There is little empirical evidence regarding how best to prepare general
education teachers for the challenge of supporting multilingual
learners. This is both regarding helping learners develop the language
of schooling, and achieving academic success (Faltis & Valdés,
2016). Similarly, little is known about what in-service teachers should
know, and what pedagogical perspective they should adopt, to achieve
these aims (Faltis & Valdés, 2016; Takanishi & Le Menestrel,
2017). However, there is a promising line of research that proposes an
observation tool to evaluate classroom pedagogy: ‘The Standards for
Effective Pedagogy’ (the ‘Standards’ 2014; Teemant, 2015). The OPETAN
project (Observations of Pedagogical Excellence of Teachers Across
Nations), based in Germany, Finland, the United States, and England,
draws on these Standards, which derive from sociocultural perspectives,
and presents a portrait of how they work in practice. This chapter
reports on the project’s findings in England. Teachers in four primary
schools were selected on the basis of their recognised competent
pedagogical practice with multilingual learners in culturally and
linguistically diverse classrooms. The pupils were aged between four and
11. Drawing on qualitative methods, classroom observation data were
gathered and thematically analysed in the light of the descriptors of
the ‘Standards for Effective Pedagogy’. In this chapter, key themes from
the data are presented and three teaching vignettes selected to
illustrate the pedagogy observed. The findings identify pedagogies
teachers can use to better support multilingual learners.