Language Study in Teacher Education: Exploring the Language in Language Arts

This article describes the author’s efforts to engage teachers in language study in a graduate course involving graduate students in Literacy Studies and TESOL programs. In the course “Language, Culture, and Identity: Issues for Teachers and Children,” teachers study language like linguists: looking closely at language in use through in-class experiences and field projects, while informing their interpretations with readings and discussions. The author provides specific examples of whole class, small group, and individual inquiry into language variation and linguistic diversity, language learning, discourse, and language study in the classroom. Teachers describe how language studies challenge and expand their assumptions and beliefs and provide a linguistic knowledge base that informs classroom teaching. Through collaborative language studies involving systematic linguistic inquiry, teachers share expertise – becoming a community of teacher/linguist researchers.