Pauline Gibbons

Pauline Gibbons is an applied linguist and teacher educator known for her influential work on scaffolding language and learning for English language learners in mainstream classrooms. She taught postgraduate and undergraduate TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) courses for many years at the University of Technology Sydney and later became an Adjunct Professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. In addition to her university roles, she has worked as an independent English language education consultant with teachers in numerous countries, including Hong Kong, Sweden, Laos, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, China, South Africa, the Marshall Islands, Iran, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Gibbons is the author of Scaffolding Language, Scaffolding Learning: Teaching English Language Learners in the Mainstream Classroom (including its second edition), a widely used text that integrates sociocultural and functional models of language with practical classroom strategies for ELLs. Her other major works include Learning to Learn in a Second Language (1993), Bridging Discourses in the ESL Classroom: Students, Teachers and Researchers (2006), and English Learners, Academic Literacy and Thinking: Learning in the Challenge Zone (2009). Across these publications, she has contributed substantially to theory and practice in ESL/ELL education, particularly around classroom talk, integrated