Professor George Bunch recently co-edited a special issue of the journal Intercultural Education focused on Complex Instruction (CI), a pedagogical approach that invites K-12 students to participate in cooperative, open-ended, and multimodal small-group learning tasks designed to counter status differentials that lead to differential participation patterns and learning opportunities. Contributors to the special issue, which included researchers from Europe, Brazil, and the U.S., presented the papers in Budapest, Hungary, at the conference of the International Association for Intercultural Education.
Amplifying the Curriculum: Designing Quality Learning Opportunities for Multilingual Learners, edited by Aída Walqui, George Bunch, and Peggy Mueller, with a chapter by UC Santa Cruz’s Daisy Martin, was published in May by Teachers College Press. The book presents a model for how K–12 educators can design high-quality, intellectually engaging, and supportive learning opportunities for multilingual learners. Providing guidance for teachers as designers of curriculum, the authors argue for instruction that amplifies—rather than simplifies—expectations, concepts, texts, and learning tasks.
Bunch and his co-authors have also published an essay in TESOL Journal that discusses debates surrounding terms used in research, policy, and practice to refer to students learning English as an additional language in U.S. K-12 schools and higher education. Often referred to as “English Learners,” alternatives such as “multilingual learners” have been proposed to highlight students’ strengths rather than deficits. The authors warn against mislocating the primary site of struggle for equity and justice in the labels themselves, rather than in the systems that position certain students in a deficit light in the first place.