The Back Burner: A Teacher’s Dilemmas When Working With English Learners in a School With Few English Learners

Abstract

Demographic and policy shifts in U.S. schools have contributed to English learners enrolling in schools with historically few English learners. This phenomenological study used interview data to identify dilemmas that one elementary teacher navigated while working with the sole English learner in her classroom. This context has the potential to inform the design of professional development for teachers working with English learners. Using a dilemmatic spaces framework, three dilemmas were identified related to whether to privilege professional experience or professional development, collaboration with the English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher, and how to navigate conflicting administrative expectations.

Keywords

teaching language equity classroom learning

Introduction

As the population of students learning English as an additional language grows and diversifies worldwide, teachers navigate changing language policies as well as context and community-specific dynamics. In this article, students who are learning English in addition to their native language(s) and who receive school-based English as a Second Language (ESL)¹ services are termed English learners (ELs). The U.S. population of school-aged ELs is shifting. As a result, ELs are increasingly enrolling in schools that have served historically no or few ELs (García et al., 2010; National Center for Educational Statistics [NCES], 2015). Within these schools, ELs may spend the majority of their school day in English-medium general education classrooms² with teachers who may have little preparation for supporting their academic and linguistic development (García et al., 2010; Lucas & Grinberg, 2008).

Within general education classrooms, teachers’ beliefs about language learning, teaching, and learners can shape the educational experiences of ELs (Gándara et al., 2005; Reeves, 2006; Youngs & Youngs, 2001). For example, teachers’ beliefs impact their efficacy when working with ELs as well as their pedagogical practices (English, 2009; Reeves, 2006). In schools with historically few ELs, teachers may work with one EL in a classroom otherwise populated with English fluent, if not monolingual English speaking, students (Walker et al., 2004). Yet, more research exploring how teachers in such schools navigate their practice with and concomitant beliefs about ELs is needed. This study was designed to contribute to extant scholarship by exploring the dilemmas that a general education elementary teacher in a school with historically few ELs navigated as part of her work with ELs. The goal of this study was to highlight potential dilemmas and how this teacher addressed these dilemmas to identify professional development opportunities for teachers in similar contexts. The following research questions guided this study: (a) what dilemmas does a teacher in a school with historically few ELs navigate when working with ELs in a general education classroom? and (b) how does the teacher negotiate these dilemmas?

Conceptual Framework: Dilemmatic Spaces

Honig (1994) conceptualized dilemmas as instances in which “two values, obligations, or commitments conflict and there is no right thing to do” (p. 568). When individuals negotiate dilemmas, they are often left in a gray zone with no clear-cut distinction between a right and wrong choice (Kakabadse et al., 2003). In teaching, Lampert (1985) argued that when faced with a dilemma of practice teachers often rely on their own goals and knowledge of the situation, rather than theory or research to guide their decision-making. For example, teachers may make decisions based on their political and societal contexts, professional ethics, organizational culture, or the advice of trusted confidants (Ehrich et al., 2011). Teachers then use this knowledge to find a “good-enough compromise” given these competing forces and values (Cuban, 1992). In the end, these compromises leave “reminders” that teachers carry with them into their future practice (Fransson & Grannäs, 2012).

This study utilized Fransson and Grannäs’ (2012) conceptual framework of dilemmatic spaces. Dilemmatic spaces are “social constructions resulting from the structural conditions and relational aspects of everyday practices” (p. 7). Fransson and Grannäs (2012) argued that a dilemmatic space could be conceptualized as occurring within the relationships of “two or more positions” (p. 13). In other words, the concept of space allows scholars to explore how individuals interpret dilemmas in relation to larger contextual factors (e.g., policy or school climate), as well as relationships between various individuals (e.g., teachers, parents, students, or colleagues). These dilemmas are often unresolved, and contribute to the constitution and reconstitution of teachers’ identities as they react in relation to their indelible dilemmatic space (Fransson & Grannäs, 2012).

The field of teaching and teacher education has long documented the potential impact of teachers’ beliefs and attitudes on their interactions and practice with students (e.g., Farrell & Ives, 2015; Molle, 2013; Pajares, 1992; Pettit, 2011; Richardson, 1996). Moreover, scholars in teaching and teacher education have recognized that teachers navigate dilemmas based on their beliefs and practices on a regular basis (Lampert, 1985). For example, teachers negotiate dilemmas related to (a) high-stakes testing (Singh et al., 2015), (b) collaboration (Turner, 2016), (c) conflicting policy mandates and pedagogical values (Jonasson et al., 2015), (d) ethics (Ehrich et al., 2011; Shapira-Lishchinsky, 2011), (e) how to teach multilingual students (Adler, 2002), and (f) how to implement theory into classroom practice (Lampert, 1985; Long et al., 2012).

With ELs, teachers’ conceptions can influence their efficacy, as well as their future pedagogical plans of action (English, 2009; Reeves, 2006; Walker et al., 2004; Yoon, 2008). For example, general education teachers may highlight a dilemma when they express generally welcoming attitudes toward ELs in schools, while also being uncertain in their ability to work effectively with them (English, 2009; Pettit, 2011; Reeves, 2006; Walker et al., 2004; Yoon, 2008). This uncertainty may come from a lack of time and resources, misgiving about their own professional knowledge of second language acquisition, or a lack of professional development (Clair, 1995; Gándara et al., 2005; Pettit, 2011; Reeves, 2006; Youngs & Youngs, 2001).

Teachers in schools with historically few ELs may also navigate dilemmas related to their desire and ability to work with ELs (Walker et al., 2004). When compared with teachers in high influx or immigrant serving schools, Walker and colleagues (2004) found that teachers in schools with historically few ELs held the most optimistic and positive beliefs regarding ELs while also expressing the most reluctance toward teaching them. In addition, teachers in such schools expressed the least amount of need for professional development for teaching ELs (Walker et al., 2004). This last finding is problematic given that teachers in schools with historically few ELs may arguably need the most support and professional development since they may only sporadically work with ELs in their classrooms.

In addition to professional beliefs, administrators and ESL teachers can also influence general education teachers’ pedagogical practices by guiding a school’s implementation of state-mandated language policies (Hornberger & Johnson, 2007; Johnson & Freeman, 2010; Stritikus & Wiese, 2006). For example, in states with restrictive English-only language policies, like the state under-study in this article, administrators and teachers can create “ideological and implementational spaces” that allows for elements of multilingual education (Hornberger & Johnson, 2007). In states with less restrictive language policies, administrators and teachers may implement policies in ways that build upon students’ bilingualism (Johnson & Freeman, 2010). Yet, administrator’s implementation of policies may interact with a teacher’s professional beliefs in ways that contribute to the construction of dilemmas. For example, a teacher may believe that schools should focus on English-only education instead of multilingual education. To positively shape teachers’ beliefs and practices with ELs, administrators can encourage an asset-based view of ELs, offer focused professional development, and promote strong collaboration between classroom teachers and ESL teachers (Theoharis & O’Toole, 2011).

Finally, the relationship between an ESL and general education teacher can support EL learning, but establishing a productive collaboration can present some dilemmas (Davison, 2006; Dove & Honigsfeld, 2010). For example, shared planning times can foster a productive collaboration between the ESL and general education teacher to the benefit of ELs (Dove & Honigsfeld, 2010). However, in the busy world of teaching, finding this shared time can be challenging (Dove & Honigsfeld, 2010). Moreover, individual teacher beliefs can shape these relationships and contribute to ongoing dilemmas about who is responsible for the education of ELs. For example, general education teachers may believe that ESL teachers should be primarily responsible for the education of ELs until they are fluent enough in English to interact in the general education classroom (English, 2009; Yoon, 2008). Ultimately, how general education teachers define their professional responsibilities in relation to ELs can shape their actions with ELs in their own classrooms as well as their collaboration with ESL teachers.

From these studies, it can be argued that general education classroom teachers often hold varied beliefs about teaching ELs, and negotiate varying relationships with other professionals who are also involved in the teaching of ELs. In turn, these beliefs and relationships can contribute to the shaping of dilemmas for general education teachers as they work with ELs in their classrooms. This study was designed to add to extant scholarship by focusing on a particular teacher population, namely general education teachers in schools with historically few ELs, and how one such teacher interpreted dilemmas as part of her practice. The goal of this focused analysis was to unpack these dilemmas to identify implications for professional development and support for teachers in schools with relatively few ELs.

Method

This study comes from a larger qualitative project that explored the experiences and access of ELs in a school with historically few ELs (Sugimoto & Carter, 2017, 2018). The larger study was conducted over a 4-month span from January through May in keeping with the school district’s timeline. This study utilized phenomenological analytic techniques to unpack the experience of one teacher in relation to working with ELs in this school with relatively few ELs.

Study Context

In the state understudy, policy mandates required that ELs receive 4 hr of English language instruction per day. In schools with relatively large populations of ELs, students could be separated from their regular classrooms and placed in a separate ESL classroom (Gándara & Orfield, 2012). In schools with fewer than 20 classified ELs in a three-grade level band, the state allowed schools to decide how to meet policy mandates. In practice, ELs in these schools often spent the majority of their school day in general education classrooms with pullout ESL services provided at the school’s discretion. To prepare all teachers to work with ELs, licensure requirements mandated that teachers obtain a Structured English Immersion (SEI) endorsement. This 90-hr professional development sequence focused on sheltered instructional strategies designed to support ELs’ linguistic and academic growth (Echevarría et al., 2016).

This study focused on an elementary school called Cordova Elementary (pseudonym). Cordova Elementary had 847 total students enrolled at the time of this study (NCES, 2014). Of these 847 students, 48% were White, 40% were Latino, 4% were Asian, 3% were Black, 5% were two or more races, and 30% received free/discounted lunch (NCES, 2014). In addition, 17 students, or 2% of the student population, were identified as ELs. These students received pullout ESL instruction for 30 min, four times a week. Otherwise, the education of ELs fell primarily under the purview of the general education teachers.

Participant

The larger study from which this focused analysis was drawn was a multiple case study exploring the experiences and access of three ELs in a school with historically few ELs (Sugimoto & Carter, 2017). The researcher recruited EL participants based on their formal classification as an EL, and teacher participants based on whether or not they taught any of the identified ELs in the school. Before data collection began, the Institutional Review Board approved this project, and the teacher, students, and parents gave their consent to take part in this study. For this focused phenomenological analysis, one teacher, Mrs. Gershner, was intentionally sampled because she was the only teacher participant who regularly discussed challenges she negotiated in her work with the sole EL in her current fourth-grade classroom.

Mrs. Gershner was licensed as an elementary teacher and a middle school English language arts and social studies teacher. She opened her own preschool before eventually becoming a director of a network of in-home preschools. Eventually, Mrs. Gershner began working at Cordova Elementary. To return to the elementary classroom, she obtained her SEI endorsement. At the time of this study, she had been working as a fourth-grade teacher for 3 years. She reported that she had previously taught one other classified EL who was a Spanish-English speaker. In her current classroom, there was one EL. Anja (pseudonym), a bilingual Russian and English speaker, had been at Cordova Elementary for 4 years and was assessed as having an intermediate English proficiency. To clarify, the state assessment used four proficiency levels: preemergent, emergent, intermediate, and proficient. Mrs. Gershner reported knowing “a few words in Spanish” but not speaking any Russian.

Data Sources

Data collection included 16 full day classroom observations coupled with two formal and 15 impromptu interviews (see Table 1 for overview). Observations took place on a weekly basis over the course of 16 weeks during the winter and spring school terms. The actual day of each observation varied during the week so that data from different days of instruction could be collected and compared, for example, a Monday versus a Friday. Mrs. Gershner was observed from the start of the school day until the end of the school day. Her content areas of instruction included English language arts, mathematics, social studies, and science. Observational fieldnotes focused on interactions between Mrs. Gershner and the sole EL in her classroom, classroom norms and procedures, lesson sequences, and language use. Formal, audio-recorded interviews at the beginning and end of the study focused on Mrs. Gershner’s teaching trajectory, experience with ELs, and dilemmas that emerged as part of her work with ELs. In addition to these formal interviews, 15 impromptu interviews took place during observations. Mrs. Gershner initiated the majority of these impromptu interviews, and these interviews focused on her interactions with the EL present in her classroom. These spontaneous interviews were summarized in the fieldnotes.

Table 1.

Research Questions and Data Collection Overview.

Research question	Primary data source	Secondary data source	Sample code
What dilemmas does a teacher in a school with historically few ELs navigate when working with ELs?	Interviews: Two formal, audio-recorded interviews; 15 impromptu interviews	Observations: 16 full-day observations of participant teaching in general education elementary classroom	Conflicting expectations from district level and school level administration
How does the teacher negotiate these dilemmas?	Interviews: Two formal, audio-recorded interviews; 15 impromptu interviews	Observations: 16 full-day observations of participant teaching in general education elementary classroom	Privileged school level administration’s expectations

Data Analysis

Although the larger study employed multiple case study data collection tools (Creswell, 2009), the analysis for this study focused on the dilemmas that this teacher perceived while working in a school with historically few ELs. Therefore, this study was better suited for phenomenological analysis as it primarily focused on the reported lived experiences of Mrs. Gershner as collected through interviews (Creswell, 2009; Moustakas, 1994). However, fieldnotes and observations have been used to triangulate Mrs. Gershner’s interview data when available.

Data analysis began with a phenomenological reduction of the transcribed interview data by exploring the meaning of each statement in relation to the research questions (Moustakas, 1994). A combination of etic and emic codes aided in clustering these transcription units (Marshall & Rossman, 2014; Moustakas, 1994). Etic codes drawn from the literature included references to the participant’s teaching trajectory, classroom norms, and beliefs about ELs and language learning. Emic codes were identified using a process of analytic induction, which involved reading and re-reading the data and highlighting sentences and passages that cohered thematically (Erickson, 1986; Hammersley, 2004). Specifically, emic codes focused on the dilemmas that Mrs. Gershner described like conflicting administrative expectations. During this coding phase, two researchers coded a subsection of the data to establish intercoder reliability, and, by extension, the reliability of the codebook (Creswell, 2009).

In the second phase of analysis, analytic memos summarized descriptions of this teacher’s interpretations of her experiences from clustered meaning codes (Marshall & Rossman, 2014; Moustakas, 1994). Specifically, thematic qualitative analysis techniques such as constant comparison methods identified emergent patterns (Bogdan & Biklen, 2003; Lichtman, 2012). These descriptions focused on the patterns of dilemmas that Mrs. Gershner perceived as part of her practice with the sole EL in her classroom. It must be noted that in keeping with other research on teacher dilemmas (e.g., Adler, 2002), Mrs. Gershner did not always explicitly name situations as dilemmas. Rather, the researcher identified the dilemmas and factors that contributed to the dilemmas based on patterns that emerged during the analytic process.

Findings

This section details the three dilemmas navigated by Mrs. Gershner including: (a) whether to privilege professional experience or professional development, (b) lack of collaboration with the ESL teacher, and (c) how to manage conflicting administrative expectations (see Table 2 for summary of themes).

Table 2.

Summary of Themes.

Theme	Number of coded instances	Sample quote
Whether to privilege professional experience or professional development	13	“I guess it’s [vocabulary teaching strategies from professional development] not necessarily a planning consideration, I just know that it’s important for ELs to read with someone, so pulling them out and having them buddy up with somebody to read.”
Lack of collaboration with the ESL teacher	9	“Well [the ESL teacher] provides the standards for us, so that we’re aware of that. That’s really it.”
How to manage conflicting school level and district level administrative expectations	16	“When I got back into the classroom, it just was the [principal’s] expectations were different than even what I felt like I learned at the [district office] . . . I just feel paranoid about the expectations, to me they aren’t super clear.”

ESL = English as a Second Language.

Dilemma 1: Whether to Privilege Professional Experience or Professional Development

Before starting at Cordova, Mrs. Gershner obtained her state mandated SEI endorsement to learn strategies for teaching ELs academic and linguistic content. When asked what she learned from the 90-hr professional development, Mrs. Gershner explained, “It just helped me to understand how the tides of education had kind of turned a little bit since I graduated.” Although she felt that the SEI endorsement helped her get her “brain kind of ramped up to be back in the classroom,” she did not actually point to any applications in her practice. Rather, Mrs. Gershner reported that she primarily drew upon her early childhood teaching experience with monolingual English-speaking students when working with ELs. Specifically, vocabulary development became a focus for Mrs. Gershner, and this focus carried into her current classroom. In her words:

It’s [early childhood teaching experience] really shaped the way that I think about, well actually language in the classroom and just how important the vocabulary is that you use. I mean, I know that I think that way, I don’t know in practice if it really comes out as much.

Mrs. Gershner stressed the importance of vocabulary development with her fourth-grade students, and particularly the sole EL in her current classroom. However, in the same excerpt, she contradicted herself by saying that she was not implementing this belief in practice. To triangulate this assertion with observational data, Mrs. Gershner was not observed directly teaching vocabulary or providing language modifications. Rather, she clarified language only in response to a question from the EL in her classroom (i.e., “What is barbecue?”). In other words, language and language modifications did not appear to be a consistent focus in Mrs. Gershner’s instruction.

Overall, Mrs. Gershner built her pedagogical plan of action for ELs based on her experiences as an early childhood educator working with monolingual English-speaking children despite having completed the state mandated SEI endorsement. When negotiating this first dilemma, Mrs. Gershner’s good enough compromise was to draw upon her early childhood experience and focus primarily on the acquisition of vocabulary for ELs, but in practice this purported focus was unevenly realized. As Mrs. Gershner stated, “language is not my main focus in the classroom.”

Dilemma 2: Lack of Collaboration With the ESL Teacher

Classified ELs in Cordova Elementary went to an ESL classroom for 30 min, 4 days a week. During this study, Mrs. Gershner praised the ESL teacher for her work with Anja, the EL in her classroom, and Anja’s language development during the year. In her words:

I’ve seen Anja grow so much this year and I think so much of it has to do with her feeling comfortable that she can really talk with [the ESL teacher] and have her one on one time and really focusing on, well I honestly don’t know exactly what they focus on.

Mrs. Gershner felt the ESL program helped Anja, even if she was unsure of what the ESL teacher actually did during classes. However, Mrs. Gershner did not feel she received support from the ESL teacher for her own classroom teaching. Reportedly, the only ESL-specific support that Mrs. Gershner received for her planning and instruction was when the ESL teacher provided a copy of the ESL standards at the beginning of the year “so that we’re aware of them.” Otherwise, Mrs. Gershner did not meet with the ESL teacher to discuss Anja’s progress or to plan for Anja’s language-specific needs in the general education classroom. This assertion was supported by observational data, as Mrs. Gershner and the ESL teacher were not observed collaborating at any point during the study.

On a school-wide level, Mrs. Gershner attributed this lack of collaboration to the fact that the education of ELs was not a pressing concern at Cordova given the relatively small population. In her words:

It’s [education of ELs] an issue but it’s not our main issue . . . because there aren’t as many [ELs] here, it just is kind of on the back burner.

The symbolism of placing the education of ELs on the back burner can be interpreted in multiple ways. On one hand, the back burner indicated that Mrs. Gershner received the message that the education of ELs could be deprioritized in the classroom. On the other hand, the back burner alluded to a larger marginalization of ELs in this school. Ultimately, Mrs. Gershner was left navigating the dilemmatic space of how to best support the academic and linguistic development of the sole EL in her classroom with limited collaboration with the ESL teacher.

Dilemma 3: Negotiating Conflicting Administrative Expectations

In this final dilemma, Mrs. Gershner reported that she found it challenging to navigate disparate expectations from her school and district administration. From Mrs. Gershner’s perspective, classroom management concerns were the most pressing issue for Cordova’s administration. For example, Mrs. Gershner reported that when her principal “casually walks through the classrooms” she felt that her principal expected to see “quiet and orderly classrooms.” Mrs. Gershner expressed discomfort with this expectation for “control over students,” partly because of her experience as an early childhood educator where she learned “how important language practice was for children.” In her words:

I know that having the discussions in class is really important but there’s also the management piece of it . . . I want them to be able to work together as much as possible but at the same time there are expectations placed on me [by the school administration].

Here, Mrs. Gershner alluded to the dilemmatic space that she experienced when trying to implement her professional principles regarding student interactions while still meeting the expectations of her school administration. An additional factor in this dilemma was related to her school administration’s expectations for instruction. In her words:

I have some flexibility with how I implement the direct instruction, but they [school administration] really want you [the teacher] giving them [the students] direct instruction where the kids are watching and you are instructing.

These dual expectations for classroom control and teacher-centered lessons left Mrs. Gershner feeling that she could not create discussion-based lessons. Rather, Mrs. Gershner felt that she had to give students information while the class listened quietly. To triangulate this assertion with observational data, Mrs. Gershner only incorporated partner or small group discussion during math flashcard practice or during small reading group instruction.

In contrast, Mrs. Gershner reported that her district office emphasized collaborative learning. To explain this expectation, Mrs. Gershner referenced the weeklong professional development seminar that she attended as an introduction to the district. During the week, district administration encouraged new teachers to utilize instructional strategies that encouraged student talk. Mrs. Gershner reflected on the contrasting viewpoints in the following:

They [district level administration] talked a lot about cooperative groups and structuring things so kids can interact with each other . . . and then when I got back into the classroom, it just was the expectations were different. So, they [school administration] would say, “Yes, that’s good but . . . we really want to make sure that your classroom management is strong and you know, that everything is under control.” So, I feel like the expectation is quiet and not a lot of movement, not a lot of discussion.

Here, Mrs. Gershner described her interpretation of the dilemma created by conflicting administrative expectations regarding student talk and learning. In negotiating this dilemma, Mrs. Gershner felt that she could not create lessons that emphasized student interactions in case her school administrator “happened to walk through” her classroom. Rather, Mrs. Gershner felt that she had to “give students instructions while they listen quietly” in alignment with her school administration’s interpretation of direct instruction. This compromise left Mrs. Gershner in a dilemmatic space where she was weighing her own professional beliefs and district administration’s values against her school administration’s priorities.

Discussion

Using phenomenological analytic techniques, this study explored how one teacher constructed and interpreted the dilemmatic spaces (Fransson & Grannäs, 2012) she negotiated when teaching the sole EL in her classroom in a school where ELs had been placed “on the back burner.” Previous studies have found that many classroom teachers report misgivings about their ability to teach ELs due to a lack of professional development (e.g., Clair, 1995; Pettit, 2011). In contrast, Mrs. Gershner had completed 90 hr of SEI professional development. However, when she built her pedagogical plan for the sole EL in her classroom, she reportedly drew upon her experience as an early childhood educator rather than knowledge gained from this professional development. This dilemma of whether to privilege one’s knowledge and experiences or professional development resulted in a good enough compromise where she questioned whether she actually implemented her plan into practice. This finding adds to previous scholarship (e.g., Walker et al., 2004) as it shows that even when a teacher completes professional development related to teaching ELs, they may not implement this knowledge into their practice.

A collaborative relationship with the school’s ESL teacher could have supported Mrs. Gershner’s work with the sole EL in her classroom (Davison, 2006; Dove & Honigsfeld, 2010). However, Mrs. Gershner reported that she did not collaborate or plan with the ESL teacher. This finding highlights a relational dilemma for Mrs. Gershner. In the end, Mrs. Gershner did not identify a resolution to this dilemma; rather, she expressed a desire for more collaboration without a specific plan to move forward. This lack of resolution highlights the appropriateness of dilemmas for this type of research because in the reality of classroom practice there will be evolving dilemmas that continue to shape teachers’ practice.

An important contribution of this study relates to how this teacher perceived administrative expectations and, in turn, how these perceptions impacted her practice. This finding adds to current scholarship as it demonstrates how teachers may have to negotiate the implementation of expectations and values given by varying levels of administration in their school districts (Johnson & Freeman, 2010; Theoharis & O’Toole, 2011). Although Mrs. Gershner’s professional beliefs aligned more with district-level expectations for classroom interactions, her school administration’s expectation for classroom control and highly structured lessons was made clear to her. In negotiating this dilemma, Mrs. Gershner’s good-enough compromise (Cuban, 1992) resulted in a classroom with highly teacher-directed lessons and little student talk. This finding illuminates the potential influence that administration can have on teachers’ work with ELs, and the role that proximity can play in teachers’ compromises as Mrs. Gershner reported aligning her practice with school administration expectations in case they happened to walk into her classroom. In summary, this teacher’s dilemmatic space was shaped by separate but related factors that highlight the influence that professional development, experiences, and interpersonal relationships can have on a teacher’s practice.

Implications

This study focused on how one teacher conceptualized dilemmas in alignment with research on teaching dilemmas (Adler, 2002; Lampert, 1985) and phenomenological analysis (Creswell, 2009; Moustakas, 1994). One limitation of this type of study is that one must be careful not to generalize findings from one specific case (Creswell, 2009). Although the findings from this study should remain situated within this particularistic context and the individual characteristics of this teacher, there are considerations that can be highlighted for future research and teacher practice. To more fully understand the dilemmas that can occur when working with ELs in schools with relatively few ELs, future scholarship should explore this issue from the perspectives of the multiple actors involved in the education of ELs, for example, administrators and ESL teachers. In addition, more research is needed to explore a variety of schooling contexts with historically few ELs, for example, urban and rural, and varying student demographics, to more fully understand the dilemmas that teachers negotiate when working with ELs.

In addition, there are considerations regarding support and professional development for teachers working with ELs. The fact that this teacher drew upon her own experience over state mandated professional development supports the contention that professional development should remain rooted in the actual needs of teachers (Molle, 2013). Therefore, professional development could be designed where teachers explore the dilemmas that arise in their own practice with ELs. Instead of being told how to teach ELs in any context, teachers in schools with historically few ELs could use their agency to identify the dilemmas that they negotiate as well as the implications of their previous good enough compromises (Cuban, 1992). For example, Mrs. Gershner could focus on how to negotiate conflicting administrative expectations, increase collaboration with the ESL teacher or implement language-specific pedagogy on a more regular basis. The framing of these challenges as dilemmatic spaces would open room for teachers to explore how their interpretations shape their current practice, as well as how to move beyond their current good enough compromises to improve their practice with ELs in the future.

More generally, the framing of these compromises as constantly evolving dilemmas rather than problems to neatly solve could support teachers in realizing that over time their interpretations of dilemmas will change and that they may need to revisit and reflect on their previous compromises to improve their current and future practice. Using professional development as an opportunity to explore dilemmas would honor the unique context that these teachers work in, and provide opportunities to better design future support that meets the needs of specific groups of teachers. Ultimately, encouraging deep reflection by teachers in schools with historically few ELs is vital because, how these teachers negotiate dilemmas in schools where ELs have been placed on the “back burner” has the potential to (in)equitably shape the educational experiences of ELs.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by the Dissertation Research Grant from the University of Arizona Research Grant.

ORCID iD

Amanda T. Sugimoto

Notes

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