Framing, Adapting, and Applying: Learning to Contextualize Science Activity in Multilingual Science Classrooms

In this article, we turn our attention to context-based approaches to science instruction. We studied the effects of changes to a set of secondary science teacher education programs, all of which were redesigned with attention to the Secondary Science Teaching with English Language and Literacy Acquisition (SSTELLA) instructional framework, a framework for responsive and contextualized instruction in multilingual science classrooms. Contextualizing science activity is one of the key dimensions of the SSTELLA instructional framework. In this article, we draw on two cases of novice teachers’ classroom practices to reflect on our own learning about how preservice science teachers can be prepared to frame lessons within relevant contexts and elicit and apply students’ funds of knowledge, recognizing these contextualization practices as especially important for language and literacy acquisition and science learning.