Transferring language instruction into science education: Evaluating a novel approach to language- and subject-integrated science teaching and learning

Language competences are still a powerful gatekeeper for many students in science learning. Popular approaches to integrating language and subject learning have attempted to make science learning more accessible to all students; however, empirical evidence for the effects of novel teaching approaches is still scarce. The Disaggregate-Instruction-Approach (DIA), which ‘disaggregates’ concept from scientific language learning, offers great potential to address an increasingly diverse population of students in science subjects and beyond. In this paper, we will present a comparative study with 228 public school students who either participated in a teaching intervention aligned with the DIA or designed in accordance with principles of language- and subject-integrated Scaffolding. The findings indicate that learners in both conditions reach substantial learning gains. However, students who received the DIA exhibit very similar learning growth scores regardless of their language proficiency whereas control group students reach a higher learning growth depending on their language competences.