Responsive Instruction for Emergent Bilingual Learners in Biology Classrooms (“RIEL”) (DRL 2010153) supported 27 biology teachers and 550 students across 3 Florida districts. RIEL had three goals: (1) Iteratively refine the RIEL Instructional Framework, (2) Understand how the RIEL Instructional Framework supports multilingual learners’ engagement and achievement in biology, (3) Study how teachers enact the RIEL Instructional Framework across contexts.

RIEL mentored 6 graduate assistants and led to 5 doctoral dissertations, 1 master’s thesis, 5 published articles, 8 manuscripts under review, and 30 presentations at professional conferences. Our teacher training (“professional development,” PD) program has received interest from 7 additional Florida districts and is an open-access program available through our existing project website. Our website also houses 21 exemplary teacher-created RIEL lessons. RIEL has been highlighted by NSF’s CADRE for excellence in STEM education. Key findings according to project goals are reported.

Goal 1: RIEL Instructional Framework Refinement

Our team developed the RIEL Observation Protocol (RIEL-OP), which measures when biology teachers use the 6 RIEL instructional Elements in their classroom instruction. These Elements (or techniques) are: Affirming Students’ Science Identities, Attention to Science Language, Funds of Knowledge, Meaningful Collaboration, Multiple Modalities, and Sociopolitical Consciousness.

The RIEL-OP allows us to measure the 6 RIEL instructional Elements in a way that includes attention to science content and practices, allowing us to comprehensively evaluate culturally and linguistically responsive biology instruction. We ensured the RIEL-OP accurately measured the 6 RIEL Elements. We undertook several steps to ensure this, including a thorough review of the literature, conducting teacher focus groups, engaging with content experts in a panel review, and consulting with a specialist who designs similar instruments.

We watched 100 biology and marine biology classes taught by RIEL teachers. We found that the current RIEL-OP tool mostly works well, but it is better at measuring some RIEL Elements than others. Figure 1 shows the model resulting from our analysis.  Collaboration, Funds of Knowledge and Multiple Modalities were mostly reliable. Affirming Identities was the most consistent Element, while Attention to Language was less so. There weren't enough examples of teaching Sociopolitical Consciousness to properly judge it. Overall, the RIEL-OP tool was fairly reliable, scoring 0.7 out of 1 (maximum).

Goal 2: How RIEL Instruction Supports MLs’ Science Achievement and Engagement

 We found that how often teachers used Funds of Knowledge is linked to improvements in multilingual learners’ biology grades. Specifically, multilingual learners whose teachers frequently used this technique showed better science grades in the 3rd Quarter compared to the 1st Quarter (β = 0.339, S.E.= 0.101, p < 0.001). This relationship was statistically significant, meaning it is unlikely to be due to chance. Our team also found that the effect of RIEL instruction significantly differs between teachers in school districts, suggesting that local factors may influence how well this approach works in different areas.

We also learned that teachers sometimes struggled with understanding science practices and their relation to RIEL Elements, thus prompting us to examine two exemplary teachers. Both teachers spent approximately 69% of their instructional time across all lessons using one or more RIEL Elements. These exemplary teachers frequently used RIEL Elements in combination with each other, such as during a lesson on macromolecules (Fig. 2). Students of these teachers participated in science practices every time RIEL instruction was used, with an average of 2.6 science practices per RIEL Element. The science practice “Obtaining, Evaluating, and Communicating Information” overlapped almost entirely with RIEL instruction, followed by the science practice “Developing and Using Models” and “Analyzing and Interpreting Data.”

Goal 3: How Biology Teachers Enact RIEL Instruction

When analyzing the 100 classroom videos, we wanted to see how teachers used RIEL Elements. On average, we saw about 18 examples of RIEL techniques in each teacher’s lessons. The most common Element was Multiple Modalities. This happened about 7 times per class.  Collaboration, or students working together, was the second most frequent Element, occurring about 4 times per class. We saw less of other RIEL Elements like Sociopolitical Consciousness, Funds of Knowledge, and Affirming Identities which occurred about twice per class. 

Our teacher training program (“PD”) significantly increased the use of RIEL Elements after specific online lessons. When we taught about Funds of Knowledge (using students' home and community experiences in class), teachers used this method four times more often than before (Fig. 3). Teachers used the RIEL Element, Sociopolitical Consciousness, nearly five times more often after learning about it.

This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.

Last Modified: 11/13/2024
Modified by: Julie C Brown