is pressing, and especially in contexts such as Indiana, where the K–12 English learner population has increased by 408% since 1990 (Indiana Department of Education, 2010).