Co-Teaching with a Holistic Bilingual Perspective

Our second Big Idea of Tandem Teaching is that Tandem Teaching aligns with a holistic perspective on bilingualism and biliteracy development. What does that mean, and what does it look like? 

Beliefs about bilingualism and biliteracy in the field in general, and in dual language education in particular, have been shifting over the past several decades from parallel monolingualism (Heller, 1999) or what Cummins (2005, 2007) refers to as ‘the two solitudes,’ to more unified, holistic notions of bilingualism. In a parallel monolingual approach, the English and partner language teachers plan separately and teach separately, each responsible for their own aspects of the curriculum, and each attempting to help students develop proficiency in one of the two program languages along with the associated academic content. By contrast, a holistic bilingual perspective unites the two teachers to consider together how they can help all students access and develop all of their linguistic resources, promoting the equitable attainment of the three goals of academic achievement, bilingualism and biliteracy, and sociocultural competence along the way. Using a holistic bilingual perspective, Tandem Teachers work together as two parts of a single system. 

In the domain of curriculum, Tandem Teachers use a holistic bilingual perspective to carry out cross-linguistic curriculum mapping. Cross-linguistic curriculum mapping enables Tandem Teachers to identify standards that are unique to each language as well as those that are shared, and to then plan instructional sequences that address the shared standards in an engaging, non-repetitive way. Here’s an example of a biliteracy map that we created when we were co-teaching kindergarten in a Spanish-English dual language program, based on Common Core (2010) and Common Core en español (San Diego County Office of Education, n.d.) standards. Standards in blue only apply to English, those in red only apply to Spanish, and those in purple apply to both languages. This was from the first round of mapping, when we documented the units as they existed at the time. This enabled us to notice gaps and redundancies and make adjustments as needed.

Reprinted with permission. Howard & Simpson (2024)

In the domain of instruction, there are two key ways that Tandem Teachers work together as part of a single system. First, using the common roots and soil of effective instruction for multilingual learners, Tandem Teachers ensure that students are receiving comparable supports regardless of the language of instruction. They are also laying the groundwork for meaningful cross-linguistic connections, such as through common gestures and images for key vocabulary words, or the same sentence frames in both languages. Second, Tandem Teachers work to promote cross-linguistic coordination of instruction through the use of the cross-linguistic pedagogies. Two of the cross-linguistic pedagogies are synchronous, meaning that both instructional languages are used together at the same time. Five are asynchronous, meaning that instruction is provided in primarily monolingual spaces that are carefully coordinated to promote cross-linguistic development of language skills and content knowledge. Purposeful selection and implementation of these cross-linguistic pedagogies helps students use their full linguistic repertoires to make sense of what they are learning and promotes the development of metalinguistic and cross-linguistic awareness.

Reprinted with permission. Howard & Simpson (2024)

Finally, coordinating assessment practices with the cross-linguistic pedagogies aligns with a holistic perspective on bilingualism and biliteracy in two ways: 1) finding ways to disentangle the assessment of content knowledge and skills from language proficiency; and 2) enabling students to use all of their language resources in the assessment process. Taken together, highly coordinated co-planning for curriculum, instruction, and assessment helps to ensure that all students receive the same high-quality experience in both languages and that students can draw fully on all of their linguistic resources for all instruction.

Interested in learning more? See our book Dual Language Tandem Teaching: Coordinating Instruction across Languages through Cross-Linguistic Pedagogies!

References

Common Core State Standards Initiative (2010). National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, Council of Chief State School Officers.

Cummins, J. (2005, September 23). Teaching for cross-language transfer in dual language education: Possibilities and pitfalls. TESOL Symposium on Dual Language Education: Teaching and Learning Two Languages in the EFL Setting. Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey.

Cummins, J. (2007). Rethinking monolingual instructional strategies in multilingual classrooms. Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 10(2), Article 2.

Heller, M. (1999). Linguistic minorities and modernity: A sociolinguistic ethnography. Longman.

San Diego County Office of Education (n.d.). Common Core en Español. State Standards Translation Initiative Project.