Systematic professional development training and its impact on teachers’ attitudes toward ELLs: SIOP and guided coaching

This study examined systematic professional development

(PD) training and its impact on teachers’ roles for and attitudes

toward English language learners (ELLs). Systematic PD

should compensate for theories and pedagogies not obtained

during teacher education programs yet needed for content

teachers with ELLs. A study was conducted to examine 6thto

12th-grade content teachers’ report on their instructional

strategies for ELLs and their perceived attitude and role

changes after they had sheltered instruction observation protocol

(SIOP) training and guided coaching sessions. Two surveys

and one interview were data sources for this mixed

methods research design. Grounded theory was an approach

adopted for qualitative data analysis, and t -tests and means

were used to analyze quantitative data. The results show that

most of the participating teachers perceived that they

improved their instructional strategies for ELLs and attributed

this improvement to SIOP and guided coaching. The results

also show that most of the participants considered their roles

for ELLs positively and attributed their attitude change

toward ELLs and teaching strategies to PD trainings. Yet some

participating teachers reported that they were still frustrated

with ELLs, mostly due to their English proficiency levels.

Implications and future directions are discussed, as are the

limitation of this study.