Culture & Society

$5.5M In Grants Focus On English Language Learners

The U.S. Department of Education awarded the Bilingual Program and the Educational Administration Program two five-year grants totaling $5.5 million.
By Ashley Green, Texas A&M College of Education & Human Development October 4, 2016

children - bilingualThe U.S. Department of Education awarded faculty from the Bilingual Program in the Department of Educational Psychology and the Educational Administration Program in the Department of Educational Administration and Human Resource Development two five-year grants totaling $5.5 million. The grants will fund teacher professional development for educators working with English language learners (ELLs) and to research its effects.

The first project—Empowering Teachers of English Language Learners (ETELL)—will feature online professional development (PD) courses as well as virtual coaching and mentoring for bilingual education and English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers in school districts across Texas. Dr. Rafael Lara-Alecio, Regents Professor and Director of the Center of Research and Development in Dual Language and Literacy Acquisition (CRDLLA), heads the project as Principal Investigator (PI), and Dr. Beverly Irby, Director of the Education Leadership Research Center (ELRC) and Co-Director of CRDLLA, and Dr. Fuhui Tong, Associate Director of CRDLLA, serve as Co-PIs.

“Researchers have demonstrated that teachers’ instructional practices can be improved through professional development, so it is crucial to provide educators working with ELLs with effective PD programs targeted to those specific skills,” Lara-Alecio said.

Irby also commented, “A critical component of this grant is the fact that the in-service bilingual/ESL teachers will be from broad expanse across Texas; therefore, virtual mentoring and coaching, what we have developed and researched as VMC, provides an inside real-time view of the classroom with just-in-time feedback—on the spot—to improve instruction.”

“The professional development we will provide will also be virtual. We have proven over a 15-year period that this approach that we have developed and researched across Texas school districts is effective in improving the instructional capacity of teachers and in aiding them in gaining state certification in bilingual/ESL education,” added Tong.

Continue reading on Transform Lives.

This article by Ashley Green originally appeared in Transform Lives.

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