American schools are becoming more linguistically diverse as immigrants and resettled refugees who speak various languages and dialects arrive at the United States from around the world. This demographic change shifts US classrooms toward super-diversity as the new norm or mainstream in all grade levels (Enright 2011; Park, Zong and Batalova 2018; Vertovec 2007). In super-diverse classroom contexts, students come from varied migration channels, immigration statuses, languages, countries of origin, and religions, which contribute to new and complex social configurations of the classroom.
Short Description
In super-diverse classroom contexts, students come from varied migration channels, immigration statuses, languages, countries of origin, and religions, which contribute to new and complex social configurations of the classroom. Super-diversity thus encourages educators and researchers to draw on nuanced understandings of the complexity that it brings to bear in educational settings and reconsider instructional approaches that we have believed to be effective. This chapter provides an insight into the complexity of teaching science in linguistically super-diverse classrooms with the case of Riverview High School.