Led by the University of Minnesota-Duluth, this Network research team is creating and pilot testing a curriculum for English language learners. The curriculum integrates teaching the English language into adult education U.S. history/civics courses. The curriculum will have content and technology support to improve learners’ digital literacy.
Partners in this work are Georgia State University and Literacy Minnesota/Northstar.
Many adult education programs combine English language instruction with civics education classes. These “integrated” classes can help learners become more fluent in English. They also help them learn U.S. history and civics, and can be a step toward U.S. citizenship. However, there is no easy-to-use, theory- or evidence-based curriculum package.
The research team will develop a curriculum called Content-Integrated Language Instruction for Adults with Technology Support (CILIA-T). CILIA-T will incorporate English language instruction into U.S. history/civics classes for adult learners.
The research team will develop and refine an integrated U.S. history/civics and English language curriculum. The final curriculum will include content and technology support to build digital literacy. It will also have resources to support instructors.
The curriculum emphasizes vocabulary, background knowledge, higher-order thinking skills and technology. Therefore, there will be preliminary studies examining these components to inform curriculum development. The research team will then conduct a quasi-experimental study to see if content knowledge and English proficiency of the learners improve.
The product for this project is a curriculum that combines U.S. history/civics with English language instruction. The curriculum also addresses digital literacy and includes support materials for instructors. The researchers will share research results through presentations at conferences and articles in peer-reviewed journals.
Please visit the Content-Integrated Language Instruction for Adults with Technology Support project page on the IES website for a detailed project description. For more information about the project, please contact the Principal Investigator Aydin Durgunoglu.
This project is supported by the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education through Award #R305N210032.
