| An increasing number of language-minority students spend only a portion of their day in the English as a Second Language (ESL) or bilingual classroom because of social, political, pedagogical and economic factors. The rest of their day is spent in the regular classroom, yet classroom teachers are generally not prepared to integrate these students (Wong-Fillmore and Meyer, 1992; Scarcella, 1990; Penfield, 1987). This qualitative study explores the beliefs, self-reported practices and professional development needs of three classroom teachers (grades 4, 5 and 10) with language-minority students.;Case histories of the teachers were composed from transcripts of in-depth interviews, notes from classroom observations and entries from teachers' and researcher journals. The analysis reveals that: (a) the teachers' beliefs towards language-minority students may be based on hearsay and misinformation; (b) the teachers do not vary their planning, but frequently vary lesson implementation; (c) selection of instructional practices may be based on naive notions of language proficiency and the demands of the mainstream classroom; (d) the teachers draw on intuitive wisdom because of a lack of preservice teacher preparation and nonexistent or ineffective inservice staff development regarding issues related to language-minority students.;The implications, targeted to teacher educators, staff developers, teachers and administrators, focus on preservice and inservice teacher preparation, because it is through education that beliefs and instructional practices may be treated. First, teacher educators need to embrace a more critical conception of schooling which considers the social, political and cultural realities of a diverse student population, when creating innovative preservice curricular designs. Second, inservice staff development regarding language-minority student issues should be context-specific; driven by the needs and commitments of the teachers and the resources of the school and community. Third, teachers have implicit responsibilities to engage in dialogue, raise issues and collaborate with other teachers, parents and administrators about the education of language-minority students. Finally, more research focusing on teacher beliefs and behavior, innovative preservice teacher education and inservice staff development models is needed. |
