Supporting Elementary Science Teachers for Linguistic Diversity in Luxembourg

Proposal Information
Multiculturalism and multilingualism enable the co-existence of several ethnolinguistic communities in Luxembourg, due in part to the country’s migration history and trilingual status. However, the resulting multilingual learning contexts do not reflect inclusion yet, as it is still to be perceived that not speaking the language of instruction at home can pose challenges to schooling (Siry, 2017; Loureiro, Hadjar, Scharf, & Grecu, 2019; Wilmes, Siry, Fernández, & Gorges, 2018).
In pre-primary and primary school, Luxembourgish, German and French are introduced in different stages within the system. In pre-primary school (ISCED 0), children are mainly exposed to Luxembourgish, as they are before the stage of knowing how to read and write. However, when children enter primary education (ISCED 1) and start to be alphabetized in German, they already have to learn science in German, highlighting diversity aspects to teachers and students.
As part of an ongoing PhD study, focused elementary teacher Continuous Professional Development for science education, this contribution aims to present data from the development of a workshop focusing on Science and Language as an example of the work done within the SciTeach Center at the University of Luxembourg, an umbrella school-university partnership (consisting of researchers and primary teachers), that aims to support primary science teacher professional development in Luxembourg.
Examining video recordings from team meetings, zooming in (Roth, 2005) into the topic of the Science & Language workshop development, we explore the data to answer these research questions:
- What themes emerge? What unfolding is observed?
- What are the inputs for the development of this workshop?
- What challenges emerge? Which ones sustain?
By exploring how the team's existing collaborative structure of reflect-dialogue-act (Wilmes, Heesen, Siry, Kneip, & Heinericy, 2018), we are able to see patterns on the team's dynamics that unfolds different perspectives from the different members of the partnership (see also the work of Guerrero & Reiss, 2020).

Methodology or Methods/ Research Instruments or Sources Used
Considering sociocultural perspectives and using qualitative research approaches to inquiry (Creswell & Poth, 2018), we use participatory research approaches (e.g., Bang & Vossoughi, 2016), as participants of the research include both researchers and collaborating teachers, and critical ethnography (Carspecken, 1996), considering the researcher's notes. By analyzing 11 video recording of team meetings (recorded from January 25th until Aug. 23rd, 2022), focusing on the team's discussion to support the development of the workshop about Science & Language, the analytic memos (Saldaña, 2015) outline several topics (such as school system structures, teamwork, collaboration elements, organization and distribution of the work, translanguaging, interdisciplinarity) that highlight the team collaborative structure reflect-dialogue-act. Layering this data onto the researcher's notes and the team's reflection pieces we use bricolage (Kincheloe, 2001) to retrace and unfold that collaborative structure.

Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings
Recommended by the European Commission (Rocard, 2007) and advocated by the members of the school-university partnership, data unveils the teamwork to support teacher professional development toward inquiry-base primary science education (Bybee, 2014). The work within the partnership unpacks the dimensions of a community of practice (Wenger, 1998/2005), the elements of distributed leadership (Woods, Bennett, Harvey, & Wise, 2004), the use of co- structures and multi- perspectives (based on the work of co-generative dialogues – Tobin, 2006; Tobin & Roth, 2005) and the ways the voices are heard (Tobin, 2007).
We expect to collect more data directly with the workshop participants to note evidence the transfer of skills (Caffarella, 2002; Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2006) and claim how school-university partnership can support sustainable teacher professional development.