Materials Design and Use in a Secondary Spanish Immersion Classroom

The successful integration of content and language is a persistent challenge in content-based language instruction contexts such as dual language and immersion (DLI) classrooms. Although previous scholarship has explored a variety of factors that affect DLI teachers' abilities to integrate content and language in their pedagogy, none of this work has focused on the potential affordances and constraints of the classroom materials that these teachers employ. Moreover, very little classroom-based language learning materials use research has examined the relationship between the design of the materials themselves and how they are used in the classroom. Operating under an overarching question of how language-focused modifications to DLI materials might offer affordances for more frequent and effective content and language integration, this study set out to build a local theory for how the design of DLI materials related to how they were mobilized by the teacher and students in one ninth-grade Spanish immersion social studies classroom. In this presentation, I share findings from classroom observations, teacher interviews and materials analysis that illustrate a possible relationship between materials design and materials use, highlighting in part how materials design features can support or inhibit an intended pedagogical paradigm and/or curriculum. I will also present implications for DLI pedagogy, materials development for content-based instruction and teacher education.
Presenter: Corinne (Cory) Mathieu is a PhD student in Second Language Education in the department of Curriculum and Instruction. Her research focuses on materials use and development and content and language integration in secondary Spanish immersion programs. She teaches in the dual language and immersion certificate program and works as the graduate assistant for the K-6 initial licensure program with a focus on dual language and immersion education at the University of Minnesota.
This presentation is cosponsored by the Second Language Education Program in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction.