Teaching writing to English language learners: two science teachers’ perspectives and practices

1 Introduction

Writing is essential to both the practice and the learning of science (Hand 2017; Norris and Phillips 2003). However, many students, especially those who are learning English as an additional language at the same time that they are developing content knowledge, struggle with writing, with the consequence that their science literacy development is impeded (Wilcox and Jeffery 2015; Yore et al. 2004). Because of this, science teachers have, over the past two decades, been exhorted to make writing (and literacy) an integral part of their curriculum and instruction (e.g. Saul 2004; Yore et al. 2003). Despite repeated calls for writing/literacy-science integration, it is still not clear whether science teachers have taken the message to heart. Our study investigated two science teachers’ beliefs and practices related to teaching writing to English language learners (ELLs), who now constitute roughly 10 % of the student population in American public schools. The study is important in that it will shed light on ELLs’ current writing experience in the science classroom and provide nuanced insights that can inform future efforts to improve science instruction for ELLs and other students in need of language and literacy support.

2 Theoretical and empirical perspectives

Science is a discipline of principled inquiry into the universe that involves conjecture, rhetoric, and argument, as well as the empirical work of observation and experiment in natural and laboratory settings (Martin and Veel 1998; Wellington and Osborne 2001). It is primarily a form of discourse involving presentation, evaluation, and argumentation about knowledge claims using evidence from both empirical work and existing research literature. Writing/literacy is, thus, central to science. In fact, it has been argued that modern western science would not have been where it is now without writing and reading (Norris and Phillips 2003).

Not only is writing fundamental to the conception of science, it is also central to the social practice of scientists. Scientists engage in reading the work of others and writing to communicate their own views and findings. They write to keep records of observations and experiments to ensure the accuracy and reliability of their scientific activities and results; they write research articles, scientific letters, and monographs to interact with other scientists, sharing opinions, debating over scientific issues, or defending their claims; and they write books and blogs for the public to disseminate scientific knowledge to a wider audience (Yore et al. 2003). It is through these literate practices that scientists display their professional competence and contribute to scientific advancement.

Writing is also seen as a powerful epistemological tool for learning science (Hand 2017). Through writing, students have to wrestle with details, rework their initial understanding, and connect to existing knowledge in new ways, a process that leads to deeper understanding of concepts and ideas. Empirically, writing has been shown to enhance content understanding, promote inquiry and conceptual change, improve retention and learning, and cultivate scientific habits of mind for students (e.g. Cervetti et al. 2012; Chen et al. 2013; Lee et al. 2009; Thomas and Ritchie 2015). More specifically, when students write about their experiments, observations, and readings, they simultaneously reflect on and examine what they have done in greater detail and clarify and organize their thoughts better. Students who can write effectively have a deeper understanding of the content knowledge and are better at engaging in knowledge construction and knowledge sharing. In short, as Yore et al. (2004: 350) explained, “the articulation of understanding into writing provides a rich arena for cognitive activity of the learner that enhances science learning”.

Because of its importance to science and science learning, writing is seen by the science education community as a key component of science literacy (National Research Council 2012). The Next Generation of Science Standards (NGSS) (NGSS Lead State 2013) recently identified 8 core science and engineering practices for K-12 students: asking question and finding problems; developing and using models; planning and carrying out investigations; analyzing and interpreting data; using mathematics and computational thinking; constructing explanation and designing solution; engaging in argument from evidence; and obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information. These practices are “language intensive” (Lee et al. 2013), requiring students to write/read as they develop models, present ideas, offer explanations, and engage in evidence-based reasoning. Some key genres that students are expected to be able to write and read in school science are procedure, explanation, report, biography, experiment, and argument. The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) also emphasize the essential role of writing in disciplinary learning, noting that students are expected to demonstrate increasing sophistication in writing arguments to support knowledge claims and informational texts to examine/convey complex ideas clearly, accurately, and logically. To meet these goals, the CCSS recommend that students “devote significant time and effort to writing, producing numerous pieces over short and long time frames throughout the year”.^[1]

This focus on writing specifically and language/literacy in general is especially critical for ELLs, who face the double change of developing language and literacy at the same time that they are expected to build knowledge about disciplinary content in school learning (August and Shanahan 2006; Oliveira and Weinburgh 2017). Lee et al. (2013) recognized this demand, arguing that an important role of science teachers is to encourage and support language use and literacy development in service of science learning. They described a range of practices and strategies that science teachers can use to support ELLs as they engage in science and engineering practices and develop discipline-specific language/literacy skills. Similarly, Lyon et al. (2018) argued that to successfully engage with both conceptual demands and science/engineering practices called for by NGSS, all students need support in developing greater language and literacy proficiency. They further suggested that ELLs are “particularly in need of support” in content learning not only because of the linguistic challenges they may face but also because they are members of other groups whom schools have not traditionally served well in science instruction. In short, the message from the science education community is that science teachers bear the responsibility for supporting ELLs in science learning, and part of this support involves helping them develop the language and literacy skills needed to successfully engage with science and engineering practices.

Despite the importance of writing to science and science learning, many students, especially ELLs, face challenges in science writing. According to a recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), only about a quarter of students in both 8th and 12th grades performed at or above the Proficiency level in writing (McFarland et al. 2018). The problem is even more acute for English language learners (ELLs), who face the double challenge of learning academic content and developing academic language/literacy at the same time (August and Shanahan 2006). Previous studies (e.g. Avalos et al. 2017; Schleppegrell 1998; Seah et al. 2015) have revealed that ELLs exhibit an array of word-level, clause-level, and discourse-level difficulties when writing in science. These include problems with basic sentence structure, inflectional endings, subject-verb agreement, relative clause for post-modification, lexical choices, verb tense, grammatical person, pronominal reference, logical connection between sentences, textual organization, and discursive flow. These difficulties prevent ELLs from producing high-quality texts that present accurate information, establish appropriate writer-reader relationships, and demonstrate scientific understandings in a logical and organized way.

One possible reason for the struggle is the lack of experience with writing and writing instruction. Lyon et al. (2018: 1290), for example, observed that secondary science teachers, perhaps more so than elementary school teachers, “generally consider themselves to be teachers of content rather than teachers of language (and literacy), despite the fact that scientific argumentation, reasoning, and communication require a multitude of specialized written and oral literacy practices”. Large-scale survey studies have found that content area teachers rarely teach writing. Applebee and Langer (2011) provided a snapshot of writing instruction in K-12 schooling within the United States. They found that students completed many more pages of brief exercises and copying than they did composing extended essays of at least a paragraph long. Specifically, they reported that only a small amount of student work involved extended writing – 19 % for elementary schools, 20.9 % for middle schools, and 17.6 % for high schools. In another national survey of writing instruction in American high schools, Kiuhara et al. (2009) found that writing in content areas such as language arts, social studies, and science was either entirely ignored or focused only on responding to test questions. A more recent online national survey (Drew et al. 2017) focused specifically on secondary science teachers. It found that although science teachers assigned writing to accompany the inquiry process, their most frequent assignments were restricted writing tasks that require very little composition, such as note taking, questions and answers, data recording sheets, fill-in worksheets, and graphic organizers. It also reported that science teachers seldom used evidence-based writing instructional practices and rarely made adaptations for struggling writers. Evidence-based practices such as teaching vocabulary, using writing as a tool for learning, providing students class time to write, and providing teacher or peer feedback were used only once per year or once per quarter.

These large-scale survey studies offered a bird’s eye view of the current state of writing instruction in science and other content areas. However, they lack an in-depth examination of what science teachers actually think and do in relation to writing instruction for ELLs. Our study answers this need by examining closely two middle school science teachers’ beliefs about and practices in teaching writing to ELLs. Specifically, we addressed two research questions: (a) what were the science teachers’ views on writing in science and on teaching writing to ELLs? and (b) how did the science teachers teach writing to ELLs in their classrooms? Answers to these questions will give us a frog’s eye view of ELLs’ writing experience in the science classroom and a concrete sense of the extent to which some science teachers embrace the message of literacy-science integration to meet the language and literacy needs of ELLs.

3 Methods

4 Findings

The purpose of our study was to explore two science teachers’ perspectives on and practices in teaching writing to ELLs in the science classroom. We found that both teachers recognized the importance of writing to science but did not embrace the responsibility to teach it; and consequently, offered few opportunities for extended writing and limited writing instruction to ELLs. These findings, organized around the two research questions, are elaborated below.

5 Discussion

Our study explored two science teachers’ (one seasoned and the other less experienced) perspectives on and practices in teaching writing to ELLs in the science classroom. It presented a frog’s eye view of ELLs’ current experience with writing in science classrooms, offering fine-grained details on teacher perspective and practice that are missing from large-scale online national surveys (e.g. Drew et al. 2017; Kiuhara et al. 2009). The rich examples and artifacts from teacher interviews and classroom observations are important in that they represent authentic voice from ‘the trenches’, giving us deeper insights into – and more nuanced understanding of – the current state of writing instruction for ELLs in sample science classrooms.

Our study found that both teachers recognized the importance of writing to science but did not make writing a priority in their actual teaching practice. Instead, they viewed content instruction as their main responsibility, offering few opportunities for extended writing and limited writing support for ELLs. These findings suggest that the task of integrating/teaching writing (or literacy) in science classrooms remains elusive for science teachers, despite many years of strong push for border crossing by scholars and policy makers from both science and literacy education communities.

This problem raises a couple of important issues regarding our efforts to integrate literacy with science. One has to do with the efficacy of the literacy-science integration message. Over the years, the message that the science and literacy education communities sent to science teachers has been that literacy is important to science because it can support science learning. This message seems to view literacy and science as two separate entities, with literacy being promoted to be in service of science (e.g. Lee et al. 2013; Pearson et al. 2010). Such a view may have had the unintended consequence of making science teachers, such as Cindy and Helen, think that literacy is subservient to science and, thus, only an ‘optional extra’ to be used when they are ready/willing or have time. In fact, both teachers appeared to view language/literacy as separate from science content, at least in their assessment practice.

It is likely that a more integrated view of literacy and science is needed if writing/literacy is to truly become a natural part of science teaching/learning. Instead of seeing literacy and science as two separate, albeit related, entities, science and literacy educators need view them as an integrated, unified whole: each exists within the other, and neither can survive without the other. As Norris and Phillips (2003: 226) have argued, writing and reading are not just tools for storing and transmitting science; they are “constitutive parts of science”. That is, literacy does not exist in a vacuum; and without literacy, there would be no science as we know it today. This systemic view of the relationship between literacy and science means that knowledge about literacy must, according to Patterson et al. (2018), be considered part and parcel of science content and, thus, an essential part of the professional knowledge base that every teacher of science is expected to develop.

A related issue that may explain the resistance of both veteran (Cindy) and relatively new (Helen) science teachers to prioritize writing in science instruction is their lack of knowledge about how to teach writing in science. Traditionally, science teachers, like other content area teachers, were required to take one literacy methods course as part of their licensure program (Fang 2024; Romine et al. 1996). This course was taught by literacy faculty, typically focused on reading, and was often too generic to be of much utility to science teachers. As a result, they typically came to the profession with surface understandings of writing and a weak sense of their own writing self-efficacy (Morgan and Pytash 2014). Most lacked a solid understanding of the writing process and writing pedagogy, especially as they relate to ELLs; and many did not have sufficient linguistic and literacy expertise to plan and teach engaging units and lessons that promote ELLs’ writing development in the context of science learning (Accurso 2020; Schleppegrell 2004).

Alternatives to the traditional way of preparing science teachers to teach literacy have been suggested. Lyon et al. (2018) advocated integrating literacy into core science methods courses, instead of having teachers learn about literacy in a course separate from content. They suggested that this new approach is more effective in helping teachers engineer a simultaneous focus on literacy and science instruction for ELLs. The approach appears to be consistent with the integrated view of literacy and science and holds promise for improving the science teaching of ELLs. Lee and Buxton (2013) recommended that professional development work for science teachers focus on identifying a proper balance between literacy and science, engaging teachers in active learning of how to infuse literacy with science practices, connecting the NGSS with the CCSS, and forging partnership with a wide range of in- and out-of-school stakeholders.

It is not surprising that the two science teachers in our study viewed writing as a potentially powerful vehicle for enhancing students’ understanding of what they were learning in science. This positive view of writing is likely the result of repeated exposures, through inservice workshops and/or preservice coursework, to the message that writing is fundamental to science and integral to its practice. For many years, the science education community has emphasized the centrality of literacy to the enterprise of scientific inquiry and to the teaching and learning of science. This emphasis is evident in recent scholarship on science literacy (e.g. Fang 2024; Fang et al. 2008; Hand 2017; Yore et al. 2004) and in the national and state science education standards (e.g. CCSS, NGSS).

Despite their ideological commitment, both science teachers did not practice what they believed in. Like other content area teachers reported in the general research literature two decades ago (O’Brien et al. 1995), neither Cindy nor Helen considered writing instruction to be within the purview of their primary responsibilities. They believed instead that teaching writing is the job of language arts teachers. They rejected the responsibility for writing/literacy instruction in part because of their deeply engrained belief that science is primarily a practical subject involving hand-on work of experiment and observation. For them, writing or literacy is separate from, rather than integral to, science content; it is a luxury that can wait to be included in the curriculum until they have time and feel prepared or comfortable to teach it. This inconsistency between beliefs and practice is not uncommon among teachers, as many factors – personal and contextual – can constrain their ability to attend to their beliefs and to provide instruction that aligns with their beliefs (Patrick and Fang 2022; Semetana et al. 2020). O’Brien et al. (1995: 447) attributed the difficulty of integrating literacy in content areas like science to “the complexities of secondary schooling”, noting that compartmentalized curricula, content primacy, pedagogies of control and telling, the organizational and reward structures of school, and classroom realities (e.g. overburdened teachers, disengaged students, prescriptive standards) are all antithetical to the literacy-content integration effort.

Our findings that ELLs had limited experience with extended writing and received little support in writing corroborate those reported in large scale studies of writing instruction reviewed earlier. In our study, the ELLs rarely engaged in writing as a way to learn, construe, consolidate, and communicate scientific understandings. Instead, the majority of the writing they produced was non-extended writing, a type of writing best described as “writing without composing” (Applebee and Langer 2011: 5) – usually short answer tasks, fill-in-the-blank exercises, or copying from the board – where the resulting text is completely structured by the teacher or textbook. Our classroom observations confirm that ELLs were rarely given tasks that required them to compose texts of adequate length or complexity. Most often, they were asked to take notes of teacher presentations, locate and copy vocabulary definitions, complete worksheets with fill-in-the-blank exercises, outlines, and questions that elicited brief responses. While these brief writing tasks enabled teachers to quickly assess students’ content learning, they deprived students of the opportunity to use writing to sharpen and transform their conceptual understanding. Even though some of the assignments provided opportunities for extended writing, most ELLs wrote only 1–2 sentences in response or did not complete the assignments. Their teachers neither pushed them to compose longer answers nor provided support that helped them complete essay-type responses. As a consequence, these students engaged in very little extended writing that requires composing.

Several factors likely contribute to the predominance of brief writing in the two science classes. The sheer number of students that each teacher had to deal with is an obstacle to using extended writing. Cindy and Helen each taught 5 sections, with roughly 25 students per section. This translates into some 125 essays to grade per assignment for either teacher. Using brief writing tasks such as multiple choice and fill-in blanks became an easier and more efficient (and, thus, preferred) way of assessing learning. Time constraint and pressure for content coverage also placed a limit on the teachers’ use of extended writing. The pacing guide that Cindy and Helen used mapped out a variety of concepts and ideas that they must teach and specified the number of days to be devoted to each topic. Both teachers had to abide by the pacing guide to stay on track and to ensure that certain concepts/units were covered by a certain date so that their students were prepared for statewide assessments. The bulk of instructional time was thus used to cover content and prepare students for tests, with little attention to the language/literacy needs of ELLs. This left little time for extended writing and writing instruction. Students did not have the opportunity to analyze, compose, share, reflect on, and revise their writing, a process essential to improving writing proficiency (Weaver 2010). Students’ less-than-positive attitude toward and lack of proficiency in writing further discouraged the teachers from assigning (extended) writing during instruction.

Another factor that encouraged the use of non-extended writing may have to do with a lack of alignment between standards and assessments. Beginning in 2003, a state-wide science assessment was administered annually in Grades 5, 8, and 10. This high-stakes test included a large percentage of multiple-choice questions, some gridded responses, and a few short-response and extended-response tasks. Even in extended-response tasks, where longer and more detailed answers were expected, students were not required to compose paragraph-long texts. Starting in 2013, a new version of the high-stakes science test was administered to students in Grades 5 and 8. The revised test consisted of multiple-choice test items only, requiring literally no writing with composing. This change in test format likely further de-incentivized teachers to incorporate writing and writing instruction in their teaching. It also reinforced the misconception that many science teachers, including Cindy and Helen, had long held regarding the role of writing in science learning. That is, science teachers tend to view writing instruction as an optional extra that can take their precious instructional time away from teaching what they consider to be the more important part of science – content.

It is also noteworthy that almost half of the extended writing pieces by ELLs were narrative informational texts and that key school-based science genres such as explanation and exposition were missing from the writing corpus collected. Creative narrative writing tasks, such as My Personal Story of the Rock Cycle and Journey Through the Water Cycle, were used by Cindy and Helen, who seemed to view writing as a generic literacy skill that can be applied unproblematically across content areas (e.g. science, literature) or genres (e.g. story, report). The narrative-informational texts written by the ELLs invariably used playful and emotive language that made their stories interesting and enjoyable to read. While narrative-informational texts may be a potent vehicle for students to demonstrate their understanding of science to teachers, an overemphasis on this hybrid genre can desensitize students to the linguistic registers that are functional and more effective for construing scientific principles, processes, and understandings, making them further alienated from the language that has co-evolved with science over the past century to classify, decompose, explain, and theorize natural phenomena and their relationships in the universe. As Halliday and Martin (1993: 219) cautioned, “narrative itself is a tremendously inefficient way of exploring the ways in which science interprets the world and positively detracts students from building up scientific understandings”. They exhorted teachers and students to work towards developing a much clearer grasp of the linguistic resources that are more powerful for building up a scientific, rather than commonsense, picture of the world. Christie and Derewianka (2008: 149) called for a similar emphasis on expanding students’ repertoire of language resources for scientific meaning making in writing, noting that school science involves not only initiating students into “an understanding of scientific knowledge and scientific methods” but also “learning a technical language and a set of written text types or genres which encode scientific principles and procedures”. In other words, ELLs need to develop language resources that enable them to write science genres and communicate scientific meanings in ways that are consistent with how scientists perceive and construe the natural world.

6 Conclusion

Our study examined two inservice science teachers’ beliefs and practices related to teaching writing to ELLs over the course of one regular semester. Our qualitative findings complement and enrich the largely quantitative findings reported in large-scale national surveys. Taken together, these studies – from both a bird’s eye view and a frog’s eye view – indicate that despite repeated calls for literacy-science integration over the past two decades, writing remains on the peripheral of science teachers’ instructional practices and science teachers today do not seem more willing or prepared to incorporate writing in their classroom than did their predecessors. As noted science education scholar Larry Yore (2004: 90) lamented,

In more than 30 years of working with language and science, my most difficult task has been – and continues to be – to convince science educators and other teachers of the importance of language in science and the importance of language-oriented tasks (such as reading and writing) in inquiry science instruction.

This is indeed a troubling revelation that provides one plausible explanation for why many ELLs (and other students) continue to struggle with writing in science. It suggests that there is still much more work to be done in (a) convincing science teachers of the centrality of literacy to science learning and teaching, (b) establishing a school culture that promotes cross-disciplinary collaboration and integration, (c) creating conditions that facilitate literacy-science integration, (d) developing teacher expertise in science and literacy, (e) showing teachers how to design and implement units of instruction that serve disciplinary goals and address the language/literacy needs of ELLs, and (f) studying the effect of the integration on ELLs’ learning outcomes.

Preparing teachers to provide effective science instruction for ELLs and others in need of language and literacy support is one of the most pressing issues facing the science education community today (Lee and Buxton 2013; Oliveira and Weinburgh 2017). Given what is now known about the role of writing in science learning and the current state of writing instruction in science classrooms, it is imperative that we respond methodically to the calls from both science and literacy educators to reconceptualize science teacher education curriculum (Lyon et al. 2018; Patterson et al. 2018) and professional development models for science teachers (e.g. Lee and Buxton 2013; Luft and Hewson 2014; Patrick and Fang 2022). At the heart of this reenvisioning should be a shift in thinking about the relationship between literacy and science, such that literacy is no longer seen as merely a handmaiden in service of science but rather an inalienable part of science. Only until literacy is accepted as a constitutive part of the content of science can we truly usher in a new era of science teaching that meets the language and literacy needs of ELLs and other students.