Cohen and Hill (2000) and Knapp (1997) found that teachers who had engaged in
large-scale professional development often blended reform-oriented practices with
traditional practices. For example, teachers might engage students in hands-on
activities or ask them to pose their own questions, but fail to help students make
sense of the data they collected or ask the students for evidence-based explanations.
Many elementary school teachers have additional difficulties teaching science to
ELL students (Bryan and Atwater 2002; Rodrı´guez and Kitchen 2005). They
assume that ELL students must acquire English before learning science, are
unaware of linguistic and cultural influences on science learning, do not consider
‘‘teaching for diversity’’ as their responsibility, or overlook linguistic differences
and accept inequities as a given condition.
With ELL students, English language and literacy development should be seen as
integral to subject area instruction (August and Hakuta 1997; Chamot and O’Malley
1994; Lee and Fradd 1998). ELL students confront the demands of academic