April 20, 2023 • 44 mins
In our second episode of the season, we continue finding ways in which science is overlooked and how it can be better utilized in schools—and as an ally to other subjects!
We sat down with Susan Gomez Zwiep, former middle school science teacher and senior science educator and staff advocate at BSCS Science Learning. She shared past experiences and research that shows the benefits of integrating science and literacy, as well as strategies for applying these ideas in the classroom.
Listen now and then explore more from the Science Connections podcast!
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Episode Transcript
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Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (00:00):
We started to see this trend of
students communicating more inEnglish because they were
excited about the science thatthey had been learning.
Eric Cross (00:10):
Welcome to Science Connections. I'm your host Eric
Cross. In this third season,we're exploring the theme of
science as the underdog. Andlast time around, we delved
into the data showing thatcompared to other subjects,
science is often put on theback burner. Now it's time to
explore why it's so importantto change that and how to do it
(00:31):
effectively. So over the courseof these coming episodes, we're
gonna make the case for scienceand equip you with data and
strategies for advancingscience in your own home,
school, or community. To kickthings off, we're going to
spend a few episodes going indepth on the integration of
science and Englishinstruction. We know we need to
(00:51):
dramatically improve literacyrates in this country, and as
we'll show in the comingepisodes, science can be a key
ally in that goal. We'll alsoshow how language development
and literacy instruction cansupport science. Yes, it can be
a win-win, folks. To start out,I'm joined by someone who has
been studying science andlanguage development for more
(01:11):
than a decade. Dr. Susan GomezZwiep is a senior science
educator and staff advocate forBSCS Science Learning. On this
episode, she talks about herown experience as a middle
school science teacher andshare some key insights and
strategies from the research onintegrating science and English
language development. Pleaseenjoy this conversation with
(01:32):
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep. Welcometo the podcast. Thank you for
being here and having thisreally important conversation.
So I'm so glad you can make it,Susan.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (01:43):
Yeah, I'm excited to be here.
Eric Cross (01:44):
We're gonna talk all about language development
and science. But first I washoping that you can just kind
of set the stage and tell thelisteners about yourself and
how you came about to studyingthis specific subject.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (01:57):
Sure. So I am a California native. I
grew up in the San GabrielValley and that's where I
started teaching. I have anundergraduate degree in
integrated biology from UCBerkeley. And I thought I was
gonna go be a field scientist.
And while I was waiting forgrad school applications to run
(02:19):
their course, I took asubstitute job in Montebello to
kind of bide my time. Andbecause I had a science degree,
they asked if I would take apermanent placement, well, a
temporary permanent placement.
And I said sure. And foundmyself teaching seventh and
eighth grade general science toa population that at the time
(02:42):
was about 68% English languagelearners , in a school that you
would consider urban,under-resourced with a
community that was largepercentage immigrants from
Mexico, Central and SouthAmerica. And I never looked
(03:02):
back. I kept that job. I lovedit. I love the middle school
classroom. I love teachingscience to my middle school
students and truly, truly justfound a really good home for my
love of science , but also mylove for talking about science
and helping other peopleunderstand science. So at some
(03:26):
point I was entertained withthe idea of going to graduate
school. So while I was stillteaching, I actually did a
Ph.D. At the University ofSouthern California in the
science education field. Andonce there, realized that I
actually had a uniqueexperience in higher ed, that
(03:47):
experience of teaching withpopulations that are learning
English or have home languagesother than English, was
actually not common in highered circles. And being from that
community was also not common.
And so I pretty quicklyleveraged that experience to
(04:10):
combat what I think isuniversally agreed as an equity
issue that in my school where Itaught, the district had
advocated for ELs to get anextra hour of language
development in order to promotetheir English language
proficiency. And , ourprincipal wisely said, there
(04:31):
are not enough English-onlystudents in this school to do
that without losing all of ourscience teachers because
there's not enough kids left toactually fill a day, a
teacher's day. And she said,these kids learn more language
in their science courses thanthey do anywhere else, so I
don't wanna remove that. Butthe reality is, is that at that
(04:54):
time--this was in the latenineties, early two
thousands--if you were notproficient in English, you went
to more time with languagedevelopment. And that makes a
lot of sense in some ways. Butwhen you look at the big
picture, you realize, well,that means those kids aren't
going to science and they'renot having opportunities to
(05:16):
have consistent quality sciencelearning opportunities simply
because they spoke a languageother than English at home. And
so that's really how I fellinto this work.
Eric Cross (05:28):
And that has a downstream effect. I mean, once
you start pulling students froma course, that automatically
sets the trajectory for lateroutcomes, which we ultimately
see in STEM fields where we, wedon't see the population of our
students represented in theSTEM fields. Now, I know this
goes back a few years, but youwere doing research for your
Ph.D. What did you start tofollow?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (05:50):
Yeah, so I eventually took a position at
Cal State Long Beach, which wasnot by chance, it's a
Hispanic-serving institution,and that's where I wanted to do
my academic work. And once Iwas there, sought funding with
a district to supportelementary science learning. So
(06:14):
it had a teacher professionallearning component that was
both summer and in-class, sortof like PD in the classroom
component. And the districtcame back and said, the only
way you are gonna get time toeven talk about science in
elementary school is if it'sattached to language
development. And so that's whatwe did. It was a three-year
(06:36):
grant, there was a sister grantthat followed--so all told, it
was about a five-year programwhere we basically said, what
if instead of following thetraditional ELD, English
Language Developmentcurriculum, we modified and put
science as the context forlanguage development in the K2
(07:00):
bands. Teachers at the districttraditionally had not been
excited about their languagedevelopment curriculum until we
said, we're gonna take that andwe're gonna do some science
instead. And then they werelike, no, no , no! We love our
ELD curriculum. But they hungin there with us. The project
was successful enough that itactually became a K4 and then a
(07:22):
K5 project. The district endedup having to put in a ton of
money into this because thegrant only paid for so much.
But their schools actuallywanted "in" 'cause what they
heard is when we put science asa context for language
development, kids were talkingmore. Kids were speaking in
English more. Kids were writingmore. Kids were engaged. And
(07:45):
the ultimate, kids weredeveloping English quickly and
in a community where you couldactually operate within the
community without speakingEnglish. These are
Spanish-speaking communitiesand the schools operated in
Spanish outside the classroom.
So if you walked into theschool's office, the principal
(08:08):
secretary, the person whomanned the door, spoke Spanish.
The field supervisors that thelunch supervisors spoke
Spanish.
Eric Cross (08:17):
The non-teaching staff that are supporting the
rest of the students outside ofthe classroom.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (08:23):
Yeah.
Everybody spoke Spanish andthey spoke Spanish at school.
And even the principals cameback and said, from being in
this project, that the kidswere coming into the office and
had transitioned tocommunicating in English,
especially when they wanted totalk about science, and they
really wanted to talk aboutscience 'cause they were super
(08:43):
excited about the stuff thatthey were learning. So we
started to see this trend ofstudents communicating more in
English because they wereexcited about the science that
they had been learning. Andyeah, that sold itself and we
had schools jumping in.
Eric Cross (09:01):
So you started off in a situation where you were
told that you had to, if youwanna get science and you had
to merge it into English,basically. And is it fair to
say that that's because oftesting requirements that
schools have on them? Like thisis what gets analyzed or what
was the purpose behind that?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (09:15):
It was district policy and it was site
policy and those policies wereput into place for very good
intentions. Students don't getreclassified into English only,
and reclassification is how youtraditionally got access to all
this other programming,electives, AP college prep, all
(09:38):
those other things. And thebest way to get them
reclassified was to learnEnglish, and to learn it sooner
rather than later. So it was inan attempt to get kids
reclassified from Englishlearner to English proficient.
Eric Cross (09:55):
And then during that process it was able to be
expanded to K4. And then withthese open-minded teachers, you
gave them the content, theyused science as the context for
learning. And then yourstudents who were mostly
emerging bilinguals andmultilingual students, you
found that they startedspeaking English more
frequently. What did you makeof that result? Like what did
(10:17):
you come to after seeing allthat happen?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (10:20):
So I do wanna say that there's a couple
of reasons why we think thisworks so well. But I have to
really acknowledge that therewere linguistics, second
language acquisition expertsthat were part of this team.
And we wouldn't have been ableto make any of this work if it
was purely science educatorsleading this cause. There's a
(10:40):
lot we didn't understand aboutlanguage development, and they
really helped us. But one ofthe things that we think is
unique about science, there's afew really important
aspects--one is that we allhave experiences in the natural
world, since we can processoutside information, right? We
(11:01):
all have observations, thingswe've observed with our eyes,
we've heard, we've felt, andall of those experiences build
some pretty good science ideasbefore we enter formal
schooling. You know, kidsalready have ideas about this.
We don't have to give themlanguage for it. They already
(11:23):
have these concepts andexperiences. The other thing is
that we are inherentlyinterested in the natural world
we occupy. And so we'recurious, science is often
considered cool, there arescience channels and science
fiction movies and sciencefiction books and
(11:45):
magazines--and this is just ...
it's just cool. And that tendedto be the trigger, you know ,
when we gave kids somethinginteresting to observe. A
Ziploc bag with water that weadded an Alka-Seltzer to, and
strange things starts happeningin the baggie. That curiosity,
(12:05):
that excitement allowed kids toleap over any concerns they had
about the language they weresupposed to use in the
classroom. One of the mostdifficult things about learning
a language is using a languagethat is imperfect. So saying
(12:27):
things and communicating in alanguage that you are not a
hundred percent confidentabout, that you're not sure
you're using the right words orthe right tenses. But when kids
were excited about this thingin a Ziploc bag, they didn't
care. They communicated howeverthey could, sometimes in their
primary language or their homelanguage, sometimes in
(12:48):
imperfect English, but by andlarge they just communicated.
They did it in oral language,like listening and speaking,
but they also did it inwriting. And that was easy.
Like we didn't have to doanything other than provide
interesting scienceexperiences. And that's, that's
pretty common.
Eric Cross (13:06):
Yeah. I feel like, to co-sign on the science is
cool, it is objectively, if amatter of fact, even just
looking at the Oscars, like wehave multiverse, you know, we
have sci-fi you know, thecostume designer of Wakanda
Forever. We have all of thesedifferent movies that are all
founded in some kind of thesescientific principles. And so
the idea that science is cooland organic, naturally engaging
is something I think we, we allcan connect to and it resonates
(13:28):
with all of us. So I feel likeis sort of your origin story
too.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (13:33):
That's the origin story.
Eric Cross (13:34):
That's the origin story right there, to continue
with this like movie theme. Nowif we fast forward to today,
based on all the research thatyou've seen since then, and
your experience, why would youadvocate merging English
language development andscience?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (13:49):
Well, for one, the research that we
conducted actually providedsome really nice evidence that
showed, even though we hadessentially stole minutes from
language development time andinserted science. And on state
mandated tests and on theirstudents' language proficiency
(14:13):
measures, the kids in theprogram with the blended, did
significantly better thanstudents who were getting ELD
instruction alone. TraditionalELD instruction. And that kind
of blew our mind. We would'vebeen happy if they had done
just fine. Like we could putscience into a student's day
and do no harm. They could gettheir language development;
(14:35):
they could get science. But infact, what we found was that
they did better. That theyactually gained English more
quickly and it showed up inmultiple measures, including
the state English language artsassessment, which again, kind
of blew our mind.
Eric Cross (14:55):
So just to be clear about the study that you did,
you looked at two groups andone was the blended science and
English language development,and then the other one was a
control group. And the blendedgroup ended up showing more
improvement.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (15:09):
Yes. So there's quite a bit of research
now, this research was done inthe early two thousands, and
the research has built aroundit to really suggest that this
does seem to be a moreefficient way to promote
language development whilestill maintaining students'
(15:30):
access to a core content area.
But in recent years, thestandards have shifted and that
has been just a remarkable,wonderful change. And both
standards have shifted. So whenwe did our research, we did it
under the old CaliforniaScience standards that were
(15:52):
fairly heavy in technicalterms. They were heavy in
science concepts rather thankids doing things. And they
were a much narrower focus.
Eric Cross (16:04):
And these are the standards that most of us grew
up on, right? Those of us whoare pretty much teachers in the
classroom today pretty muchgrew up on what you're talking
about. Is that fair to say?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (16:12):
That's fair to say, yes. So the new
standards that we have now, theCalifornia NGSS Standards
emphasize not just ideas, butthey also emphasize students
doing things in science. And wedidn't have to build-in
language portions to thestandards. They now exist. The
NGSS is a very, very richlinguistic opportunity for
(16:37):
students. And at the same time,the way we've thought about
language development has alsoshifted. We used to talk about
language and science... we usedto think about science as a lot
of words, and you had to knowthe words, you had to have this
technical language. And we'vesort of shifted that to really
(16:58):
thinking about, language is nolonger a prerequisite for
science learning. Language isnow developed through the
science learning or the contentlearning experiences.
Eric Cross (17:11):
So now there's more chances to integrate English
into science. Have you seensuccess stories or have you
seen examples of this? Maybejust anecdotes of teachers kind
of doing this since you've beendoing this research and kind of
watching. If so, would you mindsharing one or two?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (17:30):
Yeah.
And I will just give a nod toDr. Dr. Okie Lee who's now at
NYU who has really led sort ofthis reconception of language
and science. And one of theways she talks about it is this
notion that I enter thislearning experience, I enter
(17:51):
this observation of thisphenomena with fairly naive,
simple scientific ideas. And mylanguage about it is equally
simple. But as I develop moreand more ideas, as my
understanding of thephenomenon, what I figured out
becomes more sophisticated, Ineed more sophisticated
(18:14):
language. And so what we'restarting to see are these
spaces where teachers arebuilding science ideas and
science and understanding alongwith the language. And in order
to do that, you really need toknow what's the storyline arc
of my science lesson? What dothey figure out in lesson one?
What do they figure out inlesson two? What do they figure
(18:35):
out in lesson three? How arethe science ideas building over
time? So that I can then lookat the language that they're
using and what languagesupports do I need in order to
allow students to not onlyengage and figure things out,
but communicate their ideasabout it. And so we're seeing
teachers blow up what we calllanguage, what we call text.
(19:00):
It's not just words. It's notjust sentences written on a
paper, but it's models, it'spictorial representations, it's
gestures, it's this wide range.
We pretty much said, let's blowlanguage up. Let's like use all
of the linguistic registersthat we have in order to make
(19:21):
meaning of what we're seeing itin together in this classroom.
So that's one thing that we'restarting to see. The other
thing is that teachers arereally allowing students
opportunities to use what wecall social language ,
non-standard dialects. Thelanguage I use at home and with
(19:43):
my friends. Because earlier Ihad said, we have all these
experiences and thoseexperiences in the world are
tied up in my social register.
They're tied up in my homelanguage 'cause that's where I
experience them. And to letstudents have access to using
(20:04):
that language in the classroom,especially initially in a unit,
means we're giving 'em accessto those experiences that they
have that are related to thephenomena under study. So I
totally understand the benefitof promoting academic language
and promoting language framesand forms that we use in more
(20:27):
academic settings. But it's asticky wicket. You have to be
careful how you tell studentsabout the way you want them to
communicate. Because when wetell them that language that
you use at home with yourfriends and family is not
welcome here, we can send amessage that they're not
(20:48):
welcome here. And that thoseexperiences that they have
outside of classroom about howthings fall, the way sunlight
heats up different surfaces,where you'll find plants and
what plants you will find basedon conditions. All of those
experiences, we're sending amessage that those are not
welcome in the classroom. Andso this expansion of language,
(21:13):
including non-standard dialectsand even home language, is
really important for lettingstudents bring their whole
selves into the classroom.
Eric Cross (21:23):
I love what you just said. It legitimizes the
funds of knowledge, thelanguage, the cultures that our
students are bringing to thetable. I remember when I first
learned the word code-switchingin college and you know, I'm
biracial, I grew up in my homecommunity and my school
community were two differentcommunities and I ethnically,
(21:43):
culturally belonged to both.
And I had to code-switch inorder to kind of survive and be
accepted into differentcommunities. And not until I
was in college did I actuallyunderstand what I was doing.
Now there were all kinds ofteasing and jokes that went on
to how I would talk if Icode-switched improperly. And
in my classroom, I would seestudents who would explain
(22:04):
concepts in a way that wasmaybe like a casual register.
They just were explaining itthe best way they could. And
the way they were speaking waskind of denigrated or it was
seen as negative even thoughthey were communicating their
concept. And when I became amiddle school teacher, one of
my, I don't know, it's likesometimes when you teach, you
get to , you change how youwere taught or what you
(22:26):
experience and legitimizing mystudents' language, and they
would tell these beautifulstories and in their most
common like, casual language,but they're explaining the
concept brilliantly. And it wasphenomenal to see this barrier
be removed of saying, you haveto talk like this in order to
(22:47):
be a scientist or you have tosay these right words. And, and
that's what I feel like I'mhearing that in how you're
describing kind of how sciencehas been done and what language
can do to certain groups ofstudents.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (22:58):
Yeah, very much so. And you know,
back to the origin story, youknow, I grew up in a
multi-generational household.
My mom, my aunt, mygrandmother, Spanish was their
first language, but they lostit because my mom was raised in
Riverside and she, you know,went to school in the, the
(23:20):
fifties and sixties and backthen you weren't allowed to
speak Spanish at school. And sothey lost the language.
Eric Cross (23:27):
They weren't allowed to speak it at all.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (23:29):
At all.
I didn't directly observe it,but that is the story that my
family tells, that there was noEnglish spoken anywhere on
school grounds. And that was adifferent issue. Right? That
was very much for peopleunfamiliar with some of the
history in Southern California.
Their segregated schools ,severe racism , linguistic
(23:50):
racism, racial racism againstMexicans was a real thing. But
yet I grew up in this householdwhere the sort of way of
speaking, like I think manyMexican households, the context
is everything. So you can't getto the facts until you've told
(24:11):
the whole context of everythinghappening around it. So we used
to joke that we couldn't sendmy grandmother to the doctor by
herself 'cause he had 15minutes, and she was gonna take
20 just to tell him how she gotthere before she got to why she
was there. But this telling ofthe context, the telling of the
story around the idea is partof the linguistic, this sort of
(24:34):
linguistic way of my household.
When I got to school, I had tolearn to drop it because
teachers found me off topic.
You know , I still have to becareful how I express things
and sometimes I'm not a faststoryteller, and I
monitor that for myself. So Ican only imagine what it's like
(24:56):
to be a kid in a classroom.
Eric Cross (24:59):
Right. And there are so many constraints in the
school day, you know,especially if you're
multi-subject and you'reelementary and you're teaching
multiple subjects and someone'strying to tell a story and
you're just like, land theplane! And they've, you know,
gotta tell 'em the story, butrealizing that when you look at
it through a lens of like,culturally, this is how we
communicate, then it reframeswhat the student is trying to
(25:21):
do. They're communicating toyou based on how they've
learned to communicate andthey're including essential
parts of the story. And so howdo you both honor that while
also, you know, certain thingslike brevity and being concise
and things like that thatthey'll have to learn. But also
honoring that and making surethat there's space for that in
your classroom. Even me, I'mthinking about this where I had
(25:42):
students record this video andit was one minute to
two-and-a-half minutesexplaining three concepts. And
I had students coming up to meafterwards saying , Mr. Cross ,
I need to record two videosbecause two-and-a-half minutes
is not long enough. And I waslike, how? I even extended it.
But I'm realizing and listeningto you and going, they're
(26:02):
probably not just getting tothe point. They're probably
including more context intothis because that's how they
story tell and that wasactually part of the lesson. So
now I need to go back andextend their time that I've
given them for thatproject. I wanna come back to
kind of , since we're on thistopic about why this is also an
(26:22):
equity issue. Mm-hmm .
. So we weretalking about language, you
touched on this a bit, and wewere talking about integrating
into science, but can we go alittle bit further into how
this integrated approach maybecan benefit English language
learners in particular? Andmaybe anything else that's
related to equity that comes tomind.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (26:40):
So there's a couple of layers of
the equity issue. The mosttangible and clear is student
access. If we wait untilstudents develop English
proficiency to allow themaccess to quality science
learning, we lose a tremendousnumber of students that could
(27:05):
not only could they benefitfrom science, we could benefit
from their entering thisscience conversation. And I was
at a university and I was in acollege of natural sciences and
we were dedicated to increasingthe diversity of the faculty.
And it was a struggle 'causethe number of Ph.D. science ed
(27:31):
or biology or chemistryacademics that come from
marginalized populations isvery, very small. And it's not
by accident. You know, thenumber of students that make it
into the next level, that makeit into college prep courses,
that make it into STEM majors,that complete STEM majors and
(27:54):
go on to either careers oradvanced degrees narrows at
every possible step. And so theequity issue is really one of
access. And as basic as thatis, it's the easiest to solve.
So that's the first layer ofequity. But the second issue
(28:16):
around equity is how we engagethese students once they're in
this space. Do we make itpossible for them to see
themselves as a scientist or anengineer? Are we creating
learning experiences that notonly allow them to use all the
(28:38):
sense-making resources thatthey have, but do we make them
feel like they're valuable anduseful in that space? Because
there's a lot of people thatwill say, I could be successful
as a scientist, but I'm notwilling to give up who I am in
order to do that. And that's areal thing. There's a lot of
(29:01):
research about like, why arethey leaving? Like why, you
know, is it because they're notable? Is it because they don't
see themselves as beingcapable? And now I think we're
looking at this as a differentissue. It's not that students
don't see themselves as capableand not that they're not
achieving. They see the costthat it will take to enter
(29:21):
these fields and essentiallynot be able to be their full
selves. So that's the secondequity issue. And in both cases
we lose. As a society, we lose.
We lose access to the fullrange of human resources that
we have, and we lose access totheir unique perspectives that
(29:47):
they would bring to realproblems facing us. It's like
all hands-on deck. We need tostop making it too difficult to
participate in the conversationand we need to be more
inclusive about how we invitethese other perspectives and
how we respect and utilizetheir ways of sense-making.
(30:10):
That may not be Western scienceways that we have in our books
now, but hopefully thosescience materials are gonna
change and we're gonna start tosee other ways of sense-making
and other people involved inthe stories that we tell around
science concepts.
Eric Cross (30:29):
And just to be clear, this practice in
integration, while it lifts upequity for marginalized or
underrepresented groups orstudents who are emerging
bilinguals or students whotypically we don't see
representation of, thisapproach also benefits native
speakers as well. Correct?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (30:47):
Yeah.
And there's actually a group ofnative speakers that come from
text poor homes. It's typicalin underserved communities.
Poor people living in povertythat may be native English
speakers. They may not bemarginalized populations. But
(31:08):
they don't have access to liketext. And so that's another
group altogether that needslinguistic support. And then
once you have all voices in theroom contributing, everybody
benefits because now theconversation, the building
understanding conversationwe're having or the
sense-making conversation thatwe're having has everybody
(31:30):
involved. And we all benefitfrom that.
Eric Cross (31:33):
And we see, I think one of the benefits about a
country like the U. S., is wehave such a heterogeneous group
of people. And when we'removing in the same direction,
we're all coming to the sameproblem, but from different
perspectives and we're able tocome up with more innovative
and novel solutions to them.
And that's kind of what I'mhearing is like as we generate
(31:56):
scientists that are all comingfrom different backgrounds,
we're gonna be able to solvefuture problems, current
problems a lot more effectivelybecause nobody has a monopoly
on perspective. Nobody has amonopoly on knowledge or the
fastest way to do something orthe best way to do something.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (32:11):
Right.
Right. And traditionally wereally have privileged
particular experiences,particular ways of sense-making
particular linguisticregisters. And if we could just
kind of put that privilegedways aside and open up space
for everybody to feel like theyhave a voice, I think the next
(32:35):
generation could change theworld. I think they could solve
some real problems. I'm trulyhopeful that they would see
themselves not just as capable,but as necessary in these
pursuits.
Eric Cross (32:50):
So what does it actually look like today to do
this work in instruction well?
So to integrate the science, tointegrate literacy, to take the
benefits of the things thatwe've been talking about. What
are some practical things thateducators could do to get
started, whether it's in early,you know, K5 or middle school
(33:12):
or even high school.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (33:13):
So I will say , I'm gonna kind of
separate 'cause in theelementary space, students are
primarily developing literacyin multiple languages. The
language of the classroom,typically English, home
language , languages, they maybe multilingual. In the
(33:33):
secondary setting wherestudents tend to have developed
social language in somelanguage, it's a little
different. So I'm gonna kind ofseparate those two. So for
elementary spaces whereteachers tend to teach multiple
things, I recommend that youget a partner. Don't do this
(33:54):
work alone. You cannot do thiswork alone. I mean you can, but
it's very frustrating and notnearly as much fun. So you
really wanna take a look atwhat is the science that kids
are going to be engaged in.
Because when we look at sciencefirst and build language
development around it, theexperience tends to be more
(34:15):
authentic and organic. And whatwe used to do is we used to,
like when we were talking aboutthe science, we'd monitor the
language we were using and thenuse that to say these are the
registers. This is the languagethat we use when we were
thinking about this. So ifstudents are gonna use this,
these are the scaffolds they'regonna need. 'Cause to do it,
(34:37):
well, to do it efficiently, thescaffolds need to be specific
to the science learning. So ifwe're doing cause and effect,
those are specific linguisticscaffolds that are different
than if, say we're doing modeland systems and systems models,
those are a whole other slew ofscaffolds. And so you wanna be
(35:01):
really tending to, what is thescience being discussed and
what is the language that kidsare going to use and build
scaffolds around it. And thenyou also wanna think about what
is the social language? Whatare the experience that kids
will have either in words orpictures that I can leverage in
this space. And then you wannado that for the arc of the unit
(35:26):
and slowly increasesophistication around those
linguistic supports, as well asthe science learning. But if
kids have social language andthey're now in, there's a group
we call long-term Englishlearners who have not been
reclassified way beyond whatthe typical reclassification
(35:48):
is. And that actually isimportant to think about
because if you think about thekinder group, the group of
kindergartners that enter aschool when they're five or
six, those kids are going to gofrom grade to grade to grade.
And as students developproficiency, will get
reclassified and they move outof this group that we're still
(36:09):
calling English learners. So bythe time you get to like
seventh, eighth, ninth grade,if they're still students in
that category, they have verydifferent needs on average than
the group we started with.
Often when we talk aboutsecondary or these long-term
English learners, we canleverage social language a lot
more, but have to build thescaffolds more carefully
(36:32):
around, for lack of a betterword, the more academic content
transferring that those socialnonverbal language into more
sophisticated forms. I think inany setting, you wanna utilize
your resources. If I'm in asecondary space and I have a
(36:53):
language development teacherand I'm not talking to her or
him or they, that's a problem.
You need to go talk to theother people that have these
same kids and talk to themabout, how are you engaging in
language, what are you doing?
Because you know, you couldactually have a lesson , maybe
this is a lesson about energyand you're using a model and
(37:16):
the kids are creating aninitial model. And over in ELD
land, they're doing somelinguistic supports. They're
working on some forms andfunctions of language. You
could talk about the catapult,you could talk about the solar
heater. You could use thecontext of the science
(37:39):
conversation, which has a wholebunch of tangible experiences.
You know, there's the solarheater in front of you. I don't
need to keep it all in my head'cause it's in front of me and
we can point to things and talkabout things by manipulating
the materials. And then I cantake all of that and my ELD
partner can use that as contextwhen available. But it takes
(38:03):
collaboration, but it'scollaboration well spent . And
it's more challenging in theinitial phases of the
collaboration. Once you kind ofthe get into the groove, it
becomes a lot easier.
Eric Cross (38:16):
The meta of this, as we talk about integrating
science and literacy is, andthis is great advice, but it's
basically integrate yourscience teachers with your
English teachers and co-planand do this work together. It's
a force multiplier. One, you'reboth, you're getting two
specialists together. It also,I'm just listening to just the
(38:37):
parallels. It also resembleswhat you actually do in the
STEM fields of collaborationworking together to
problem-solve, and you'remodeling for your students what
you want to happen. And if Iwas an administrator listening
to this, someone who hadcontrol, like master schedules
and things like that, therealso needs to be space created
for these teachers to talk toeach other and plan and do all
(38:58):
these other things to kind ofmaybe come up with like
interdisciplinary units or evenjust meet and begin the
conversation. It just seemslike such great advice.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (39:07):
Yeah.
We're professionals. We haveacademic degrees and
credentials and experience inthe classroom and yet more
often than not, we leave it tothe students in the seats to
make the connections between myclass and the class they go to
next. And that's not fair. Weneed to be talking to each
(39:29):
other. So if we're talkingabout argumentation,
argumentation in science andargumentation in ELA and
argumentation in math--we'renot even talking about the same
thing. I mean, cognitivelywe're talking about taking some
evidence and creating a claimand supporting it, but what we
mean by evidence is verydifferent in the different
disciplines. What counts asmore convincing evidence
(39:53):
changes. And yet we assume thatbecause we say evidence in one
class, the kids know what we'retalking about. And the kids are
sitting there going, which oneis this? Which evidence are you
talking about? Because lastperiod it was something else.
And so I think we also need toreally consider who's in the
best position to clarify theconnections and the integration
(40:17):
because we leave it to kidsmore often than not right now.
Eric Cross (40:19):
I agree. Just having those conversations and
defining your terms andagreeing on them just to make
it easier for students. 'Causeyou're right, they are left to
make those connections orbridge the gaps. And when you
have an education system formany schools, I think most of
us, it's still pretty siloed.
You're still kind of like,especially when you're in
secondary, it's we're doingthis or even elementary,
(40:41):
different times of the day youdo different subjects, versus
the way that we experience lifeitself or even our professions.
We're actually integratingscience and math and reading
and writing throughout the day,and ebbs and flows going back
and forth. And without makingthose explicit connections,
we're leaving a lot of thingsto chance, hoping that the
learning's there in such avaluable moment. Before we go,
(41:03):
I'm wondering if you have aparting message for listeners
about the topic of integratingscience and literacy. You've
already said so many amazingthings, but you have the
platform speaking to educatorsand folks out there. What would
you wanna say to them?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (41:18):
This is not an easy endeavor. The
system that we operate in doesnot make this effort easy, but
it is worth it. It is worth itto the kids in our classrooms.
It is worth it to the buildingof a scientific community and a
(41:40):
scientifically literatepopulace. It's important to
solving problems in the future.
It's important to have kidsfeel like regardless of how
they say things, that theybelong in a classroom. If we
can relax the sort oflinguistic demands on kids and
(42:00):
let them enter science learningin a way that allows them to
use all their resources andthey're curious, they can
really leverage both areas in away that they don't do
individually. It's really hardto think about what it is I'm
trying to say if I'm worriedabout how I have to say it. And
(42:23):
so we really need to thinkabout, when are those times
that we're gonna let kids justtell us what it is that they're
excited about and when is itthat we're going to help them
craft a more formalizedlanguage around those ideas.
Right now we do a really goodjob at that second half. We
(42:43):
need to do better at the first.
Eric Cross (42:46):
Susan, thank you so much for joining us today and
for sharing your expertise andyour wisdom and your passion
for serving the students andfor bringing everybody to the
table through language andthrough science. We really
appreciate it and the listenerswill too.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (43:03):
Thank you so much. This is my
favorite topic.
Eric Cross (43:06):
Thanks so much for listening to my conversation
with Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep,senior science educator and
staff advocate at BSCS ScienceLearning. And please remember
to subscribe to ScienceConnections so that you don't
miss any of the episodes inthis exciting third season. And
while you're there, we'd reallyappreciate it if you can leave
us a review. It'll help morelisteners find the show. Next
(43:28):
time on the show, we're goingto continue exploring the how
and why of integrating scienceand literacy instruction.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
When we interview scientists, they spend a lot of
their time reading the work ofother scientists and writing
their findings, writing grantproposals, presenting at
conferences. A huge part of thework of a scientist is not just
at a bench conductingexperiments, but even if you're
conducting experiments, you'reusing your literacy processes
to think about what you'reseeing in your experiment.
Eric Cross (43:57):
That's next time on Science Connections. Thanks so
much for listening.
We started to see this trend of
students communicating more inEnglish because they were
excited about the science thatthey had been learning.
Eric Cross (00:10):
Welcome to Science Connections. I'm your host Eric
Cross. In this third season,we're exploring the theme of
science as the underdog. Andlast time around, we delved
into the data showing thatcompared to other subjects,
science is often put on theback burner. Now it's time to
explore why it's so importantto change that and how to do it
(00:31):
effectively. So over the courseof these coming episodes, we're
gonna make the case for scienceand equip you with data and
strategies for advancingscience in your own home,
school, or community. To kickthings off, we're going to
spend a few episodes going indepth on the integration of
science and Englishinstruction. We know we need to
(00:51):
dramatically improve literacyrates in this country, and as
we'll show in the comingepisodes, science can be a key
ally in that goal. We'll alsoshow how language development
and literacy instruction cansupport science. Yes, it can be
a win-win, folks. To start out,I'm joined by someone who has
been studying science andlanguage development for more
(01:11):
than a decade. Dr. Susan GomezZwiep is a senior science
educator and staff advocate forBSCS Science Learning. On this
episode, she talks about herown experience as a middle
school science teacher andshare some key insights and
strategies from the research onintegrating science and English
language development. Pleaseenjoy this conversation with
(01:32):
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep. Welcometo the podcast. Thank you for
being here and having thisreally important conversation.
So I'm so glad you can make it,Susan.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (01:43):
Yeah, I'm excited to be here.
Eric Cross (01:44):
We're gonna talk all about language development
and science. But first I washoping that you can just kind
of set the stage and tell thelisteners about yourself and
how you came about to studyingthis specific subject.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (01:57):
Sure. So I am a California native. I
grew up in the San GabrielValley and that's where I
started teaching. I have anundergraduate degree in
integrated biology from UCBerkeley. And I thought I was
gonna go be a field scientist.
And while I was waiting forgrad school applications to run
(02:19):
their course, I took asubstitute job in Montebello to
kind of bide my time. Andbecause I had a science degree,
they asked if I would take apermanent placement, well, a
temporary permanent placement.
And I said sure. And foundmyself teaching seventh and
eighth grade general science toa population that at the time
(02:42):
was about 68% English languagelearners , in a school that you
would consider urban,under-resourced with a
community that was largepercentage immigrants from
Mexico, Central and SouthAmerica. And I never looked
(03:02):
back. I kept that job. I lovedit. I love the middle school
classroom. I love teachingscience to my middle school
students and truly, truly justfound a really good home for my
love of science , but also mylove for talking about science
and helping other peopleunderstand science. So at some
(03:26):
point I was entertained withthe idea of going to graduate
school. So while I was stillteaching, I actually did a
Ph.D. At the University ofSouthern California in the
science education field. Andonce there, realized that I
actually had a uniqueexperience in higher ed, that
(03:47):
experience of teaching withpopulations that are learning
English or have home languagesother than English, was
actually not common in highered circles. And being from that
community was also not common.
And so I pretty quicklyleveraged that experience to
(04:10):
combat what I think isuniversally agreed as an equity
issue that in my school where Itaught, the district had
advocated for ELs to get anextra hour of language
development in order to promotetheir English language
proficiency. And , ourprincipal wisely said, there
(04:31):
are not enough English-onlystudents in this school to do
that without losing all of ourscience teachers because
there's not enough kids left toactually fill a day, a
teacher's day. And she said,these kids learn more language
in their science courses thanthey do anywhere else, so I
don't wanna remove that. Butthe reality is, is that at that
(04:54):
time--this was in the latenineties, early two
thousands--if you were notproficient in English, you went
to more time with languagedevelopment. And that makes a
lot of sense in some ways. Butwhen you look at the big
picture, you realize, well,that means those kids aren't
going to science and they'renot having opportunities to
(05:16):
have consistent quality sciencelearning opportunities simply
because they spoke a languageother than English at home. And
so that's really how I fellinto this work.
Eric Cross (05:28):
And that has a downstream effect. I mean, once
you start pulling students froma course, that automatically
sets the trajectory for lateroutcomes, which we ultimately
see in STEM fields where we, wedon't see the population of our
students represented in theSTEM fields. Now, I know this
goes back a few years, but youwere doing research for your
Ph.D. What did you start tofollow?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (05:50):
Yeah, so I eventually took a position at
Cal State Long Beach, which wasnot by chance, it's a
Hispanic-serving institution,and that's where I wanted to do
my academic work. And once Iwas there, sought funding with
a district to supportelementary science learning. So
(06:14):
it had a teacher professionallearning component that was
both summer and in-class, sortof like PD in the classroom
component. And the districtcame back and said, the only
way you are gonna get time toeven talk about science in
elementary school is if it'sattached to language
development. And so that's whatwe did. It was a three-year
(06:36):
grant, there was a sister grantthat followed--so all told, it
was about a five-year programwhere we basically said, what
if instead of following thetraditional ELD, English
Language Developmentcurriculum, we modified and put
science as the context forlanguage development in the K2
(07:00):
bands. Teachers at the districttraditionally had not been
excited about their languagedevelopment curriculum until we
said, we're gonna take that andwe're gonna do some science
instead. And then they werelike, no, no , no! We love our
ELD curriculum. But they hungin there with us. The project
was successful enough that itactually became a K4 and then a
(07:22):
K5 project. The district endedup having to put in a ton of
money into this because thegrant only paid for so much.
But their schools actuallywanted "in" 'cause what they
heard is when we put science asa context for language
development, kids were talkingmore. Kids were speaking in
English more. Kids were writingmore. Kids were engaged. And
(07:45):
the ultimate, kids weredeveloping English quickly and
in a community where you couldactually operate within the
community without speakingEnglish. These are
Spanish-speaking communitiesand the schools operated in
Spanish outside the classroom.
So if you walked into theschool's office, the principal
(08:08):
secretary, the person whomanned the door, spoke Spanish.
The field supervisors that thelunch supervisors spoke
Spanish.
Eric Cross (08:17):
The non-teaching staff that are supporting the
rest of the students outside ofthe classroom.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (08:23):
Yeah.
Everybody spoke Spanish andthey spoke Spanish at school.
And even the principals cameback and said, from being in
this project, that the kidswere coming into the office and
had transitioned tocommunicating in English,
especially when they wanted totalk about science, and they
really wanted to talk aboutscience 'cause they were super
(08:43):
excited about the stuff thatthey were learning. So we
started to see this trend ofstudents communicating more in
English because they wereexcited about the science that
they had been learning. Andyeah, that sold itself and we
had schools jumping in.
Eric Cross (09:01):
So you started off in a situation where you were
told that you had to, if youwanna get science and you had
to merge it into English,basically. And is it fair to
say that that's because oftesting requirements that
schools have on them? Like thisis what gets analyzed or what
was the purpose behind that?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (09:15):
It was district policy and it was site
policy and those policies wereput into place for very good
intentions. Students don't getreclassified into English only,
and reclassification is how youtraditionally got access to all
this other programming,electives, AP college prep, all
(09:38):
those other things. And thebest way to get them
reclassified was to learnEnglish, and to learn it sooner
rather than later. So it was inan attempt to get kids
reclassified from Englishlearner to English proficient.
Eric Cross (09:55):
And then during that process it was able to be
expanded to K4. And then withthese open-minded teachers, you
gave them the content, theyused science as the context for
learning. And then yourstudents who were mostly
emerging bilinguals andmultilingual students, you
found that they startedspeaking English more
frequently. What did you makeof that result? Like what did
(10:17):
you come to after seeing allthat happen?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (10:20):
So I do wanna say that there's a couple
of reasons why we think thisworks so well. But I have to
really acknowledge that therewere linguistics, second
language acquisition expertsthat were part of this team.
And we wouldn't have been ableto make any of this work if it
was purely science educatorsleading this cause. There's a
(10:40):
lot we didn't understand aboutlanguage development, and they
really helped us. But one ofthe things that we think is
unique about science, there's afew really important
aspects--one is that we allhave experiences in the natural
world, since we can processoutside information, right? We
(11:01):
all have observations, thingswe've observed with our eyes,
we've heard, we've felt, andall of those experiences build
some pretty good science ideasbefore we enter formal
schooling. You know, kidsalready have ideas about this.
We don't have to give themlanguage for it. They already
(11:23):
have these concepts andexperiences. The other thing is
that we are inherentlyinterested in the natural world
we occupy. And so we'recurious, science is often
considered cool, there arescience channels and science
fiction movies and sciencefiction books and
(11:45):
magazines--and this is just ...
it's just cool. And that tendedto be the trigger, you know ,
when we gave kids somethinginteresting to observe. A
Ziploc bag with water that weadded an Alka-Seltzer to, and
strange things starts happeningin the baggie. That curiosity,
(12:05):
that excitement allowed kids toleap over any concerns they had
about the language they weresupposed to use in the
classroom. One of the mostdifficult things about learning
a language is using a languagethat is imperfect. So saying
(12:27):
things and communicating in alanguage that you are not a
hundred percent confidentabout, that you're not sure
you're using the right words orthe right tenses. But when kids
were excited about this thingin a Ziploc bag, they didn't
care. They communicated howeverthey could, sometimes in their
primary language or their homelanguage, sometimes in
(12:48):
imperfect English, but by andlarge they just communicated.
They did it in oral language,like listening and speaking,
but they also did it inwriting. And that was easy.
Like we didn't have to doanything other than provide
interesting scienceexperiences. And that's, that's
pretty common.
Eric Cross (13:06):
Yeah. I feel like, to co-sign on the science is
cool, it is objectively, if amatter of fact, even just
looking at the Oscars, like wehave multiverse, you know, we
have sci-fi you know, thecostume designer of Wakanda
Forever. We have all of thesedifferent movies that are all
founded in some kind of thesescientific principles. And so
the idea that science is cooland organic, naturally engaging
is something I think we, we allcan connect to and it resonates
(13:28):
with all of us. So I feel likeis sort of your origin story
too.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (13:33):
That's the origin story.
Eric Cross (13:34):
That's the origin story right there, to continue
with this like movie theme. Nowif we fast forward to today,
based on all the research thatyou've seen since then, and
your experience, why would youadvocate merging English
language development andscience?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (13:49):
Well, for one, the research that we
conducted actually providedsome really nice evidence that
showed, even though we hadessentially stole minutes from
language development time andinserted science. And on state
mandated tests and on theirstudents' language proficiency
(14:13):
measures, the kids in theprogram with the blended, did
significantly better thanstudents who were getting ELD
instruction alone. TraditionalELD instruction. And that kind
of blew our mind. We would'vebeen happy if they had done
just fine. Like we could putscience into a student's day
and do no harm. They could gettheir language development;
(14:35):
they could get science. But infact, what we found was that
they did better. That theyactually gained English more
quickly and it showed up inmultiple measures, including
the state English language artsassessment, which again, kind
of blew our mind.
Eric Cross (14:55):
So just to be clear about the study that you did,
you looked at two groups andone was the blended science and
English language development,and then the other one was a
control group. And the blendedgroup ended up showing more
improvement.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (15:09):
Yes. So there's quite a bit of research
now, this research was done inthe early two thousands, and
the research has built aroundit to really suggest that this
does seem to be a moreefficient way to promote
language development whilestill maintaining students'
(15:30):
access to a core content area.
But in recent years, thestandards have shifted and that
has been just a remarkable,wonderful change. And both
standards have shifted. So whenwe did our research, we did it
under the old CaliforniaScience standards that were
(15:52):
fairly heavy in technicalterms. They were heavy in
science concepts rather thankids doing things. And they
were a much narrower focus.
Eric Cross (16:04):
And these are the standards that most of us grew
up on, right? Those of us whoare pretty much teachers in the
classroom today pretty muchgrew up on what you're talking
about. Is that fair to say?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (16:12):
That's fair to say, yes. So the new
standards that we have now, theCalifornia NGSS Standards
emphasize not just ideas, butthey also emphasize students
doing things in science. And wedidn't have to build-in
language portions to thestandards. They now exist. The
NGSS is a very, very richlinguistic opportunity for
(16:37):
students. And at the same time,the way we've thought about
language development has alsoshifted. We used to talk about
language and science... we usedto think about science as a lot
of words, and you had to knowthe words, you had to have this
technical language. And we'vesort of shifted that to really
(16:58):
thinking about, language is nolonger a prerequisite for
science learning. Language isnow developed through the
science learning or the contentlearning experiences.
Eric Cross (17:11):
So now there's more chances to integrate English
into science. Have you seensuccess stories or have you
seen examples of this? Maybejust anecdotes of teachers kind
of doing this since you've beendoing this research and kind of
watching. If so, would you mindsharing one or two?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (17:30):
Yeah.
And I will just give a nod toDr. Dr. Okie Lee who's now at
NYU who has really led sort ofthis reconception of language
and science. And one of theways she talks about it is this
notion that I enter thislearning experience, I enter
(17:51):
this observation of thisphenomena with fairly naive,
simple scientific ideas. And mylanguage about it is equally
simple. But as I develop moreand more ideas, as my
understanding of thephenomenon, what I figured out
becomes more sophisticated, Ineed more sophisticated
(18:14):
language. And so what we'restarting to see are these
spaces where teachers arebuilding science ideas and
science and understanding alongwith the language. And in order
to do that, you really need toknow what's the storyline arc
of my science lesson? What dothey figure out in lesson one?
What do they figure out inlesson two? What do they figure
(18:35):
out in lesson three? How arethe science ideas building over
time? So that I can then lookat the language that they're
using and what languagesupports do I need in order to
allow students to not onlyengage and figure things out,
but communicate their ideasabout it. And so we're seeing
teachers blow up what we calllanguage, what we call text.
(19:00):
It's not just words. It's notjust sentences written on a
paper, but it's models, it'spictorial representations, it's
gestures, it's this wide range.
We pretty much said, let's blowlanguage up. Let's like use all
of the linguistic registersthat we have in order to make
(19:21):
meaning of what we're seeing itin together in this classroom.
So that's one thing that we'restarting to see. The other
thing is that teachers arereally allowing students
opportunities to use what wecall social language ,
non-standard dialects. Thelanguage I use at home and with
(19:43):
my friends. Because earlier Ihad said, we have all these
experiences and thoseexperiences in the world are
tied up in my social register.
They're tied up in my homelanguage 'cause that's where I
experience them. And to letstudents have access to using
(20:04):
that language in the classroom,especially initially in a unit,
means we're giving 'em accessto those experiences that they
have that are related to thephenomena under study. So I
totally understand the benefitof promoting academic language
and promoting language framesand forms that we use in more
(20:27):
academic settings. But it's asticky wicket. You have to be
careful how you tell studentsabout the way you want them to
communicate. Because when wetell them that language that
you use at home with yourfriends and family is not
welcome here, we can send amessage that they're not
(20:48):
welcome here. And that thoseexperiences that they have
outside of classroom about howthings fall, the way sunlight
heats up different surfaces,where you'll find plants and
what plants you will find basedon conditions. All of those
experiences, we're sending amessage that those are not
welcome in the classroom. Andso this expansion of language,
(21:13):
including non-standard dialectsand even home language, is
really important for lettingstudents bring their whole
selves into the classroom.
Eric Cross (21:23):
I love what you just said. It legitimizes the
funds of knowledge, thelanguage, the cultures that our
students are bringing to thetable. I remember when I first
learned the word code-switchingin college and you know, I'm
biracial, I grew up in my homecommunity and my school
community were two differentcommunities and I ethnically,
(21:43):
culturally belonged to both.
And I had to code-switch inorder to kind of survive and be
accepted into differentcommunities. And not until I
was in college did I actuallyunderstand what I was doing.
Now there were all kinds ofteasing and jokes that went on
to how I would talk if Icode-switched improperly. And
in my classroom, I would seestudents who would explain
(22:04):
concepts in a way that wasmaybe like a casual register.
They just were explaining itthe best way they could. And
the way they were speaking waskind of denigrated or it was
seen as negative even thoughthey were communicating their
concept. And when I became amiddle school teacher, one of
my, I don't know, it's likesometimes when you teach, you
get to , you change how youwere taught or what you
(22:26):
experience and legitimizing mystudents' language, and they
would tell these beautifulstories and in their most
common like, casual language,but they're explaining the
concept brilliantly. And it wasphenomenal to see this barrier
be removed of saying, you haveto talk like this in order to
(22:47):
be a scientist or you have tosay these right words. And, and
that's what I feel like I'mhearing that in how you're
describing kind of how sciencehas been done and what language
can do to certain groups ofstudents.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (22:58):
Yeah, very much so. And you know,
back to the origin story, youknow, I grew up in a
multi-generational household.
My mom, my aunt, mygrandmother, Spanish was their
first language, but they lostit because my mom was raised in
Riverside and she, you know,went to school in the, the
(23:20):
fifties and sixties and backthen you weren't allowed to
speak Spanish at school. And sothey lost the language.
Eric Cross (23:27):
They weren't allowed to speak it at all.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (23:29):
At all.
I didn't directly observe it,but that is the story that my
family tells, that there was noEnglish spoken anywhere on
school grounds. And that was adifferent issue. Right? That
was very much for peopleunfamiliar with some of the
history in Southern California.
Their segregated schools ,severe racism , linguistic
(23:50):
racism, racial racism againstMexicans was a real thing. But
yet I grew up in this householdwhere the sort of way of
speaking, like I think manyMexican households, the context
is everything. So you can't getto the facts until you've told
(24:11):
the whole context of everythinghappening around it. So we used
to joke that we couldn't sendmy grandmother to the doctor by
herself 'cause he had 15minutes, and she was gonna take
20 just to tell him how she gotthere before she got to why she
was there. But this telling ofthe context, the telling of the
story around the idea is partof the linguistic, this sort of
(24:34):
linguistic way of my household.
When I got to school, I had tolearn to drop it because
teachers found me off topic.
You know , I still have to becareful how I express things
and sometimes I'm not a faststoryteller
monitor that for myself. So Ican only imagine what it's like
(24:56):
to be a kid in a classroom.
Eric Cross (24:59):
Right. And there are so many constraints in the
school day, you know,especially if you're
multi-subject and you'reelementary and you're teaching
multiple subjects and someone'strying to tell a story and
you're just like, land theplane! And they've, you know,
gotta tell 'em the story, butrealizing that when you look at
it through a lens of like,culturally, this is how we
communicate, then it reframeswhat the student is trying to
(25:21):
do. They're communicating toyou based on how they've
learned to communicate andthey're including essential
parts of the story. And so howdo you both honor that while
also, you know, certain thingslike brevity and being concise
and things like that thatthey'll have to learn. But also
honoring that and making surethat there's space for that in
your classroom. Even me, I'mthinking about this where I had
(25:42):
students record this video andit was one minute to
two-and-a-half minutesexplaining three concepts. And
I had students coming up to meafterwards saying , Mr. Cross ,
I need to record two videosbecause two-and-a-half minutes
is not long enough. And I waslike, how? I even extended it.
But I'm realizing and listeningto you and going, they're
(26:02):
probably not just getting tothe point. They're probably
including more context intothis because that's how they
story tell and that wasactually part of the lesson. So
now I need to go back andextend their time that I've
given them for
kind of , since we're on thistopic about why this is also an
(26:22):
equity issue. Mm-hmm .
touched on this a bit, and wewere talking about integrating
into science, but can we go alittle bit further into how
this integrated approach maybecan benefit English language
learners in particular? Andmaybe anything else that's
related to equity that comes tomind.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (26:40):
So there's a couple of layers of
the equity issue. The mosttangible and clear is student
access. If we wait untilstudents develop English
proficiency to allow themaccess to quality science
learning, we lose a tremendousnumber of students that could
(27:05):
not only could they benefitfrom science, we could benefit
from their entering thisscience conversation. And I was
at a university and I was in acollege of natural sciences and
we were dedicated to increasingthe diversity of the faculty.
And it was a struggle 'causethe number of Ph.D. science ed
(27:31):
or biology or chemistryacademics that come from
marginalized populations isvery, very small. And it's not
by accident. You know, thenumber of students that make it
into the next level, that makeit into college prep courses,
that make it into STEM majors,that complete STEM majors and
(27:54):
go on to either careers oradvanced degrees narrows at
every possible step. And so theequity issue is really one of
access. And as basic as thatis, it's the easiest to solve.
So that's the first layer ofequity. But the second issue
(28:16):
around equity is how we engagethese students once they're in
this space. Do we make itpossible for them to see
themselves as a scientist or anengineer? Are we creating
learning experiences that notonly allow them to use all the
(28:38):
sense-making resources thatthey have, but do we make them
feel like they're valuable anduseful in that space? Because
there's a lot of people thatwill say, I could be successful
as a scientist, but I'm notwilling to give up who I am in
order to do that. And that's areal thing. There's a lot of
(29:01):
research about like, why arethey leaving? Like why, you
know, is it because they're notable? Is it because they don't
see themselves as beingcapable? And now I think we're
looking at this as a differentissue. It's not that students
don't see themselves as capableand not that they're not
achieving. They see the costthat it will take to enter
(29:21):
these fields and essentiallynot be able to be their full
selves. So that's the secondequity issue. And in both cases
we lose. As a society, we lose.
We lose access to the fullrange of human resources that
we have, and we lose access totheir unique perspectives that
(29:47):
they would bring to realproblems facing us. It's like
all hands-on deck. We need tostop making it too difficult to
participate in the conversationand we need to be more
inclusive about how we invitethese other perspectives and
how we respect and utilizetheir ways of sense-making.
(30:10):
That may not be Western scienceways that we have in our books
now, but hopefully thosescience materials are gonna
change and we're gonna start tosee other ways of sense-making
and other people involved inthe stories that we tell around
science concepts.
Eric Cross (30:29):
And just to be clear, this practice in
integration, while it lifts upequity for marginalized or
underrepresented groups orstudents who are emerging
bilinguals or students whotypically we don't see
representation of, thisapproach also benefits native
speakers as well. Correct?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (30:47):
Yeah.
And there's actually a group ofnative speakers that come from
text poor homes. It's typicalin underserved communities.
Poor people living in povertythat may be native English
speakers. They may not bemarginalized populations. But
(31:08):
they don't have access to liketext. And so that's another
group altogether that needslinguistic support. And then
once you have all voices in theroom contributing, everybody
benefits because now theconversation, the building
understanding conversationwe're having or the
sense-making conversation thatwe're having has everybody
(31:30):
involved. And we all benefitfrom that.
Eric Cross (31:33):
And we see, I think one of the benefits about a
country like the U. S., is wehave such a heterogeneous group
of people. And when we'removing in the same direction,
we're all coming to the sameproblem, but from different
perspectives and we're able tocome up with more innovative
and novel solutions to them.
And that's kind of what I'mhearing is like as we generate
(31:56):
scientists that are all comingfrom different backgrounds,
we're gonna be able to solvefuture problems, current
problems a lot more effectivelybecause nobody has a monopoly
on perspective. Nobody has amonopoly on knowledge or the
fastest way to do something orthe best way to do something.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (32:11):
Right.
Right. And traditionally wereally have privileged
particular experiences,particular ways of sense-making
particular linguisticregisters. And if we could just
kind of put that privilegedways aside and open up space
for everybody to feel like theyhave a voice, I think the next
(32:35):
generation could change theworld. I think they could solve
some real problems. I'm trulyhopeful that they would see
themselves not just as capable,but as necessary in these
pursuits.
Eric Cross (32:50):
So what does it actually look like today to do
this work in instruction well?
So to integrate the science, tointegrate literacy, to take the
benefits of the things thatwe've been talking about. What
are some practical things thateducators could do to get
started, whether it's in early,you know, K5 or middle school
(33:12):
or even high school.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (33:13):
So I will say , I'm gonna kind of
separate 'cause in theelementary space, students are
primarily developing literacyin multiple languages. The
language of the classroom,typically English, home
language , languages, they maybe multilingual. In the
(33:33):
secondary setting wherestudents tend to have developed
social language in somelanguage, it's a little
different. So I'm gonna kind ofseparate those two. So for
elementary spaces whereteachers tend to teach multiple
things, I recommend that youget a partner. Don't do this
(33:54):
work alone. You cannot do thiswork alone. I mean you can, but
it's very frustrating and notnearly as much fun. So you
really wanna take a look atwhat is the science that kids
are going to be engaged in.
Because when we look at sciencefirst and build language
development around it, theexperience tends to be more
(34:15):
authentic and organic. And whatwe used to do is we used to,
like when we were talking aboutthe science, we'd monitor the
language we were using and thenuse that to say these are the
registers. This is the languagethat we use when we were
thinking about this. So ifstudents are gonna use this,
these are the scaffolds they'regonna need. 'Cause to do it,
(34:37):
well, to do it efficiently, thescaffolds need to be specific
to the science learning. So ifwe're doing cause and effect,
those are specific linguisticscaffolds that are different
than if, say we're doing modeland systems and systems models,
those are a whole other slew ofscaffolds. And so you wanna be
(35:01):
really tending to, what is thescience being discussed and
what is the language that kidsare going to use and build
scaffolds around it. And thenyou also wanna think about what
is the social language? Whatare the experience that kids
will have either in words orpictures that I can leverage in
this space. And then you wannado that for the arc of the unit
(35:26):
and slowly increasesophistication around those
linguistic supports, as well asthe science learning. But if
kids have social language andthey're now in, there's a group
we call long-term Englishlearners who have not been
reclassified way beyond whatthe typical reclassification
(35:48):
is. And that actually isimportant to think about
because if you think about thekinder group, the group of
kindergartners that enter aschool when they're five or
six, those kids are going to gofrom grade to grade to grade.
And as students developproficiency, will get
reclassified and they move outof this group that we're still
(36:09):
calling English learners. So bythe time you get to like
seventh, eighth, ninth grade,if they're still students in
that category, they have verydifferent needs on average than
the group we started with.
Often when we talk aboutsecondary or these long-term
English learners, we canleverage social language a lot
more, but have to build thescaffolds more carefully
(36:32):
around, for lack of a betterword, the more academic content
transferring that those socialnonverbal language into more
sophisticated forms. I think inany setting, you wanna utilize
your resources. If I'm in asecondary space and I have a
(36:53):
language development teacherand I'm not talking to her or
him or they, that's a problem.
You need to go talk to theother people that have these
same kids and talk to themabout, how are you engaging in
language, what are you doing?
Because you know, you couldactually have a lesson , maybe
this is a lesson about energyand you're using a model and
(37:16):
the kids are creating aninitial model. And over in ELD
land, they're doing somelinguistic supports. They're
working on some forms andfunctions of language. You
could talk about the catapult,you could talk about the solar
heater. You could use thecontext of the science
(37:39):
conversation, which has a wholebunch of tangible experiences.
You know, there's the solarheater in front of you. I don't
need to keep it all in my head'cause it's in front of me and
we can point to things and talkabout things by manipulating
the materials. And then I cantake all of that and my ELD
partner can use that as contextwhen available. But it takes
(38:03):
collaboration, but it'scollaboration well spent . And
it's more challenging in theinitial phases of the
collaboration. Once you kind ofthe get into the groove, it
becomes a lot easier.
Eric Cross (38:16):
The meta of this, as we talk about integrating
science and literacy is, andthis is great advice, but it's
basically integrate yourscience teachers with your
English teachers and co-planand do this work together. It's
a force multiplier. One, you'reboth, you're getting two
specialists together. It also,I'm just listening to just the
(38:37):
parallels. It also resembleswhat you actually do in the
STEM fields of collaborationworking together to
problem-solve, and you'remodeling for your students what
you want to happen. And if Iwas an administrator listening
to this, someone who hadcontrol, like master schedules
and things like that, therealso needs to be space created
for these teachers to talk toeach other and plan and do all
(38:58):
these other things to kind ofmaybe come up with like
interdisciplinary units or evenjust meet and begin the
conversation. It just seemslike such great advice.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (39:07):
Yeah.
We're professionals. We haveacademic degrees and
credentials and experience inthe classroom and yet more
often than not, we leave it tothe students in the seats to
make the connections between myclass and the class they go to
next. And that's not fair. Weneed to be talking to each
(39:29):
other. So if we're talkingabout argumentation,
argumentation in science andargumentation in ELA and
argumentation in math--we'renot even talking about the same
thing. I mean, cognitivelywe're talking about taking some
evidence and creating a claimand supporting it, but what we
mean by evidence is verydifferent in the different
disciplines. What counts asmore convincing evidence
(39:53):
changes. And yet we assume thatbecause we say evidence in one
class, the kids know what we'retalking about. And the kids are
sitting there going, which oneis this? Which evidence are you
talking about? Because lastperiod it was something else.
And so I think we also need toreally consider who's in the
best position to clarify theconnections and the integration
(40:17):
because we leave it to kidsmore often than not right now.
Eric Cross (40:19):
I agree. Just having those conversations and
defining your terms andagreeing on them just to make
it easier for students. 'Causeyou're right, they are left to
make those connections orbridge the gaps. And when you
have an education system formany schools, I think most of
us, it's still pretty siloed.
You're still kind of like,especially when you're in
secondary, it's we're doingthis or even elementary,
(40:41):
different times of the day youdo different subjects, versus
the way that we experience lifeitself or even our professions.
We're actually integratingscience and math and reading
and writing throughout the day,and ebbs and flows going back
and forth. And without makingthose explicit connections,
we're leaving a lot of thingsto chance, hoping that the
learning's there in such avaluable moment. Before we go,
(41:03):
I'm wondering if you have aparting message for listeners
about the topic of integratingscience and literacy. You've
already said so many amazingthings, but you have the
platform speaking to educatorsand folks out there. What would
you wanna say to them?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (41:18):
This is not an easy endeavor. The
system that we operate in doesnot make this effort easy, but
it is worth it. It is worth itto the kids in our classrooms.
It is worth it to the buildingof a scientific community and a
(41:40):
scientifically literatepopulace. It's important to
solving problems in the future.
It's important to have kidsfeel like regardless of how
they say things, that theybelong in a classroom. If we
can relax the sort oflinguistic demands on kids and
(42:00):
let them enter science learningin a way that allows them to
use all their resources andthey're curious, they can
really leverage both areas in away that they don't do
individually. It's really hardto think about what it is I'm
trying to say if I'm worriedabout how I have to say it. And
(42:23):
so we really need to thinkabout, when are those times
that we're gonna let kids justtell us what it is that they're
excited about and when is itthat we're going to help them
craft a more formalizedlanguage around those ideas.
Right now we do a really goodjob at that second half. We
(42:43):
need to do better at the first.
Eric Cross (42:46):
Susan, thank you so much for joining us today and
for sharing your expertise andyour wisdom and your passion
for serving the students andfor bringing everybody to the
table through language andthrough science. We really
appreciate it and the listenerswill too.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (43:03):
Thank you so much. This is my
favorite topic.
Eric Cross (43:06):
Thanks so much for listening to my conversation
with Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep,senior science educator and
staff advocate at BSCS ScienceLearning. And please remember
to subscribe to ScienceConnections so that you don't
miss any of the episodes inthis exciting third season. And
while you're there, we'd reallyappreciate it if you can leave
us a review. It'll help morelisteners find the show. Next
(43:28):
time on the show, we're goingto continue exploring the how
and why of integrating scienceand literacy instruction.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
When we interview scientists, they spend a lot of
their time reading the work ofother scientists and writing
their findings, writing grantproposals, presenting at
conferences. A huge part of thework of a scientist is not just
at a bench conductingexperiments, but even if you're
conducting experiments, you'reusing your literacy processes
to think about what you'reseeing in your experiment.
Eric Cross (43:57):
That's next time on Science Connections. Thanks so
much for listening.
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