Raising Teachers’ Voices: What do teachers say about how well their instructional materials support English Learners?

Researchers have demonstrated that instructional materials can be a valuable resource for teaching and learning, and that significant gains in student achievement are possible when teachers use high-quality, standards-aligned instructional materials. While this is hopeful information, our newest research shows that most teachers do not feel their materials truly support their multilingual learners.

In this new report, English Learners Success Forum and San Diego State researchers share new data from a national teacher survey administered by Rand’s American Educator Panel about teacher views of the value of their instructional materials. The survey captures teachers’ perceptions about how well their instructional materials reflect strategic, research-based language and content supports for MLLs.  

To summarize the major findings, the analysis revealed:

1. Only 30% of the teachers surveyed feel fully prepared for teaching multilingual learners.
2. More than half of the teachers (64%) reported that they can’t rely on their instructional materials for supporting them in teaching their multilingual learners.
3. Most teachers (80%) reported that their instructional materials are not designed to include researched-based practices that are known to improve outcomes for multilingual learners.
4. Instructional materials were reported to be deficient in both the areas of curricular relevance and assessment.
5. Most teachers reported receiving no curriculum-specific professional development provided by either the publisher or their school and/or district. Additionally, most teachers report having little to no coaching or collaboration time.