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This lightning talk provides an overview of our IUSE project that aims to improve pre-service teachers’ (PSTs) culturally and linguistically sustaining science pedagogies. US science teachers have been underprepared to support multilingual learners (MLs) in K-12 schools and STEM fields. While multiple instructional models have been introduced in science teacher education to address this concern, the Language-based Approach to Content Instruction (LACI) provides a useful framework to prepare science teachers to work with MLs by identifying six areas of support – “connection”, “culture”, “code-breaking”, “challenge”, “community and collaboration”, and “classroom interactions”. A practice-based teacher education also provides an effective framework to develop PSTs’ instructional expertise by emphasizing building knowledge, observing exemplary teaching, purposeful practices with critical reflection, and focused feedback. Based on these two frameworks, our project designed a 6-week practice-based learning unit presenting a series of core ML teaching practices and providing distributed opportunities to enact those practices through mixed-reality simulation. As a result of their engagement in this unit, PSTs self-reported improvements in all six areas of LACI. During the focus group, participants reported that dividing the learning opportunities into two separate lessons with different focuses helped their learning as did having the opportunity to teach and refine the same lesson four times. The survey showed that our online learning modules with a series of simulations helped PSTs develop culturally and linguistically sustaining science pedagogies through building key concepts, deepening and extending a repertoire of instructional strategies, and receiving focused feedback.
