“COVID has Brought Us Closer”: A Proleptic Approach to Understanding ESL Teachers’ Practices in Supporting ELLs In and After the Pandemic

Authors

  • Dr. Guofang Li University of British Columbia
  • Zhuo Sun University of British Columbia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.20360/langandlit29654

Keywords:

ESL teachers, social-emotional learning, parental involvement, technology-enhanced language teaching, team-teaching, pandemic, classroom literacies

Abstract

This paper uses “prolepsis,” a process of reaching into the past to inform present and future practices, to understand 12 English-as-a-second language (ESL) teachers’ practices of supporting English language learners (ELLs) through remote teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020-2021 in British Columbia and to envision some different current and future post-pandemic classroom literacies for diverse learners. Accounts of these ESL teachers’ synthetical moments of teaching and supporting ELLs during the pandemic suggest that they had to navigate “new” areas of teaching, including attending to students’ social-emotional learning (SEL), connecting with ELL parents, teaching and engaging students via technology-supported instruction, and co-teaching with mainstream teachers, on the basis of limited or no pre-pandemic experience. These insights suggest a need to widen the focus on ESL teachers’ knowledge and expertise in applied linguistics and instructional strategies to include classroom literacies in integrating SEL into ESL instruction, adopting interactive, student-driven instructional designs and practices afforded by multimodal technologies, maintaining multiple channels of communication with parents and students, and team-teaching with classroom teachers to provide tailored language support for ELLs.

Author Biographies

Dr. Guofang Li, University of British Columbia

Dr. Guofang Li is a Professor and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Transnational/Global Perspectives of Language and Literacy Education of Children and Youth in the Department of Language and Literacy Education, University of British Columbia, Canada. Her program of research focuses on bilingualism and biliteracy development, pre- and in-service teacher education, and current language and educational policy and practice in globalized contexts. Her recent books include Superdiversity and Teacher Education (2021, Routledge), Languages, Identities, Power and Cross-Cultural Pedagogies in Transnational Literacy Education (2019, Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press), and Educating Chinese-heritage Students in the Global-Local Nexus: Identities, Challenges, and Opportunities (2017, Routledge).

Zhuo Sun, University of British Columbia

Zhuo Sun is a PhD candidate in the Department of Language and Literacy Education, University of British Columbia. She received her master’s degree in TESOL from University of Pennsylvania in 2014 and has been involved in ESL/EFL teaching and teacher training since then. She has also been collaborating with community-based heritage-language educators in the Greater Vancouver area to explore and develop localized, asset-based literacy pedagogies for young immigrant learners. Zhuo is currently working on her dissertation research that examines Chinese heritage-language teachers’ literacy and pedagogical practices from the theoretical perspectives of transnationalism and situated literacy.

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Published

2023-02-15

How to Cite

Li, G., & Sun, Z. (2023). “COVID has Brought Us Closer”: A Proleptic Approach to Understanding ESL Teachers’ Practices in Supporting ELLs In and After the Pandemic. Language and Literacy, 25(1), 32–56. https://doi.org/10.20360/langandlit29654

Issue

Vol. 25 No. 1 (2023): Post-Pandemic Classroom Literacies

Section

Articles

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