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Research Report
October 2018

Initial Teacher Education and

English as an Additional Language
Authors:
Dr Yvonne Foley
Dr Charles Anderson
Dr Jean Conteh
Jonathan Hancock

Old College quad, Central Area campus. [Tricia Malley & Ross Gillespie]

Funded by The Bell Foundation and Unbound Philanthropy

English as an Additional Language and Initial Teacher Education

Authors: Dr Yvonne Foley (University of Edinburgh), Dr Charles Anderson (University of

Edinburgh), Dr Jean Conteh (University of Leeds), Jonathan Hancock (University of
Edinburgh)

© 2018 by The University of Edinburgh

1
List of contents

Page

Chapter 1: Introduction 3

Chapter 2: Policy and Educational Context 7

Chapter 3: Method 22

Chapter 4: Background of the student respondents 31

Chapter 5: Conceptualisations of EAL and of Professional

Responsibilities 36

Chapter 6: Talking and Thinking about Language 43

Chapter 7: Meeting Language and Literacy Needs 58

Chapter 8: Teacher Confidence and Teacher Education 67

Chapter 9: Key Findings, Insights and Recommendations 82

References 89

Glossary 97

2
Chapter 1: Introduction

Rationale

There are currently 1,538,724 million pupils in schools in the maintained sector1 in England
learning English as an Additional Language (EAL), 18% of the school population (DfE, 2018).
Department for Education figures report that over one in five (21.2%) of state-funded primary
school pupils in England – do not have English as their first language. In secondary schools the
figure stands at 16.6%. The number of pupils in both primary and secondary schools who had
a first language other than English rose by 0.5% between January 2017 and January 2018, and
has been steadily rising since 2006 (DfE, 2018). The question then arises of whether student
teachers are being adequately prepared to meet the needs of these pupils and to respond
creatively to the challenges and opportunities that arise in this ‘era of increased cultural and
linguistic diversity’ (Dooley et al., 2013, p.65). Put more bluntly is initial teacher education
sufficiently responsive to the realities of multilingual classrooms?

Although in the past two decades there has been a significant increase in the number of
research studies which have focused on the teaching and learning of English as an Additional
Language (EAL), considerably less attention has been paid to Initial Teacher Education (ITE)
programmes. There are only a limited number of studies that report on research into how
university Schools of Education prepare ITE students to meet the increasingly varied needs of
EAL learners in mainstream subject classrooms and that explore the conceptual
underpinnings of university EAL courses (Bernhard, Diaz and Allgood, 2005; Grant and Gilette,
2006; Butcher, Sinka and Troman, 2007; Murakami, 2008; Cajkler and Hall, 2009; Skinner,
2010; Anderson et al., 2016b; Foley et al., 2013); and there are only a few studies that require
student teachers to evaluate the usefulness of their university-based EAL courses (Anderson
et al., 2016b; Brentnall, 2015). Research also needs to widen out to consider the views of
student teachers who are enrolled across the variety of training routes that are now available
in England.

The current study, co-funded by Unbound Philanthropy and The Bell Foundation, extends our
preceding efforts (Anderson et al., 2016b; Foley et al., 2013) to begin to fill this key gap in the
literature and in practice. This final report on the study is addressed primarily to fellow
researchers in this field and to teacher educators; and the accompanying executive summary
that states key findings and draws out recommendations for policy and practice aims to reach
a wider audience.

Aims of the study

The key aims of this research project were to investigate to what extent initial teacher
education programmes in England are preparing student teachers to meet the language and
literacy needs of EAL learners, and to design resources to extend the knowledge base of
teacher educators and student teachers in relation to meeting these needs.

1 This figure does not include independent schools or academies.

3
We therefore set out to gather teacher educators’ and student teachers’ views on:

To what extent their ITE programmes prepare student teachers to meet the language
and literacy needs of learners with EAL.
To what extent teacher educators feel prepared to extend the knowledge base, skills
and practices of student teachers as they try to meet the language and literacy needs
of EAL learners.
The modules, materials and Continued Professional Development (CPD) sessions
designed by the research team, using an inclusive approach, that aim to extend the
knowledge base of teacher educators and student teachers in relation to meeting the
language and literacy needs of pupils with EAL.

The study

This report describes a study conducted at nine initial teacher education sites, named as site
1 to site 9. The research was primarily focused at site 1 and site 2, two institutions located in
widely separated areas of England, where interviews and focus groups were conducted with
teacher educators and student teachers. Two online surveys were also conducted at Site 1
and Site 2, and extended across a further 7 ITE sites in England. These information-gathering
exercises guided the development of draft resources to enhance the understanding and
practice of ITE tutors and their students in relation to EAL. This development work was
followed by a piloting phase of the project, in which feedback on the draft resources was
gained principally through focus groups. The piloting of resources took place first at sites 1
and 2, and was then extended to include Site 3, Site 8 and an additional site outside the main
study.

Terminology

It is important to bear in mind that there are a number of terms used in published research
to refer to pupils learning English as an additional language. We have chosen to use the term
EAL in this report as it allows us to refer to a commonality of issues that are linked to an
increasingly diverse group of students. This diversity can be described in a number of ways.
For example, some EAL pupils are literate in their home languages, while others have limited
literacy or are considered to have no literacy in any languages; some pupils are refugees,
while others are children of migrants who have moved to England to improve their economic
situation. Some EAL pupils are new to England, while others are second or third generation
migrants who have not yet developed the type of advanced literacy skills needed to access
the curriculum successfully. Some have developed fluency in English conversational skills and
others have developed some literacies associated with reading and writing, but have no
conversational ability (Gibbons, 2009:8). It is also necessary to remain alert to the fact that
students who are learning EAL possess distinctly varying levels of proficiency in English. The
term itself does not take into account the EAL pupil’s English language proficiency level or
their ability in reading in their first or additional languages.

4
The EAL student population is also socioeconomically diverse. Some come from families with
high levels of income and education, while others have lived in poverty and have had little
formal schooling (Hutchinson, 2018). It is important to recognise these socio-economic
differences, given that family socio-economic status and education level influence the
academic achievement of students (Strand et al., 2015; Goldenberg et al., 2011). Research
indicates that low-income EAL students are usually behind their peers from higher socio-
economic backgrounds in language skills and that they need culturally responsive teaching
(Cartledge and Kourea, 2008). The EAL student population in the UK cannot therefore be
viewed simply as a homogenous group; rather, they comprise a wide and diverse population
and one that is becoming increasingly diverse as refugees and other migrants continue to
arrive in the UK.

Accordingly, we remain alert to the fact that the term EAL is not unproblematic. In addition,
we are aware that while English is a core subject in schools, it is also the ‘language of
schooling’ and the medium of instruction for the whole curriculum (Gibbons, 1993; Met,
1994; Snow et al., 1992). Students – both those for whom English is their first language and
those for whom it is a second or additional language – therefore have to apply their
knowledge and understanding of speaking, listening, reading and writing to other areas of
subject knowledge. Yet the term EAL tends to suggest that learning English is an end in itself,
rather than also being a means to help EAL learners to access subject content knowledge that
is being delivered through the medium of English (Anderson et al., 2016a). Probyn (2010)
reported the high levels of stress that learners experience in teaching and learning through
the medium of a language in which they are not able to communicate freely, with negative
consequences for learning; and Jordaan (2013) has argued that low levels of achievement in
literacy could be attributed to the fact that English remains the main medium of instruction.
Paxton (2009) found that, even at university level, students for whom English was not their
first language struggled with learning new concepts because of unfamiliar grammatical
structures and that they frequently engaged in codeswitching between languages to
negotiate meaning and to understand new concepts better.

Because in the UK EAL is not a distinct subject, but rather is what Leung (2001, unpaginated)
terms ‘a diffuse curriculum area’, there is an erroneous belief that learning an additional
language across the curriculum will develop naturally in the school environment or will be
achieved through English as a subject. Effective teachers have long recognised that this is not
the case, and that EAL learners require explicit instruction to help them to make the
connections between English as a subject and English as a medium of instruction within all
the subjects that feature in the school curriculum.

Organisation of the report

The introduction to this report has set out the wider research context against which the
current study is placed, outlined the main aims of the study and pointed up key considerations
concerning terminology. The following chapter sets out the policy and educational context in
England which impacts on ITE providers, student teachers and provision for EAL learners. This
is followed by a description of the methods adopted for this study, which includes an account
of the surveys and the methods employed at the interview and piloting stages.

5
Attention then turns to the findings, starting with a short chapter that gives a succinct picture
of the backgrounds of the student respondents to the surveys. This chapter includes a
summary of their perceptions of their own capacities to speak other languages and the
educational, life and work experience they were bringing that was pertinent to working with
EAL learners. The following Findings chapters are organised around the four key themes that
emerged during analysis: Conceptualisations of EAL and of Professional Responsibilities;
Talking and Thinking about Language; Meeting Language and Literacy Needs; Teacher
Confidence and Teacher Education. These themes encapsulate the analysis of the quantitative
and qualitative data gathered from the surveys of the student teachers and from the
interviews with teacher educators and student teachers in the initial and piloting phases of
the project. Within each theme our findings are framed within relevant bodies of literature
and where relevant points of comparison or contrast with preceding studies are highlighted.
This has involved us in drawing on the following main bodies of literature: first language
acquisition; literacy and multiliteracies; multilingual theories of language development;
teacher education.

The discussion of these themes sets out how the project’s findings have underpinned the
development of resources. A succinct account is then given of the nature of, and the rationale
for, the resources that have been developed to date. The final chapter highlights key findings,
and makes recommendations.

6
Chapter 2: Policy and Educational Contexts

This chapter provides an overview of the theoretical framing and of the policy and practice
contexts of the project. It begins by providing a brief review of the ways in which English as
an Additional Language (EAL) is situated within the academic field of Second Language
Education (SLE) in a rapidly changing, multilingual world. This raises questions, which have
important implications for the project, about the ways that EAL is currently understood and
the status it holds in the wider field of language education. This section necessarily uses
theoretical concepts that may be unfamiliar to non-specialist readers, so a glossary of the
words highlighted in bold is provided at the end of the report. Following this, the main body
of the chapter gives an overview of the national education policy context in England and the
ways in which it has responded to the challenges of language and cultural diversity. This
covers the key matters of funding, the curriculum and the current situation in initial teacher
education.

Theoretical Contexts: Second Language Education and ‘EAL’

We live in a multilingual world where it is normal for people to use different languages in their
daily lives in fluid ways to accomplish their purposes, construct their social relationships and
affirm their identities. But many researchers around the world have pointed out how
multilingualism as a social phenomenon is constructed in negative ways in social policy, as it
often is in the media. Multilingualism is often seen as a challenge to national identity and a
risk to community and social cohesion. Many researchers have also gone on to show how this
affects the ways in which language diversity is perceived and addressed in education systems
in different national contexts. EAL policy and practice in England2 can be seen to be influenced
by such negative constructions. Safford and Drury (2013), for example, show how
bi/multilingual children have systematically been constructed over the years as a ‘problem’
in educational policy in England in relation to pedagogy, curriculum and assessment. Thus,
we argue, the issues that surround research, policy and practice for EAL learners in
mainstream schools in England are complex. A broad perspective that takes account of this
complexity is needed to understand how to improve their opportunities for success.

Conteh and Meier (2014) and May (2014) argue that we have reached a ‘multilingual turn’ in
understanding and theorising language in society and the classroom policies and practices
required to meet the needs of teaching and learning in multilingual classrooms. Debates
about how language should be theorised, researched and mediated in classrooms to take
account of multilingualism are not new. Firth and Wagner (1997, p. 296) were among the
first to call for a change to the strong focus on cognitive and psycholinguistic approaches
that prevailed, and which – it can be argued – still do. They advocated an analytical approach
to pedagogy in SLE that concerned itself with ‘how language is used as it is being acquired
through interaction, and used resourcefully, contingently and contextually.’

2A rather more nuanced statement would be required here if we were commenting on the other
nations within the UK, particularly Wales.

7
May (2014, pp.12-16) argues for the importance of this approach, but tracks the forceful and
negative responses which it has received from many established academics in the field. In
considering why this should be, he uses Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, field and practice to
account for the low status of research that addresses policy and pedagogy in multilingual
contexts. He suggests that this reflects:

a multilingual habitus within a monolingual field;

a low-status intellectual field;
a poorly defined set of practices.

Thus, it can be argued that EAL in England does not have a well-defined position in the
curriculum (Leung, 2001). It has until recently been somewhat overlooked as a field of
language education research and lacks a recognised academic identity. Moreover, there is no
generally agreed, ‘official’ set of classroom strategies and practices to address the needs of
EAL learners.

Using Bernstein’s concepts of classification and framing, May (2014) goes on to argue that
EAL, along with other developing approaches to ‘multilingual pedagogy’ within the field of
second language education, needs to be seen as an applied field or ‘region’ (to adopt
Bernstein’s term). This allows the possibility of ‘a more reflexive, porous understanding of the
origins and dominant research principles underlying particular academic disciplines.’ May
suggests (pp. 17-18) that:

In the first instance, such reflexivity provides the basis for critically analysing the
normative research questions and understandings previously established within
disciplines.

He goes on to argue that such a stance could lead to transformation in both theory and
practice and a significant move forward in developing effective multilingual pedagogies:

Greater interdisciplinarity thus opens up the possibilities of reconceptualising

and/or reconfiguring disciplines in order to overcome theoretical and research
impasses, particularly where these impasses arise directly from existing
disciplinary hierarchies of power and control.

This challenge to the established hierarchies of academic disciplines clearly has important
implications for the ways in which elements of Second Language Education such as EAL need
to be conceptualised, and also the kinds of research that are needed to move matters
forward. We argue that EAL, as a newly emerging region of language education, needs to be
understood as still fluid and in contention in policy and practice. Our approach in this project
has been guided by this view and we have endeavoured to be open to the different ways in
which EAL is mediated by all participants, particularly those directly involved in the provision
of initial teacher education.

8
The Policy Context in England

Language Diversity and Policy Responses

Superdiversity

Vertovec, (2007) introduced the term ‘superdiversity’ to describe communities with complex
histories of language and cultural diversity, such as many multilingual cities across Britain.
Such communities, which have experienced successive waves of migration sometimes over
many generations, can no longer be understood using only the ‘traditional’ variables of race,
gender and class. They need more nuanced and multi-layered kinds of research. The histories
of each city and the groups who live in them are hugely diverse and this complexity is clearly
reflected in their schools. Many pupils arrive at school already speaking more than one
language and may be learning English as their third or fourth language. Some areas have
experienced diversity over many years, but in certain localities, language diversity is a new
phenomenon and there is only a fairly small minority of pupils who speak languages other
than English, (see, Hutchinson, 2018). This is a point that we will return to when we consider
participants’ comments in interview on the marked differences in the degree to which
student teachers encountered EAL pupils in their placement schools.

Using data from the 2016 schools census, Table 2.1 gives a clear sense of the very wide range
of languages that are currently spoken by learners within English classrooms. (We have used
0.1% of the proportion of pupils in England as the cut-off point for this table. A very long list
of other languages follows on from this cut-off point in the DfE’s full set of figures.) The
categories ‘Other than English’ and ‘Believed to be other than English’, which together
constitute 8.7% of the pupils who do not fall under the category of ‘English’ as a first language,
can be seen to point to the difficulties inherent in such a survey exercise. Table 2.1 reveals
that a considerable number of pupils have one of the languages of the Indian subcontinent as
their first language. Of pupils who are not categorised as having English as their first language,
the three leading groups are the 9.9% who speak Urdu, the 8.2% who speak Polish and the
7.0% who speak Punjabi.

9
Table 2.1: First language of pupils in state-funded schools in England, DfE, January 2016.

Language No. of pupils Proportion of pupils

English 5,668,561 81.51%
Urdu 127,101 1.83%
Polish 105,569 1.52%
Punjabi 3 90,673 1.30%
Other than English 81,852 1.18%
Bengali 75,700 1.09%
Somali 46,700 0.67%
Arabic 45,553 0.66%
Gujarati 41,028 0.59%
Portuguese 31,804 0.46%
Tamil 31,018 0.45%
Believed to be other
than English 29,236 0.42%
French 27,349 0.39%
Spanish 25,280 0.36%
Romanian 24,793 0.36%
Turkish 23,929 0.34%
Believed to be
English 22,276 0.32%
Lithuanian 19,770 0.28%
Bengali (Sylheti) 17,467 0.25%
Panjabi (Mirpuri) 17,326 0.25%
Yoruba 17,100 0.25%
Pashto/Pakhto 16,457 0.24%
Italian 15,788 0.23%
Albanian/Shqip 13,791 0.20%
Malayalam 13,518 0.19%
Russian 12,999 0.19%
Chinese 12,560 0.18%
Slovak 12,337 0.18%
Hindi 12,292 0.18%
Kurdish 9,111 0.13%
Hungarian 8,661 0.12%
Bulgarian 8,547 0.12%
Tagalog/Filipino 8,320 0.12%
Nepali 8,139 0.12%
Information not
obtained 7,932 0.11%
Akan/TwiFante 7,605 0.11%
Persian/Farsi 7,586 0.11%
German 7,386 0.11%
Czech 7,336 0.11%
Latvian 7,283 0.10%
Shona 6,942 0.10%

3Punjabi is the most common native language in Pakistan. The alternate spelling, ‘Panjabi’ is
commonly used in official documents in England. This spelling is often used elsewhere for the version
of the language used by Sikh rather than Muslim speakers.

10
As we have noted earlier, added to the diversity in first languages is diversity in:
prior exposure to English;
prior experience of schooling;
prior literacy experiences;
length of residence in England;
the social circumstances of EAL pupils.

These differences are reflected in the following list of terms that have been used over the
years in policy documents4 in England to describe EAL learners:

Learners who are second and third generation members of settled ethnic
minority communities (advanced bilingual learners).
Learners who are recent arrivals and new to English, some of whom have
little or no experience of schooling, and others who are already literate in
their first languages (children new to English).
Learners whose education has been disrupted because of war and other
traumatic experiences (asylum-seekers and refugees).
Learners who are in school settings which have had little prior experience
of bilingual children (isolated learners).
Learners whose parents are working and studying and are in England for
short periods of time (sojourners).

Funding

In 1966, ‘Section 11’ of the Local Government Act directed funds to meet the various needs
of pupils of ‘New Commonwealth’ origin. Among other things, this funding supported the
teaching of English to EAL and bilingual learners. Later developments saw this support
replaced by the Ethnic Minority Achievement Grant (EMAG), which was intended to narrow
achievement gaps for pupils from ethnic minority backgrounds and those learning English as
an additional language. This ring-fenced grant was distributed to Local Authorities and
enabled them to provide a service that centrally employed teachers to support such pupils.
In 2011, a significant change in resources for EAL in England saw the loss of EMAG. Revisions
in the structuring of expenditure saw this grant mainstreamed into the Direct Schools Grant
(DSG), where schools were given decision making power in terms of how the funding was to

4
Documents such as:
Department for Education and Employment (DfES) (1998) The National Literacy Strategy:
Framework for Teaching. London, HMSO.
DfES (2004) Aiming High: Understanding the Educational Needs of Minority Ethnic Pupils in Mainly
White Schools. Ref: DfES/0416/2004. http://www.naldic.org.uk/Resources
Department for Education and Skills (DfES) (2006) Excellence and enjoyment: learning and teaching
for bilingual pupils in the primary years. Ref: 0013-2006PCK-EN
Department for Education and Skills (DfES) (2007) New arrivals excellence programme: guidance.
London: DfES.

11
be used. This restructuring ended the requirement for funding to be spent on black and
minority ethic (BME) pupils and those learning EAL. Alongside the change to this funding,
greater emphasis was being placed on school target setting, which resulted in an increased
focus on outcomes for BME pupils, including those learning EAL.

Hutchinson states that the impact of consolidating EMAG into general school funding has
had a mixed effect (Hutchinson, 2018, p 16). In some cases, EAL central services across a
small number of local authorities, where there a larger numbers of EAL pupils in schools,
receive more funding than they received under EMAG’s previous restrictions. However, it is
recognised more widely, that the trend has been for local authorities to reduce or stop
funding EAL central services. ‘The number of LAs with no central EAL spending has increased
from 39 to 72 since 2011-2012’ (Hutchinson, 2018, p16).

Currently, the new national funding system for schools is guided by pupil-led factors (e.g. the
number and characteristics of pupils in schools, which includes those with EAL status) in an
attempt to ensure that money is allocated more consistently across English schools. While
recognising that the values and goals behind the new funding mechanism aim to provide a
fairer system, Hutchinson notes that the ‘proposed implementation of the formula has been
controversial due to the overall level of funding passing through the formula, combined with
significant increases in schools’ staffing costs, which result in real term losses for many
schools’ (2018, p17). It is important to recognise that any aim to support EAL is intricately
tied to the broader changes within the funding system and that these aims and processes
cannot be interpreted outside of such mechanisms.

Added to this, the shift in England in initial teacher education (ITE) from university-based to
school-based training, which is outlined below, has led to changes in funding arrangements
for this sector of education. The bulk of funding now goes into schools through partnership
arrangements with accrediting bodies, usually – but not always – universities. One main effect
of this has been to decentralise provision, including the content of ITE courses. The Teachers’
Standards (DfE, 2011) still remain the statutory criteria, but are described as ‘the minimum
level of practice expected of trainees and teachers from the point of being awarded QTS’ (p.
6). The ways in which the standards are met and the overall balance of provision are left to
the providers themselves. With pressure to prioritise a whole range of competing demands,
EAL is not always given the weighting it deserves.

The National Curriculum

Despite the growing numbers of EAL learners in the mainstream system and their complex
needs, national policy in England, including the Teachers’ Standards mentioned above, does
not provide a great deal of guidance for teachers and school managers. The National
Curriculum Statutory Guidance, (Dec. 2014) (DfE, 2014b), Section 4 sets out principles for the
inclusion of all pupils, with two main requirements:

Setting suitable challenges.

12
 Responding to pupils’ needs and overcoming potential barriers for individuals
and groups of pupils.

As part of the second, two principles are stated (on p. 9) which relate specifically
to EAL:

4.5 Teachers must also take account of the needs of pupils whose first language
is not English. Monitoring of progress should take account of the pupil’s age,
length of time in this country, previous educational experience and ability in
other languages.

4.6 The ability of pupils for whom English is an additional language to take part
in the national curriculum may be in advance of their communication skills
in English. Teachers should plan teaching opportunities to help pupils
develop their English and should aim to provide the support pupils need to
take part in all subjects.

Though brief, these two statements do contain essential guidance for schools on meeting the
needs of their EAL learners, indicating the need to take account of pupils’ prior experience in
language and education and of language across the curriculum. While they hint at the
importance of mediating the needs of newly arrived pupils, they do not provide any specific
guidance as to how this could be done.

Assessment of both the abilities and the learning needs of EAL pupils has always been very
problematic in the English system. The DfE School Census for 2016 to 2017 introduced a set
of proficiency scales in English, with the following objectives:

… to inform policy on this high needs group with the basic rationale being that
current data on EAL pupils does not distinguish between pupils who lack a basic
command of the English language versus those who are bilingual and have
mastered English sufficiently to access the curriculum.

This information will therefore help the Department understand how effective the
education sector is for EAL pupils by providing valuable statistical information on
the characteristics of these children and along with their attainment and
destinations, will allow us to measure whether the individual pupils, or the schools
they attend, face additional educational challenges.
(DfE, 2017a, p. 63)

There are five bands, which do begin to indicate the complexity of making useful judgements
through assessment, and the importance of making links between the home language and
English:

13
 A: NEW TO ENGLISH:
May use first language, remain silent, copy/repeat words; may understand
everyday English but have minimal or no literacy in English; needs
considerable EAL support.

B: EARLY ACQUISITION:
May follow social communication and take part in learning with support;
understand simple instructions, follow narrative/accounts; have developed
some reading skills, subject-specific vocabulary; needs significant EAL
support.

C: DEVELOPING CONFIDENCE:
Increasing independence; able to express self in English; grammatical
inaccuracies; needs ongoing support for literacy; may be able to follow more
complex written English; needs ongoing EAL support.

D: COMPETENT:
Successful engagement across the curriculum; understand a wide variety of
texts; occasional errors in structure of written English; needs support to
develop abstract vocabulary and nuances of meaning; needs occasional EAL
support.

E: FLUENT:
Can operate across the curriculum comparably to English L1 pupil; operates
without EAL support.

The Bell Foundation has recently developed the EAL Assessment Framework for Schools (The
Bell Foundation, 2017) to support teachers in assessing their EAL pupils according to these
bands:
https://www.bell-foundation.org.uk/eal-programme/teaching-resources/eal-assessment-
framework/.

National Curriculum: Language and Literacy

Teachers’ engagement with EAL learners takes place against the backdrop of the general
statements in the National Curriculum concerning language and literacy and the detailed
requirements that it sets out for English as a subject. Looking first at overarching statements
within the National Curriculum concerning language and literacy, there is an unequivocal
message that their development is in effect the responsibility of all teachers: ‘Teachers should
develop pupils’ spoken language, reading, writing and vocabulary as integral aspects of the
teaching of every subject’ (DfE, 2014b, 6.1).

The guideline on ‘vocabulary development’ notes that: ‘Pupils’ acquisition and command of
vocabulary are key to their learning and progress across the whole curriculum. Teachers
should therefore develop vocabulary actively, building systematically on pupils’ current

14
knowledge’ (DfE, 2014b, 6.4). Some attention is also given to developing the lexis of individual
subjects:

… it is vital for pupils’ comprehension that they understand the meanings of words
they meet in their reading across all subjects, and older pupils should be taught
the meaning of instruction verbs that they may meet in examination questions. It
is particularly important to induct pupils into the language which defines each
subject in its own right, such as accurate mathematical and scientific language
(DfE, 2014b, 6.4).

This message is reinforced in some of the subject specific sections of the National Curriculum,
with the section on Science stating:

Pupils should be able to describe associated processes and key characteristics in

common language, but they should also be familiar with, and use, technical
terminology accurately and precisely. They should build up an extended specialist
vocabulary (DfE, 2014a, p.168).

If these prescriptions are consistently followed by schools, EAL pupils should be taught in a
context where considerable care is being taken over the development of subject-specific
vocabulary.

English

Turning to the framework that is set out for English as a subject, we will draw out a number
of its features that are pertinent to the learning and teaching of EAL pupils. This framework is
largely structured under the headings of spoken language, reading and writing. As Noble-
Rogers and Rose acknowledge in the document they produced pointing up changes
introduced by the National Curriculum English Framework (NCEF): ‘Speaking and listening is
presented as a single set of outcomes.’ (Rogers and Rose, 2014, p.4). While the NCEF does
require teachers to ‘ensure the continual development of pupils’ confidence and competence
in spoken language and listening skills [italics added]’, it does not include any detailed
guidance on how listening skills are to be fostered. There is also no guidance given on how
teachers themselves can act to foster pupils’ active listening to, and processing of, subject
content. It can be argued that, for EAL pupils in particular, it is an unfortunate omission that
there is no separate and sustained consideration of listening as a language mode.

A central thrust of the National Curriculum in English is the explicit teaching of both spelling
and ‘grammar’, as the following statement indicates:

Pupils should be taught to control their speaking and writing consciously and to
use Standard English. They should be taught to use the elements of spelling,
grammar, punctuation and ‘language about language’ listed. This is not intended
to constrain or restrict teachers’ creativity, but simply to provide the structure on

15
 which they can construct exciting lessons. A non-statutory Glossary is provided for
teachers. (DfE, 2014a, p.16)

Rogers and Rose (2014, p.3) note that this knowledge about language needs to be ‘both taught
directly and contextualised so that pupils are able to apply correct spelling and grammatical
knowledge and become increasingly effective writers across the curriculum.’

The ‘Non-statutory Glossary’ referred to in the preceding quotation is a quite extensive listing
of linguistic terms that are clearly defined often in ways that highlight their linguistic function
rather than being a simple descriptive gloss on the term. It also acts to correct common but
inaccurate understandings of grammatical terminology5. This glossary can be viewed as a
helpful resource for teachers’ professional development in the area of language and as a
means of ensuring that they share the same metalanguage for talking about language among
themselves and with their pupils. In constructing resources in the project, we have followed
the (standard) usages in this glossary, rather than say adopting the somewhat different
linguistic constructs employed within systemic functional linguistics (Coffin, Donohue and
North, 2009). This was largely a practical decision so that the resources could more easily be
aligned with the National Curriculum glossary.

Having an agreed language with which to discuss language can be seen to be a key matter for
teachers in their interactions with EAL learners. It can also be argued that concentrating
teachers’ attention on the direct teaching of knowledge of language moves them away from
a reliance on their implicitly acquired network of knowledge about English to a more explicit
understanding of English morphology and grammar that can inform their work with EAL pupils.
However, as the following paragraphs will reveal, the particular approach to, and set of
requirements for, the teaching of grammar within the national curriculum has sparked
controversy.

First, though, it is important to give a sense of the scope of the spelling and grammar content
that pupils are expected to achieve. This in turn points up the demands that these curricular
prescriptions make on current and trainee teachers’ knowledge of the English language and
pedagogical expertise concerning how best to convey this knowledge to pupils.

The National Curriculum sets out a trajectory of detailed prescriptions for spelling and
grammar to be followed through Key Stages 1 to 4. On spelling, there is a strong emphasis in
the early stages on work in synthetic phonics. A statutory appendix, Appendix 1, contains a

5 As an illustration of both these features, the following definition is provided for adjective, and for
this and other definitions, a number of examples are also provided:
The surest way to identify adjectives is by the ways they are used:
Before a noun, to make the noun’s meaning more specific (i.e. to modify the noun), or
After the verb be, as its complement.
…
Adjectives are sometimes called ‘describing words’ because they pick out single characteristics such
as size or colour. This is often true, but it doesn’t help to distinguish adjectives from other word
classes.

16
very extensive list of spelling patterns that have to be mastered. In addition, there is a
prescribed list of 100 words whose spelling is to be learned in Years 3 and 4, and another list
of 100 words for Years 5 and 6. For grammar there is also a clearly defined set of prescribed
content, (set out in statutory Appendix 2: Vocabulary, grammar and punctuation), with, for
example, plural noun suffixes featuring among the content to be covered in Year 1 and
subordination in Year 2. It is notable that a large proportion of the spelling and grammatical
knowledge to be covered in the curriculum as a whole is located in the primary school years,
making consequent demands on the language, and associated pedagogical, knowledge of
primary school teachers.

The range of grammatical knowledge that teachers may need to acquire to teach the
framework for English set out in the National Curriculum is indicated in the following list
presented by Rogers and Rose (2014, p.12):

There is a considerable amount of ‘new’ grammatical knowledge which many

teachers may need to learn, including: subordination and coordination; the
continuous/progressive verb form; use of conjunctions, adverbs and prepositions
to express time and cause; fronted adverbials; the subjunctive; active and passive
voice; modal verbs or adverbs; relative clauses; cohesive devices: semantic
cohesion, grammatical connection, elision; adverbials of time, place and number.
[presented as bullet points in the original text]

Whatever stance one may take on the desirability or otherwise of the curricular changes that
have been outlined in the preceding paragraphs, such changes have created a rather different
learning landscape for EAL pupils and their teachers. We have been alert to this changed
landscape in our own research and development work.

Moving to consider work that has scrutinised the new curriculum in English and its possible
effects, the closest analysis to date has been provided in a combined response by CLPE, NAAE,
NATE and UKLA (2016a). They make a number of points that appear to be of central relevance
to EAL learning and teaching. They found quite a number of aspects of the new curriculum to
commend, but their overall judgement is that it is ‘a thing of mixed quality’ (UKLA, 2016a,
p.20). They put forward a number of trenchant points of critique including its
conceptualisation of the sequence in which language learning takes place: ‘the government
has made the mistake of imagining that prior analytical instruction in the primary years will
produce 11-year-olds who can read fluently and accurately, write correctly, and use correct
grammar in their speech and writing (UKLA, 2016a, p.3). They go on to observe that:

… we are not saying that it is impossible to analyse the activities of reading, writing
and the use of grammar in order more clearly to understand how they work.
Professionals working in these areas should be able to do these things. The simple
principle here is that competence is prior (both in the chronological and
intellectual sense) to analysis, not the other way round.

17
We will return later in the report to the question of what knowledge about language teachers,
as opposed to pupils, require if they are to support EAL learners in an effective fashion (see
Chapter 6). Staying at the moment on the topic of communicative competence in relation to
EAL, Leung (2014, p. 124) has argued that ‘a “follow-the-rules” view of communicative
competence can only provide partial purchase on what it takes to achieve communication’.
He highlights on the basis of empirical data from multilingual classrooms in London that ‘the
importance of “knowledge” has to be understood alongside the importance of participatory
involvement on the part of all the interlocutors’ (2014, p.141). Communicative competence in
his view needs to be seen as comprised of language knowledge and participatory involvement
(2014, p.142). He also reminds us that ‘students from diverse backgrounds can call upon their
additional multilingual and multilingual resources to achieve communication and to further
their learning.’ (2014, p.143). The topic of how teachers can be assisted to foster the
participatory involvement of EAL learners is pursued in subsequent chapters of the report.

Turning to other areas of concern in the National Curriculum for English raised by CLPE, NAAE,
NATE and UKLA, they identify an ‘obsession with synthetic phonics’ (UKLA, 2016a, p.4) as a
key problem in early reading. They are at pains to point out that they are ‘not in any crude
sense ‘anti-phonics’ ‘ (UKLA, 2016a, p.4), but point up the distinct limitations of an approach
to early reading that is very much centred around one method to the exclusion of others. This
view is supported by a wide range of research, much of it drawn together in an authoritative
systematic review by Torgerson et al. (2006), which informed the Rose Review (DfES, 2006).
This government report first raised the idea of the ‘simple view of reading’ (p.70) and
recommended the introduction of Systematic Synthetic Phonics for ‘most children’ by the age
of five (p. 77). The Torgerson review, however, has as one of its conclusions that evidence for
the effect of systematic phonics instruction on comprehension is very weak – a point taken up
in the following paragraph in relation to EAL learners. It is also important to remember that
prescribing only one method may not suit all learners, given the diversity of experiences they
bring to the task. The use of phonic methods in the teaching of early reading to EAL learners
also needs to take account of the fact that ‘each language has an inventory of phonemes that
may differ from that of other languages’ and that ‘contrasting phonemic patterns across
languages and dialects can have an impact on what words children understand, how they
pronounce words, and also how they might be inclined to spell them’ (Fillmore and Snow,
2000, p.14).

Literacy research with multilingual learners over the past few years has benefited a great deal
from the ‘many pathways’ model developed by Gregory and her associates (Gregory et al.
2004, Gregory, 2005, 2008). Gregory argues for an understanding of learning, and particularly
literacy learning, as ‘syncretic’, (2005, p. 225) where young learners ‘transform the languages
and cultures they use to create new forms relevant to the purposes needed’ (2005, p. 225).
This resonates with the model of literacy teaching promoted by UKLA, where readers are
‘encouraged to bring the whole range of their intellectual faculties to bear on the text in order
to derive meaning from it’ (UKLA, 2016a, p.5).
Gregory (2008) provides many illuminating qualitative accounts of young multilingual learners
learning to read, including Saida, a young child recently arrived from Bangladesh. Saida could
accurately decode words in an English reading scheme book, but did not comprehend what
she had ‘read’ (p. 123). She could decode the Arabic she was learning in the mosque in the

18
same way. Her mainstream teacher had the knowledge to understand what was happening
and the imagination to think of ways to use her pupil’s knowledge of the sounds of the letters
as a resource to lead her into reading for meaning. Gregory concludes that knowledge of
sound/symbol association in any language provides the young multilingual learner with an
initial advantage, but that the move to meaningful engagement with text needs to be quickly
made in order to develop the learner’s comprehension and capacity to become an
independent reader.

CLPE, NAAE, NATE and UKLA also criticise the National Curriculum for its failure to give
sufficient attention to digital media and to media education. Extending their critique, it
appears to us that the National Curriculum has a limited sense of what constitutes a text and

that a much more expansive definition of texts is required in a 21 st century world. This is an
important consideration for EAL learners who can gain from interacting with multimodal texts
and can be encouraged to produce, by hand or digitally, texts that draw on more than one
language and may include images and symbols.

In addition, CLPE, NAAE, NATE and UKLA note the ‘regrettable absence’ of ‘knowledge about
language’ (NATE, 2016a, p.17) in the National Curriculum for English and clearly recognise that
‘the teaching of grammar sits best within the overall study of language as a phenomenon’
(NATE, 2016a, p.17). Their own reworking of the National Curriculum, An Alternative
Curriculum for English 3 to 16 (UKLA, 2016b), does set out to provide a ‘progressive
programme of study for knowledge about language’ (UKLA, 2016a, p.17), with sections
detailing the knowledge about language that pupils should acquire at key stages 2, 3 and 4.
Matters that are listed here include: attention to ‘some aspects of variety in contemporary
English, for example, the use of different accents, dialects and word usages’; comparisons of
spoken and written language; ‘the spread of ‘Englishes’ across the world’; ‘differences
between the standard forms of different countries’, etc. (UKLA, 2016b, pp.22-23.) While not
directly employing the term critical literacy, this Alternative Curriculum does propose that:
‘Students study some of the connections between language and power, whether in
interpersonal or mass uses of language’ (UKLA 2016b, p.23).

Making LPE, NAAE, NATE and UKLA’s critique of the National Curriculum’s failure to take a
sufficiently expansive view of knowledge about language more specific to EAL learning and
teaching, we see the concentration in the National Curriculum on teaching ‘grammar’ as
presenting the danger that the focus of initial teachers’ knowledge of language will be
narrowed. In particular, it may take attention away from the pragmatics of communication
and how these vary across cultures; from attention to the interconnections between language
and culture; and from a recognition of how language and identity are inextricably intertwined.
Assisting EAL learners to understand the grammar of English will be enabled if teachers have
at least a basic knowledge of how structures and forms vary across languages. In other words,
a strong argument can be made that in contemporary multilingual classrooms teachers’
knowledge about language is not wholly confined to the English language. This is a theme that
we will pursue later in this report.

19
Initial Teacher Education in England – The Current Situation

ITE in England has undergone huge changes over recent years. The current trend is towards
school-based training with HE institutions increasingly taking a monitoring and accrediting
role, and not working as directly with trainees. This is made clear by the stated priorities for
2016-2017 articulated by the National College for Teaching and Leadership (NCTL, 2015), the
government-sponsored executive agency which oversees training6. The third priority is to:

… support schools to take control of their own recruitment and training of

teachers, through School Direct, and support the development of new school-
centred initial teacher training (SCITT) provision while encouraging higher
education providers to work in partnership with schools further to improve their
programmes of training (2015, unpaginated).

The most recent government-initiated review of ITE (Carter, 2015) reveals the complexity of
the current situation. It reports the numbers of ITE trainees recruited for the 2014-2015
academic year, showing that about two thirds of trainees were still recruited onto the
‘traditional’ HE provider-led routes of PGCE and BA QTS but the school-led routes of School
Direct and Teach First were becoming increasingly significant (pp.18-19). Like the NCTL, Carter
(p. 3) noted the move to a school-led ITE system, though with a recognition of the importance
of university involvement:

Sometimes universities will take the lead, sometimes and increasingly, it will be
the schools that lead the way. However, neither can do it alone and our review
has made recommendations that emphasise the strength of working together
within a system that is increasingly school led.

This shift from HE to school has important implications for the kinds of materials and resources
that will be needed to meet the CPD needs of ITE providers in the future.

There is only a small reference to EAL in the Carter Review, following a response to the call for
evidence made by the Bell Foundation and Unbound Philanthropy which the authors of this
report also contributed to. There is one useful, short case study from Sheffield Hallam
University describing ‘National Priority Placements’ focusing on EAL (Carter, 2015, p.39). Apart
from this, the recommendations of the review are generic, but do allow for the integration of
EAL issues into a curriculum for ITE by those providers who are prepared to consider the
implications for their courses. The Teachers’ Standards (DfE, 2011), mentioned above, do, on
the other hand, make explicit reference to EAL pupils, albeit briefly. As part of Standard 5,
within the requirement to ‘adapt teaching to respond to the strengths and needs of all pupils’,
it is stated that all teachers should:

… have a clear understanding of the needs of all pupils, including those with special
educational needs; those of high ability; those with English as an additional

6At the beginning of April 2018, the NCTL was replaced by the Department for Education Teaching
Regulation Agency. Information about NCTL materials can be found at: https://nationalcollege.org.uk

20
 language; those with disabilities; and be able to use and evaluate distinctive
teaching approaches to engage and support them (pp. 11-12).

Conclusion

This chapter has provided a contextual overview of the situation in education in England in
relation to EAL. To conclude, we sum up the key issues that have emerged, which have
attinformedthe empirical research that underpins the project:

EAL is an emergent, complex and fluid region of Second Language

Education and understandings about its status and pedagogies are very
diverse.
Funding for EAL for both mainstream schools and ITE providers is unstable
and subject to change.
There are debates about the ways in which the subject English and
specifically literacy is constructed in the National Curriculum, which have
important implications for EAL learners.
ITE in England is undergoing radical changes, which will have significant
bearing on provision for EAL for current and future trainees.

21
Chapter 3: Method

Research Aims and organisation of the chapter

The introduction to this report has set out the general aims of this study:

to investigate to what extent initial teacher education programmes in England are

preparing student teachers to meet the language and literacy needs of EAL learners,
and;
to design resources to extend the knowledge base of teacher educators and student
teachers in relation to meeting these needs.

This chapter describes how these aims were operationalised, starting with an overview of the
research design, followed by a sketch of the sites where the study took place. The focus then
shifts to the content of the two student surveys, the procedures employed to implement the
surveys and the number of the respondents to the two surveys. The content, character and
numbers involved in focus groups and individual interviews are then described, followed by
accounts of the analysis of data and the development and piloting of resources. Issues
concerning generalisability and ethics are also examined.

Overview of the Research Design

This study has built on preceding research into the preparation of Initial Teacher Education
(ITE) student teachers to teach English as an Additional Language (EAL) pupils in mainstream
schools (e.g. Anderson et al., 2016b; Foley et al., 2012; Andrews, 2009). It employed a mixed-
methods design that involved the following main elements:

Two online surveys, which generated both quantitative and qualitative data were
developed for student teachers. These surveys were administered at the project’s two
principal research sites and at a further seven sites throughout England.
Focus groups and individual interviews were conducted with teacher educators and
student teachers at the two principal research sites.
Informed by the data collected in the project, resources concerning EAL were designed
by the research team.
These resources were then piloted, first in the two principal research sites and then
at a further three sites. Feedback was sought from participants in these piloting
sessions and recorded to inform the further development of the resources.

Research Sites

The principal research sites in this study (Site 1 and Site 2) were located in widely separated
areas of England. These primary sites were selected because their ITE programmes were
similar in size and both attracted students from a wide range of subject specialist
backgrounds. In addition, both universities have a long history in the preparation of student

22
teachers and provided or had partnerships with a variety of routes to teacher qualification,
such as Teach First and School Direct.

The population for the two online questionnaires comprised student teachers at the two
principal research sites and seven other ITE sites across England. It included students
completing various routes into teacher qualification including PGCE, Teach First, and School
Direct. These nine sites were chosen to encompass different English regions, ranging from the
North-East to the South-West. It was viewed as important to achieve this geographical spread
in the surveys, given that EAL pupils are not distributed evenly over the country as a whole.
The sites included Russell group universities, post-1992 universities and a Teaching
Foundation.

Surveys

Student Survey Questionnaire 1 (SQ1)

The design of the student surveys in this project was informed by our preceding work
surveying students in two Scottish university Schools of Education on EAL-related matters
(Anderson, et al., 2016b). The first survey gathered information on a range of topics relevant
to the project’s aims through a set of questions which is summarised in the following box.

23
Box 3.1: Question set for the first student survey.

As a research objective in itself and to set a context for the interpretation of

survey findings, the students were first asked to respond to a number of
questions on their backgrounds:

- If they were a primary or secondary student teacher; the age range, any
specialisms or subject areas; their institution and ITE programme;
- Information on gender, age, work experience and qualifications;
- If they spoke a language other than English; any prior learning of another
language, whether they had been an EAL/ESL learner;
- If they had informal/more formal experience of teaching EAL learners; any
formal qualifications for teaching English as a foreign language; any prior
teaching experience.

They were asked how confident they felt at this stage in their ITE programme
in their ability to support EAL learners.

Students were asked to respond to a series of statements probing their views

on how language is best acquired and how teachers may best respond to EAL
learners indicating their level of agreement/disagreement with these
statements using a five-point scale, (strongly
agree/agree/unsure/disagree/strongly disagree).

They were asked to give (using a five-point scale of very large responsibility/
large responsibility/ some responsibility/ little responsibility/no responsibility)
their views on the extent to which educators occupying different roles are
responsible for meeting the needs of EAL learners.

Students were asked if they had received any input during the institution-
based part of their course related to working with EAL/bilingual learners, and
if so to provide further details.

This was followed by a set of questions on the level of importance of having

EAL-related input on key, language-related aspects of learning, teaching and
assessment for their future careers.

They were then asked if they had received any specific training while working,
or on placement, in schools in relation to meeting the language and literacy
needs of EAL pupils, and if so to briefly describe this.

Finally, students were invited to provide additional comments about how ITE
programmes could better prepare them to face the challenges of meeting the
language and literacy needs of pupils with EAL.

24
Procedure

The first online questionnaire for student teachers was launched and circulated across nine
ITE sites at roughly the midway-point of their ITE programme. The survey link was sent to
programme directors at each of the nine sites to be distributed to their students. To ensure
that anonymity was maintained, but to allow us to match up responses from this survey to
the second survey, participants were asked to create a unique identifier that included one
letter and six numbers. For ease of memory, we suggested that the participants could use
their birth date preceded by the first letter of their surname. As the following section on the
second survey will reveal, this means of matching up individual responses to the first and
second surveys did not work out as well as anticipated.

Student Survey Questionnaire 2 (SQ2)

Towards the end of their ITE programme, student teachers were asked to complete a second
survey questionnaire. The purpose of the questionnaire was to gather further responses from
students at this stage in their training, and to allow us to determine whether, and to what
extent, the full ITE programme and any input on EAL received during the programme had
developed their understanding of how to support EAL learners in general and in their own
subject specialist areas. The second online survey was again circulated to each of the nine
participant institutions.

The survey began by asking students if they had completed the first survey and, if they had
done so, to enter their unique identifiers. If they had not completed the first survey, or had
forgotten their identifiers, they were asked to complete the same series of background
questions that featured in SQ1. Attention then turned to any EAL-related support or input
that the students had received during their course. The question set for the second survey is
summarised in Box 3.2.

25
Box 3.2: Question set for the second student survey.
Students were asked to supply the following information:

As in SQ1, students were asked if they had received any input during the
institution-based part of their course directly related to working with
EAL/bilingual learners. They were also asked if they had received any school-
based training in relation to EAL, and if so were asked to provide brief details
of this input/training.

Students were asked to rate, (using a three-point scale of very little

understanding/some increase in understanding/considerable increase in
understanding), the extent to which any input they had received had given
them a better understanding of the needs of EAL learners.

They were then asked to rate the extent to which they had been able to
develop extra strategies, ideas and resources for responding effectively to
EAL learners.

Students were invited to highlight: any particular type of input that they
found particularly helpful; any matters that were not covered or that needed
to be addressed in greater depth; matters that they perceived as key in
learning how to meet the language and literacy needs of EAL pupils; any
strategies or ideas that they would put into practice in the classroom.

Questions from SQ1 were repeated including a rating of their confidence in

supporting EAL learners, and views on how language is best acquired.

Students were asked to give their views on the extent to which educators are
responsible for meeting the needs of EAL learners, and invited to provide any
additional comments and/or more general reflections on EAL-related
matters.

26
Number of respondents to the surveys

Figure 3.1: Number of respondents to each survey, numbers who answered both surveys,
numbers in the second survey who remembered their unique identifier.

Number of respondents

First Questionnaire 182

Second Questionnaire 54

Both Questionnaires 34

Both and remembered UI 19

0 50 100 150 200

A total of 182 student teachers responded to SQ1, which can be viewed as a very acceptable
sample size. However, the same cannot be claimed for the second survey. A total of 54
responses were received for SQ2, of which 34 responded to both questionnaires and 19
responded to both and remembered their unique identifier. This disappointing response rate
appeared to be due to several factors, one of which was the timing of the launch towards the
end of the academic year. The intention was to allow student teachers to consider any EAL
input, support or learning across their ITE programme, however the timing of the launch also
coincided with their final exams and projects and so many may not have had the time
available to complete the survey. The implications for data analysis of the lower than
anticipated responses to the second survey and the fact that only a limited number of
responses to each survey could be directly matched up will be discussed in a following section.

Focus Groups and Interviews

Focus groups and individual interviews were conducted at the two primary research sites with
both teacher educators and student teachers. The interviews were highly interactive in their
form with a focus on generating open discussion with participants on key topics. The
interviews were conducted in two stages: first at the mid-point of the academic year and then
towards the end of the academic year, with an intervention session delivered in-between.
The second interviews allowed the project team to follow up on initial discussions and explore
with the student teachers their experience in relation to EAL pupils during their time spent in
schools. In addition, feedback was invited from the tutors and students on the intervention
sessions, which included the initial versions of resources developed by the project team.

27
The topics for teacher educator focus groups and interviews included:

• Information on their background in education and initial teacher education, their

knowledge of EAL issues and experience of teaching EAL pupils, and any CPD
opportunities available to them;
• Links with partnership schools and whether their ITE programme has an overall
strategy that supports student teachers to meet the needs of EAL pupils;
• The challenges for teacher educators in preparing students to teach EAL pupils;
• The challenges associated with developing language and literacy, for all school pupils
and for EAL pupils in particular;
• Subject specific issues, and any aspects of their own practice that they wished to
highlight;
• Suggestions for tools, resources, CPD; and in the second phase of interviews
comments and feedback on the intervention session and any other input on EAL
received during the ITE programme.

Topics for student teacher focus groups and interviews included:

• Information on background, ITE programme, and any experience teaching EAL or as

an EAL learner;
• Views on their ITE programme, how it addressed EAL issues and any provision, input,
provided to support the teaching of EAL pupils;
• Experiences of teaching EAL pupils in schools, thoughts on school placement and
confidence in ability to meet the language and literacy needs of EAL pupils;
• Perceptions of challenges for EAL pupils, and for all school pupils, in developing
language and literacy skills;
• Any subject specific issues in relation to EAL or developing language and literacy;
• Thoughts on the role of teachers and school practice in relation to meeting the
needs of EAL pupils;
• In the second set of interviews, comments and feedback were invited on any
intervention session that they had received in relation to EAL.

Focus groups and interviews: sample

The sample for focus groups and interviews comprised 16 teacher educators and 17 student
teachers spread across the two primary sites. Both primary and secondary PGCE students
were interviewed, as well as Teach First and School Direct participants. Student teachers on
PGCE secondary programmes came with a variety of subject specialisms, including English,
Maths, Physics, and Physical Education. Likewise, the teacher educators came with a range of
subject specialisms and roles, including a Science and English tutor, PGCE Leaders, Partnership
Manager, School Direct Lead and Lead for Teach First. A similar, but not altogether identical,
sample of teacher educators was interviewed in the phase of the initial piloting of resources.

28
Table 3.1a: Interview and Focus Group Participants: Site 1.

Teacher Educators 9
Student Teachers (Secondary) 7

ITable 3.1a: Interview and Focus Group Participants: Site 2.

Teacher Educators 7
Student Teachers (Primary) 8
Student Teachers (Secondary) 2

Analysis of data

A preceding section has set out the disparity in the number of responses to the two student
surveys and that responses to the first and second surveys could only be matched up for a
small sub-set of respondents. These circumstances somewhat thwarted our intention at the
design stage to give a very close-grained analysis of similarities and differences across the two
data sets, using inferential statistics where apposite. However, it has still been possible,
(within the constraints that we have outlined), to conduct a close analysis of the data within
each survey and to present comparisons between the two surveys where they were clearly
appropriate and justifiable.

The analysis of qualitative data followed closely the approach that we adopted in our
preceding study of ITE and EAL (Anderson, et al., 2016b). As in that preceding project, our aim
in this study has been to centre on representing the participant tutors’ and students’
understandings of, and views, concerning EAL-related matters. An important first stage
involved a close, interactive reading of the qualitative data that gave a secure basis on which
to generate inductively what Maxwell (2013: 108) has termed ‘substantive categories’. Such
substantive categories ‘are primarily descriptive, in a broad sense that includes description of
participants’ concepts and beliefs; they stay close to the data categorized’ (Maxwell, 2013:
108). The robustness of these categories and of interpretations based on them was
scrutinised by the research team.

A key consideration within the analysis of the qualitative findings was to give due attention
to the range of conceptions and opinions that were expressed. Within this report, we have
set out not only to indicate what were majority views, but also to represent the range of
opinions on an issue and not to overlook ‘outliers’.

Based on the data analysis, the project team identified four key themes that would guide the
development of the project resources: Conceptualisations of EAL and Professional
Responsibilities; Talking and Thinking about Language; Meeting Language and Literacy Needs;
Teacher Confidence and Teacher Education.

29
The Development and Piloting of Resources

One of the key aims of the project was for the research team to design resources and
materials, using the overarching principles of an inclusive approach that recognises the
intrinsic value of diversity, to extend the knowledge base, conceptions and strategies of
teacher educators and student teachers in relation to meeting the language and literacy
needs of EAL pupils.

Drawing on the findings of the first phase of the research project and relevant literature
concerning EAL and initial teacher education, the project team developed initial drafts of the
resources for piloting based primarily on themes 1 (Conceptualisations of EAL) and 2 (Talking
and Thinking about Language) but drawing on aspects of each of the four themes. Materials
trialled in these sessions comprised presentations, exercises, extracts from data highlighting
particular issues regarding EAL, and, as stated above, were underpinned by literature related
to EAL and ITE. In devising the materials, the research team was also alert to the policy
context, including the National Curriculum and the requirements the Curriculum makes
concerning knowledge about language. The resources encouraged participants to consider
and discuss concepts of EAL and language, literacies and communication, with some language
tasks aimed at highlighting the challenges and barriers faced by EAL pupils in the classroom.

Piloting of these draft resources was conducted by the research project team with teacher
educators at sites 1 and 2, and then extended to three other sites. Teacher educators were
asked to provide verbal feedback and comments on the resources and these were recorded
to guide further development of the materials. Recorded feedback was transcribed and
analysed and fed into the on-going development and refinement of the materials, with the
aim that the final resources would to a certain degree be co-produced by the research project
team and project participants. It was also intended that the resources would be trialled by
the teacher educators with student teachers at each of the pilot sites. At one site the
resources were presented to student teachers directly by members of the project team as
another form of piloting. At the time of writing the final versions of the resources are being
developed and are due to be published from late 2018 onwards.

Generalisability

From the outset we took care to ensure that we did not generalise our findings
inappropriately. However, we would suggest that the views, concerns, issues and challenges
reported by our participants are likely to be similar to those encountered by students and
staff in other universities, that they may possess some degree of generality. Indeed, there are
similarities between the findings from this project and those from previous research projects
conducted by the project team in this area, for example Anderson et al. (2016b) which
focused on two ITE programmes at universities in Scotland. That research in this area
continues to raise familiar issues and challenges with regards to UK teacher education
programmes and EAL suggests that the resources developed as part of the current project, in
collaboration with ITE providers, are both timely and necessary.

30
Ethical Issues

Ethical approval was sought and given by the Ethics Committees in both universities used as
primary research sites, and data collection and reporting followed closely the guidelines
published by the British Educational Research Association (BERA). Permission to undertake
the research was sought from programme directors at each site, who were also given
information sheets and consent forms. Separate forms were prepared for students and for
staff informants, and these were distributed before the interviews and focus groups. Both
sets of informants were assured that should they wish any additional information this would
be provided. Assurances were given that when reporting the research it would not be possible
to identify either individuals or institutions and that at all times confidentiality and anonymity
would be assured.

For the survey, students were not asked to sign paper copies of consent forms. It was
considered that having read the information sheets and the assurances given at the beginning
of the survey, the decision to participate would be taken as informed consent. We have set
out earlier the careful steps we took to ensure that anonymity was maintained in any
matching of students’ responses to the first questionnaires with their responses to the second
questionnaires.

As researchers, our own conceptualisation and action in relation to research ethics was not
confined to these matters of gaining informed consent and ensuring anonymity. Consonant
with a ‘virtue ethics’ approach (Macfarlane, 2009), we recognised the need for a continuing
close attentiveness and responsiveness to the participants in our research. We regarded it as
important ‘to move attention away from the idea of research ethics as a neatly delineated
sphere of issues and concerns to foreground the relationships between researchers and
participants and the qualities that the researcher can be expected to exhibit in such
relationships’ (Anderson and Sangster, 2010, p.130).

31
Chapter 4: Background of the Student Respondents

The Introduction to this report has flagged up the linguistic and cultural diversity of the
current school population in England. The question arises of the extent to which student
teachers mirror this increasing diversity. What knowledge of languages do they possess? Have
they experienced any crossing of national boundaries in their own education? Are they
bringing life and work experience that is pertinent to working with EAL pupils? Addressing
these questions was seen as an important research objective in the current project: as a
valuable end in itself; as providing a context against which to interpret the survey findings;
and as providing information to inform the design of resources. This background information
also informed the design of the resources linked to the project outcomes.

The following sub-sections provide an overview of the background of the respondents to the
surveys. Given that there were only 20 respondents to the second survey who had not
responded to the first survey, attention is focused on giving a detailed description of
responses to the background questions in the first survey.

Gender

Looking first at gender, out of the 178 respondents to the question asking them to state their
gender, 153 (86%) were female and 25 (14%) male. These figures need to be viewed against
the ratio of women to men in the teacher workforce in England where in November 2016
‘almost three out of four school teachers are female and four out of five school employees
are female.’ (DfE, 2017d, p.7).

Primary/ Secondary and subject specialisms

There was a fairly even division between primary and secondary student teachers in the first
survey. The question ‘please indicate whether you are a Primary or Secondary student
teacher’ revealed that 95 (52.2%) were enrolled on a Primary programme and 87 (47.8%) on
a Secondary programme.

Primary subject specialisms

Primary student teachers were asked to ‘indicate if you have a specialism.’ 12 out of the 77
responses to this question simply stated ‘no’ or’ N/A’. Of the 65 positive responses: 17
students stated that their specialism was ‘English’; two others English and Early Years; and
one ‘MFL [Modern Foreign languages] /English’. It would be appropriate to expect these
students to be equipped by their programmes not only to develop pupils’ communication in
English across the different language modes but also to share knowledge about how to foster
literacies in the English language with future colleagues. A much smaller number, 5, (including
the “MFL/English’ response), said that they were specialising in a language, (1 French, 1
Spanish), or languages.

32
6 indicated that they were specialising in ‘Early Years’ and 5 others in Early Years and a specific
subject, (e.g. humanities/early years’, ‘early years science’). 9 were focusing on Maths, 5 on

Science and 4 on Computing. 5 were enrolled in the area of ‘SEN’, 2 in ‘Inclusion’ and 1 in an
‘international specialism’. Only two students were concentrating on PE, with 2 also
concentrating on ‘History and Geography’, 1 in History, and 1 in Humanities.

Secondary subject specialisms

82 of the 87 secondary student teachers gave a positive response to the question asking them
to state their subject area(s). 28 of the 82, i.e. almost exactly a third, were studying to be
English teachers. The observation made in the preceding paragraph concerning primary
school teachers specialising in English applies with equal force here. 11 were going to be
teaching Modern Foreign Languages, and one History and French. 13 were aiming to teach a
Science subject; 11 Maths; and 5 Psychology. There were only 3 individuals enrolled in PE as
a subject and a similar number in Geography. Two individuals were going to teach Latin with
Classics; and Art, History, RE, Music and Social Science featured one student each.

Location of primary and secondary education

To gain some sense of the extent to which respondents had experienced the crossing of
national boundaries within their own educational experience, they were asked ‘if your
primary or secondary education was outside the UK please tick any of the areas below that
are applicable’, with the continents as response categories. 24, (13.2%) of the total sample,
stated that they had been educated outside the UK, with the figures breaking down as
follows: 2 (1.1%) Africa, 4 (2.2%) Asia, 16 (8.8%) Europe, 2 (1.1%) South America.

Age distribution

The age distribution of the respondents to the first survey was:

Figure 4.1: Age distribution.

33
It will be seen from Figure 4.1 that just under a third of respondents were aged thirty-five or
over and therefore would be bringing considerable work experience to their role in the
classroom.

Previous work experience

It seemed germane to explore in the first survey whether or not respondents were bringing
life and work experience that was pertinent to working with EAL learners. Accordingly, a
question asked them to ‘indicate your prior work experience’. Responses to this question
sometimes flagged up voluntary activities as well as preceding jobs and professional roles. 36
of the 171 respondents to this question indicated that they had occupied a Teaching Assistant
role, sometimes for a considerable period of time, (‘10 years TA/HLTA in a multi-cultural
Junior School’); while others indicated that they had undertaken voluntary work in a support
role in schools. Fifteen stated that they had previously been engaged in teaching English
language in some capacity or other. For example: ‘CELTA qualified English teacher’; ‘English
language assistant in Germany’; ‘ESOL tutor and programme manager’; ‘Teaching English as
a foreign language in Iran and Italy’; ‘EAL specific work in a Nursery’.

Preceding experience of teaching EAL learners

A following question asked directly: ‘have you had any informal, or more formal, experience
of teaching (in English) learners for whom English is not their first language?’ A third, 49, of
the replies to this question indicated that they had had no experience of this kind. It was clear
from the descriptions given in another 24 responses that experience of teaching EAL learners
had only been gained on placement and therefore half of the respondents could be clearly
identified as having had no teaching role in relation to EAL learners prior to commencing their
training. 35 simply stated that ‘YES’ they had had such experience. (For these ‘YES’ responses,
one cannot be confident that they are necessarily referring to a period prior to teacher
training.)

The remaining responses did provide some detail on the nature of their teaching in relation
to EAL; and it was possible to group the bulk of these responses into a number of categories.
11 indicated that they had had a teaching role outside of the UK, (e.g., ‘English teacher in
Sierra Leone’); 8 in the role of a teacher or teaching assistant; 6 as a volunteer, or through
informal contact, outside the UK; and 7 as volunteers in the UK. A few responses pointed up
communications within the family: ‘Speaking to my baby sisters (Mongolian mother, English
father)’.

A few cautionary notes need to be sounded concerning the interpretation of this set of
findings. We have observed that one needs to be cautious about what a ‘YES’ response may
mean, and the extent of the experience gained by some of the respondents in a volunteering
role may possibly in some cases have been quite limited and the approaches employed may
not have been in line with current thinking in the field of EAL. Even when these caveats are
taken into account, this set of findings appears to contain a clear message for the design of
programmes concerning EAL in ITE in that they need to accommodate the fact that
participants will be coming with markedly contrasting levels of prior interaction with EAL

34
learners. We will return to this question of disparity in amount of contact with EAL learners
when we report later on the distinct variability across placements in the number of EAL
learners.

Respondents as EAL learners

Such a programme also needs to take account of the fact that a number of trainee teachers
will themselves have been EAL learners. A question in the first survey asked ‘If English is not
your first language, have you ever been an EAL/ESL learner in the UK or another English-
speaking country?’ 16 (8.8%) indicated that they had been or were an EAL/ESL learner. Most
of these 16 respondents did not describe the nature of their EAL experience, but two did make
short statements that pointed to a distinctly bilingual upbringing in the UK, with one of them
stating that ‘I was born in London so learnt Spanish and English simultaneously’. One
respondent wrote of being an EAL/ESL learner ‘at this very moment in the University.’ This
observation can be seen to highlight the question of how well ITE programmes respond to
participants who themselves happen to be EAL learners.

Formal qualifications for teaching English language

The survey revealed that almost a tenth of respondents had gained an academic qualification
in teaching English language. There were 17 (9.3%) positive responses to the question ‘Do you
have any formal qualifications for teaching English as a foreign language (e.g. CELTA/DELTA?)’.
Five indicated that they had a CELTA qualification, one CELTA and DELTA. Eight indicated that
they had a ‘TEFL’ qualification, (e.g. ‘150 hour Advanced Online TEFL course’), and one an
“EAL certificate’. One respondent had graduated with a BA Hons (Minor) English Language
Teaching’ and another simply stated ‘Yes, from University.’ Although not possessing
qualifications that focus on the needs of EAL pupils, this group of respondents could be
expected to contribute knowledge about language and language learning to the schools
where they work.

Other languages

It appeared important to investigate the extent to which this group of trainee teachers who
were likely to be working in multilingual classrooms perceived themselves as capable of
speaking another language. Accordingly, respondents were asked ‘Do you speak a language
other than English? If so, what language(s) do you speak?’ It needs to be acknowledged that
respondents encountering this question may have varied in the standards that they felt
needed to be achieved to qualify as a ‘speaker’ of another language. There were 125
responses to this question, but of these 55 replied ‘No’ or ‘N/A’, and one ‘none fluently’. Thus
there were 69 positive replies, 55.2%, to this statement, (37.9% of the total sample).

Looking first at respondents who identified that they spoke a single language other than
English, the most commonly occurring response, 9, was French, (with a few individuals
inserting qualifications: ‘French but not fluent’, ‘Basic French’), followed by Spanish at 5, and
German at 3. Two stated that they spoke Bengali, two Punjabi, and two Welsh. The following

35
list of languages had only one speaker each: Afrikaans, Arabic, British Sign Language, Greek,
Gujarati, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Pashto, (Basic) Polish, Romanian, Turkish, Urdu.

Looking at pairs of languages, 6 respondents identified themselves as having French and

German, and 6 as having French and Spanish. Two described themselves as speaking Spanish
and Catalan. The following combinations of languages other than English had one speaker
each, with French often being one of the two languages: French and Italian; Albanian, Italian;
some Japanese and Korean; Sinhalese, Tamil; French and Punjabi; Italian and Spanish; French
and Russian; French and Krio; Dutch and French; French (not fluent) and Brazilian Portuguese
(not fluent); Urdu and Arabic.

The following six respondents indicated that they spoke three or more languages: Farsi, Italian
and Arabic; German, some Portuguese, some Dutch; French, German, some Spanish;
Cebuano, Tagalog and basic Spanish; Spanish, Italian and Portuguese; Slovak, Czech, English,
German, Spanish.

Some notes of caution have been sounded concerning how respondents may have
interpreted this question. Even when this caveat is taken into account, it is a striking finding
that only 37.9% of the total sample noted that they spoke a language or languages in addition
to English. The majority of respondents therefore would not appear themselves to be able to
participate directly in translanguaging practices. The languages that were spoken were largely
those of Western European countries, with only a small number speaking Slavic languages.
Given the location of the respondents’ primary and secondary education, it is not surprising
that Middle-Eastern, Asian and African languages were scarcely represented in responses to
this question.

36
Chapter 5: Conceptualisations of EAL and of Professional Responsibilities

Previous research with teachers has begun to indicate the ways in which their professional
identities influence their professional roles and their perceptions of their students (Varghese
et al., 2005; Hobson et al. 2009; Cajkler and Hall, 2012a). Accordingly, we recognised that it
was important to gain an insight into the experiences and knowledge that participants in this
research study, both tutors and students, brought to their work. We argue that these
experiences feed into their perceptions of what is involved in the ‘region’ of EAL and that it is
important to delineate these perceptions. In the case of EAL, research is beginning to show
that the construction of professional identity is linked to the professional and personal
experiences of multilingualism and cultural diversity that teachers bring to their work (e.g.
Pavlenko and Blackledge, 2004; Miller, 2010). There is also some emerging evidence that
teachers who have such experience are more able to appreciate the positive potential of
multilingualism in their classrooms and to provide affordances for learning for their pupils
from diverse backgrounds (Martin-Jones and Saxena, 2003; Conteh et al., 2014). At the same
time, there is evidence that professionals feel constrained by the system in opening out such
potential (Conteh et al, 2014; Foley, 2013; Anderson et al, 2016b).

This chapter presents the overarching constructions of EAL of the teacher educators in our
study and of the student respondents’ conceptions of professional responsibilities in relation
to EAL. We look first at teacher educators’ views on the definition of ‘EAL’, then move to
consider their expectations concerning requisite knowledge about language and language
diversity, followed by their thoughts on distinguishing between EAL and Special Educational
Needs (SEN). The second part of the chapter examines first the teacher educators’ and then
the student teachers’ beliefs concerning professional roles and responsibilities in relation to
EAL.

Defining ‘EAL’: Teacher educators’ conceptions

Heterogeneity

Among tutors, there was clearly good awareness of the diversity of pupils who came under
the umbrella of EAL. The following two comments, taken from focus group interviews with
teacher educators indicate this:

I think you made an interesting distinction as well earlier in that clearly

there's a, you know, EAL pupils, or pupils perceived as having English as an
additional language are far from a uniform bunch.

The second extract shows an understanding of the importance of knowing something of the
background and prior language knowledge of new arrivals in school, and gives a sense of the
complexity of this:

37
 … And there's definitely a difference between somebody whose main
languages at home is probably not English but they've spoken English ever
since a very early age in school with their peers, and so on, and then recent

arrivals, some of whom … have almost not got a single word of English
when they arrive in the classroom, and clearly they've got very different
needs.

A teacher educator in Site 2 talked at length about the breadth of reference of the category
of EAL, which he felt was something that many student teachers were not aware of:

I think a lot of the students… you get a sense and a feeling that they are
looking for diversity for EAL, for very specific children. So, the Polish
children for instance don’t get counted in that. The children whose English
is very, very good and got a Sri Lankan background don’t get included in
that, in that same sort of sense… And in some cases the nature of the EAL
child within the school whose English is very, very good, but at home it’s
not their first language. And I think that almost gets missed by some
students sometimes.

Tutors involved in piloting materials in one of the research sites not only recognised this
breadth of reference of the term EAL, but also began to question whether having the label
‘EAL’ had a negative influence on teachers’ perceptions of their pupils. In the following
quotation one can observe Tutor 1 considering both sides of the argument concerning the
value of employing the term in schools:

Tutor 1: So, is the term EAL actually a barrier?

Tutor 2: Yes!

Tutor 1: You know and would these pupils’ and schools’ perceptions do
better if the term didn’t exist? Does good teaching really cover
it all or does good teaching do a pretty good job but unless
there's a specific EAL focus it misses certain things?

Requisite knowledge about language and language diversity

Our interviews revealed that some tutors were concerned about the lack of knowledge about
languages and language diversity that their students brought to their training. This chimes
with Cajkler and Hall’s research (2012b) where they argue for the importance of enhancing
the language capabilities of new teachers. A teacher educator in Site 2 commented in her
interview both about her students’ lack of knowledge of the local context and of languages
more broadly:

And quite often they're quite surprised… where I asked them to predict the
numbers of languages which are spoken in X schools, lots of the students

38
 are completely amazed. The other thing that I would then do is ask them
to then predict what the languages are in order of popularity. And that's
also very eye-opening that some of the students, their understanding of
different languages is quite worrying. So, we have, in the past, I've had
students referring to African as a language, or Indian as a language.

The following chapter looks in depth at this topic of the knowledge of language that teachers
require if they are to interact responsively and effectively with EAL learners. For the moment,
it is important to note that while the teacher educators we interviewed had considerable
concerns about student teachers’ knowledge in the area of language, they were not
presenting a blanket, deficit view of their linguistic capacities. For example, a teacher
educator from one of our primary research sites had noticed the possible positive influence
of trainees who themselves were multilingual and had experience of diverse cultures. She
suggested that they seemed to have a better understanding of ways to benefit multilingual
pupils:

I think that trainees who have English as an additional language themselves

are much better placed … they’ve got many more strategies than English as
a first language trainees.

This perception has been corroborated in research, such as Cajkler and Hall’s (2012b).
However, Safford and Drury (2013) show how multilingual trainees can be prevented from
activating their expertise where appropriate both in their training institution and on school
placements.

Distinguishing between ‘EAL’ and ‘SEN’

The need to understand the ways in which EAL and SEN are different fields, each with their
own distinctive features, has been a recurrent theme in the literature over the years
(Cummins, 1984). It was a main finding in the large, Training and Development Agency for
Schools (TDA)-funded research project into the needs of the EAL workforce carried out in
England between 2008-2010 (IOE, 2009):

There seems to be a lack of clarity of the distinctions between EAL and SEN
with the consequence that there is often no clearly identified criteria for
identifying the language needs of pupils. In one school the provision for
pupils with EAL was handled by the SENCO who had had SEN training but
none in EAL.

This view was echoed by a teacher educator we interviewed, who clearly appreciated the
complexity of the issues:

I think it's quite important that EAL isn't just lumped in with diversity and
equality, and particularly becomes a little bit too dangerously close to SEN.

39
 Which, I think, a lot of students I've worked with, and indeed teachers I've
worked with, see the two as going in some way hand in hand. So, I think it's,
for me it's healthier to see them as two areas.

Another teacher educator suggested that part of the reason for this confusion could be to do
with the models of practice that students are exposed to in schools, and she linked this with
the lack of ‘definitive’ official guidance for EAL practice. This interview participant made the
point that while there might be practice in schools in relation to SEN that could be brought
into discussions in university-based training, such examples were generally lacking in relation
to EAL, so that discussion could only be hypothetical:

… certainly in input that I've done on EAL I would quite comfortably say this
is what schools do in relation to SEN but for EAL this is what schools should
do – but you might not see that in all schools. So, having something which
was more definitive in the same way that we have frameworks for SEN, it
might be useful.

The teacher educators’ observations that have been presented in the preceding paragraphs
can be read as pointing up the need for greater conceptual clarity in discussion, within teacher
education and more generally, of the differently located positions of EAL and SEN. In
particular, it can be argued that there is a need to distinguish between the different matters
of:
EAL and SEN as distinct fields of practice;
and
how individual schools may maintain distinct divisions between, or blur the boundaries
of, EAL and SEN provision;
and
the profile of EAL and SEN needs of an individual pupil.

Professional roles and responsibilities in relation to EAL: teacher educators’ perceptions

The interviews with the teacher educators in our study gave a clear sense that they themselves
had taken on board the message that EAL learners were the responsibility of all members of
the teaching profession and believed that this message needed to be conveyed to students.
The following extract from a focus group illustrates these points. Here the tutors stated that
EAL is about ‘permeation’ and should become ‘implicit’ to all practitioners, not just those who
may encounter EAL learners in their classrooms:

Tutor 1: Ultimately it’s about effective teaching and learning strategies;

and it’s just through the route of EAL that we’re looking at them
– they are effective teaching and learning strategies. So, it’s
not about oh, well I’ve got no EAL kids this year so I don’t need
to.

Int: I don’t need to worry about any of this.

40
 Tutor 2: Yeah! And it’s that sort of permeation, it should become
implicit to you as an effective practitioner that actually when
you face any challenge of a child who is struggling to engage
and understand the curriculum for whatever reason this is part

of your suite of strategies. And, you know, it’s like if you’ve had
a child with really challenging problems and whatever, and
you’ve adapted your teaching, you very often take them
because they’ve worked, they’ve worked so your next class you
create an environment that anticipates some of those things.

Int: Yes, exactly.

Tutor 3: You learn from them so if you like we want our students to
create an EAL-friendly classroom learning environment,
regardless of – they might never teach a child who would be
identified within the school as a child with EAL. But if they did,
if that child did arrive, that learning environment would already
be set up.

They also recognised that they themselves were not exempt from these responsibilities. Many
teacher educators expressed in different ways a lack of confidence in their own expertise in
guiding their students in EAL. This is a theme that we will pursue in depth in a following
chapter. At the same time, there was a recognition of the need to move forward on this front.
A teacher educator talked at length in a focus group about his own lack of experience, as a
mainstream teacher, with EAL learners. He moved on to describing how he had begun as a
teacher educator to ‘learn on the job’ by taking opportunities when in school to sit with EAL
learners and work out for himself what strategies might help them to access the curriculum:

I think as well one of the things that I don’t know whether everybody would
agree with me here, but from my personal experience, if you'd have asked
me a relatively short time ago, six or seven years, about strategies I think
of using for EAL children in the classroom, I'd have been blank. I didn’t have
any. Having been out in schools observing our trainees working with these
children, and looking at the situation they're working in with an analytical
frame of mind, you sort of start generating your own. In fact, I, I've done
lesson observations where there's been groups of children in the classroom
– EAL – and purely out of my own personal and professional curiosity I've
gone and sat and worked with those children, and tried to help them deal
with whatever the content of the lesson was. And I've learnt a lot for
myself in that process.

41
Professional roles and responsibilities in relation to EAL: students’ perceptions

EAL learners: who is responsible?

Central questions for the schooling of EAL learners are: where does the responsibility for
meeting their needs lie; and to what degree do individual teachers see themselves as having
a central role to play in ensuring that their needs are met? It seemed necessary therefore to
explore in our surveys where student teachers saw the responsibilities for meeting the needs
of EAL learners as being located. Accordingly, they were asked to rate the degree of
responsibility that educators occupying different roles have in relation to EAL learners.

It is heartening to see that across all the roles set out in Table 5.1 there were very few
responses in the categories ‘little responsibility’ and ‘no responsibility’, with no respondents
answering in these categories for ‘English teachers’ and for ‘class teachers of subjects other
than English’. The findings presented in Table 5.1 show that supporting EAL learners was not
in general perceived as being only a matter for EAL specialist services and of English teachers,
with 70.2% of respondents in the first survey and 75.9% in the second survey viewing ‘class
teachers of subjects other than English’ as having either ‘very large responsibility’ or ‘large
responsibility’. This finding and the overall distinctly positive responses to the set of items in
Table 5.1 suggest that the expectation that teachers should act to ‘take account of the needs
of pupils whose first language is not English’ have been largely taken on board by the
respondents to our surveys.

As Table 5.1 reveals there was broad similarity in the responses to most of the categories of
staff across the two surveys. Exceptions here are the rating of the responsibilities of ITE
providers and of classroom assistants. 47.5% of the students in the first survey believed that
ITE providers had ‘very large’ or ‘large’ responsibility, as opposed to the 62.9% who answered
in these categories in the second survey. This pattern of response in the second survey can
be read against students’ comments presented later in the report expressing concerns about
their lack of preparation in the area of EAL. The differences in the attribution of responsibility
to classroom assistants, (49.7% of participants in the first survey and 68.5% in the second
survey answering in the categories ‘very large responsibility’ or ‘large responsibility’), may
possibly reflect students’ greater exposure to the important role that classroom assistants
often play in assisting EAL learners. There was a certain increase in the second survey in the
rating of the responsibilities of SEN teachers and coordinators, (64.1% of participants in the
first survey and 74.1% in the second survey answering in the categories ‘very large
responsibility’ or ‘large responsibility’).

42
Table 5.1: students’ perceptions of the extent to which the following educators are
responsible for meeting the needs of EAL learners: ITE providers, EAL specialist services,
English teachers, class teachers of subjects other than English, classroom assistants, school
management. (First survey in black, second survey in blue).

Response very large large some little no

options responsibility responsibility responsibility responsibility responsibility
ITE providers 11.3% (20) 36.2% (64) 43.5% (77) 6.8% (12) 2.3% (4)
18.5% (10) 44.4% (24) 33.3% (18) 3.7% (2) 0% (0)
EAL 61.1% (107) 28.0% (49) 10.3% (18) 0% (0) 0.6% (1)
specialist
57.4% (31) 33.3% (18) 9.4% (5) 0% (0) 0% (0)
services
English 28.3% (51) 53.3% (96) 15.0% (27) 2.2% (4) 1.1% (2)
teachers
22.2% (12) 57.4% (31) 20.4% (11) 0% (0) 0% (0)

Class teachers 26.4% (47) 43.8% (78) 24.7% (44) 3.9% (7) 1.1% (2)
of subjects
22.2% (12) 53.7% (29) 24.1% (13) 0% (0) 0% (0)
other than
English
Classroom 15.1% (27) 34.6% (62) 40.2% (72) 8.9% (16) 1.1% (2)
assistants
14.8% (8) 53.7% (29) 29.6% (16) 1.9% (1) 0% (0)

School 34.4% (62) 40.6% (73) 19.4% (35) 4.4% (8) 1.1% (2)
management
37.0% (20) 40.7% (22) 20.4% (11) 1.9% (1) 0% (0)

SEN teachers 28.2% (51) 35.9% (65) 23.8% (43) 8.8% (16) 3.3% (6)
and
35.2% (19) 38.9% (21) 22.2% (12) 3.7% (2) 0% (0)
coordinators

43
Chapter 6: Talking and Thinking About Language

This chapter of the report is divided into three main parts. The first part presents a review of
students’ ratings in the surveys of the importance of EAL-related input on a range of specific,
language-related aspects of learning, teaching and assessment. The second part presents
students’ reactions in both surveys to a number of attitudinal statements concerning EAL and
language acquisition. In the third part, attention turns to qualitative findings from the project;
an account is given of central themes concerning EAL, language and literacy that emerged
from the interviews and free-text comments in the surveys. These themes are: learning
Englishes; the cognitive demands of moving between languages; vocabulary development:
what does it entail? subject specific literacies; and the importance of knowledge about
language(s).

Ratings of the importance of areas of EAL-related input

First survey

To gain a detailed sense of what the students themselves viewed as priority areas for their
education in EAL, they were asked in the first survey to rate the importance of EAL-related
input on the specific aspects of learning, teaching and assessment that are listed in Table 6.1.
These questions covered a range of aspects of language learning and literacy development.
This set of questions was designed with the purposes of both revealing what student teachers
regarded as important matters and of guiding the content of the resources that we were still
developing. In relation to the first purpose, it is encouraging to see that only a very small
number of respondents regarded these aspects as ‘not important’, with only two or three
individuals choosing this response category for many of the questions. This finding, taken in
conjunction with the students’ responses on class teachers’ responsibilities for EAL learners,
can be interpreted as indicating a lack of resistance to engaging with EAL pupils.

The overall pattern of response to the items set out in Table 6.1 also suggests that these
students were recognising the importance of developing their knowledge and strategies
related to EAL across a broad front. For most of the items listed in table 6.1 a, sometimes
large, majority of respondents answered within the categories ‘essential’ and ‘very
important’. An exception here is the item on ‘theories of bilingualism/multilingualism’, where
only 39.1% answered within these two categories. At the same time though there was a much
higher rating of the item ‘specific input on how a second/additional language is learned’, with
59.6% choosing the categories ‘essential’ and ‘very important’. The question on ‘the
importance of academic language’ also did not attract as high, though still a substantial,
rating, with 43.2% answering in the categories ‘essential’ and ‘very important’. (We recognise
that this item could have been phrased in a more precise manner.)

High ratings were given to the matters of learning vocabulary and recognising subject-specific
language that can be challenging to EAL pupils, along with ‘the development of literacies’ and
‘language across the curriculum’. It is heartening to see that students also gave a high rating
to ‘training in cultural/diversity awareness’. The highest rating was given to ‘assessing

44
EAL/bilingual learners’, perhaps reflecting students’ concerns about how they would address
this in every day practice.

Table 6.1: Responses to the question in the first survey: ‘Focusing on your current studies in
teacher education, please indicate the degree to which you think it would be important for
your future career to have EAL-related input on the following aspects of learning, teaching
and assessment.’

45
Table 6.1

Response Essential Very Important Fairly Not

categories important important important
Specific input on 27.8% (49) 31.8% (56) 23.3% (41) 15.9% (28) 1.1% (2)
how a second/
additional
language is
learned
Recognising the 32.0% (56) 36.0% (63) 25.7% (45) 5.1% (9) 1.1% (2)
specific language
that can cause
challenges for
pupils learning
EAL within your
subject area
The 24.6% (43) 36.0% (63) 30.9% (54) 6.8% (12) 1.7% (3)
development
of literacies
Learning literacy 28.2% (49) 33.9% (59) 27.6% (48) 8.6% (15) 1.7% (3)
in a
new/additional
language
Language across 31.0% (54) 31.6% (55) 27.6% (48) 6.9% (12) 2.9% (5)
the curriculum
Learning 29.4% (52) 32.2% (57) 28.8% (51) 5.6% (10) 3.9% (7)
vocabulary in a
new/additional
language
Learning 24.1% (42) 31.0% (54) 30.5% (53) 10.9% (19) 3.5% (6)
grammar in a
new/additional
language
The importance 14.8% (26) 28.4% (50) 38.6% (68) 15.3% (27) 2.8% (5)
of academic
language
Theories of 20.1% (35) 19.0% (33) 32.2% (56) 24.7% (43) 4.0% (7)
bilingualism
/multilingualism
Training in 35.1% (61) 29.9% (52) 28.2% (49) 5.7% (10) 1.1% (2)
cultural/diversity
awareness
Assessing EAL/ 44.8% (77) 29.1% (50) 22.1% (38) 2.9% (5) 1.1% (2)
bilingual
learners

46
Second survey

Moving on to the second survey, a different set of items was deployed here, with a focus on
everyday teaching tasks. The key finding would seem to be that all of the items in this set
were given high ratings. Combining the categories ‘very useful’ and ‘useful’, the percentage
of respondents answering in these two categories, ranged from 82% for ‘providing effective
feedback’ to 98.1% for ‘developing EAL learners’ vocabulary’. Very few answers were given in
the categories ‘little use’ and ‘not required’. At this later stage of their training, these students
were still flagging up the usefulness of ‘general input on learning/teaching an additional
language.’ As Table 6.2 shows, the respondents in the second survey were not simply
confining their attention to the practicalities of ‘devising resources/materials’ but were also
attending to the social integration of EAL learners and to how they could draw ‘appropriately
on EAL learners’ own linguistic and cultural background.’ The overall pattern of response
revealed in this table can be read as making an argument for providing a wide-ranging
education concerning EAL. How this could be achieved to any degree within the tight
constraints of very full initial teacher training programmes is a question that we return to in
chapter 9.

Table 6.2: Responses to the question in the second survey: ‘Thinking particularly of your own
subject area, please indicate the degree to which it would be useful for your future career to
have EAL-related input on the following aspects of learning, teaching and assessment.’

47
Table 6.2

Response Very Useful Some use Little use Not

categories useful Required
general input on 55.6% (30) 37.0% (20) 5.6% (3) 1.9% (1) 0% (0)
learning/teaching
an additional
language
Recognising 51.9% (28) 40.7% (22) 5.6% (3) 1.9% (1) 0% (0)
language that can
cause challenges
Devising 59.3% (32) 33.3% (18) 3.7% (2) 3.7% (2) 0% (0)
resources/materials
Differentiation of 63.0% (34) 29.6% (16) 7.4% (4) 0% (0) 0% (0)
content/activities
Involving EAL 63.0% (34) 31.5% (17) 3.7% (2) 1.9% (1) 0% (0)
learners in group
work
Involving EAL 57.4% (31) 33.3% (18) 9.3% (5) 0% (0) 0% (0)
learners in whole
class work
Language for 42.6% (23) 50.0% (27) 7.4% (4) 0% (0) 0% (0)
conceptual
understanding of
your subject(s)
Developing EAL 53.7% (29) 44.4% (24) 1.9% (1) 0% (0) 0% (0)
learners’
vocabulary
Drawing 40.7% (22) 51.9% (28) 7.4% (4) 0% (0) 0% (0)
appropriately on
EAL learners’ own
linguistic and
cultural
background
Creating 50.0% (27) 37.0% (20) 11.1% (6) 0% (0) 1.9% (1)
appropriate
assessments
Providing effective 55.6% (30) 26.4% (14) 15.1% (8) 0% (0) 1.9% (1)
feedback
Involving EAL 54.7% (29) 39.6% (21) 5.7% (3) 0% (0) 0% (0)
learners socially in
the life of the
classroom and
school

48
Attention now turns to an account of the findings concerning students’ beliefs about how
English can best be acquired.

How can English best be acquired?

A set of questions in both surveys explored students’ beliefs concerning language acquisition
and how EAL pupils might best be supported in their learning of English. Looking at the first
of these questions, Figure 6.1 displays the pattern of response in the first and second surveys
to the statement: ‘English is best acquired by being immersed in an English-speaking
environment.’ It will be seen that there was a very large degree of agreement with this
statement, with a higher proportion of respondents in the second survey answering in the
category ‘strongly agree’, (1st survey 25.3% ‘strongly agree’, ‘agree’, 59.6%; 2nd survey, 42.6%
‘strongly agree’, 48.6% ‘agree’).

49
Figure 6.1: English is best acquired by being immersed in an English-speaking environment.

50
A different pattern of response can be seen in Figure 6.2 to the statement: ‘English is best
acquired by the explicit teaching of the vocabulary and structure of the language.’ Here
there was a broadly similar distribution of responses across the two surveys and a distinct
division of opinion is evident. In the first survey 49.5% and in the second survey 55.6% of
respondents answered in the categories ‘strongly agree’ and ‘agree’; around a quarter of
respondents in both surveys were ‘unsure’, (1st survey, 26.4%; 2nd survey, 25.9%); and a
significant number ‘disagreed’ or ‘strongly disagreed’, (1st survey, 24.1%, 2nd survey, 18.6%).
One possible reading of this particular set of responses is that it is not in line with the strong
advocacy in some of the EAL literature for more explicit teaching of language structures and
forms. The belief that EAL learners can acquire English simply ‘ “by osmosis” ‘ (de Jong and
Harper, 2005, p.104) through immersion in an English-speaking environment has been
challenged vigorously in a considerable number of research studies with de Jong and Harper
(2005, p.105), for example, stating that ‘academic language often requires explicit modelling
and instructional focus’, and Fillmore and Snow (2000, p.22) arguing that ‘often explicit
teaching of language structures and uses is the most effective way to help learners.’

Figure 6.2: English is best acquired by the explicit teaching of the vocabulary and structure
of the language.

A more positive view of explicit teaching was, however, evident in responses to the
statement: ‘Learners need to be taught explicit strategies for transferring meaning from their
first language to their second language.’ This statement gained a largely positive reaction
from respondents. Figure 6.3 shows that the majority of students across both surveys agreed
with it. 69.5% of respondents in the first survey answered in the categories ‘strongly agree’

51
and ‘agree’ and 77.7% in these categories in the second survey. It will be seen that there was
a stronger positive reaction to this statement in the second survey, with 29.6% of respondents
answering in the category ‘strongly agree’ as opposed to 17.5% in the first survey, and only
14.8% in the second survey, as opposed to 26.6% in the first survey, being unsure.

Figure 6.3: Learners need to be taught explicit strategies for transferring meaning from their
first language (L1) to their second language (L2).

Figure 6.4 shows a certain shift in opinion between the first and second surveys towards a
more positive view of the statement: ‘EAL learners acquire language best through
participating in mainstream classes’, with 27.8% in the second survey, as opposed to 13% in
the first survey answering in the category ‘strongly agree’. The percentage ‘agreeing’ to this
statement was almost identical, (1st survey 50.3%, 2nd survey, 50%), but a smaller proportion
of respondents in the second survey were ‘unsure’, (1st survey, 27.7%, 2nd survey, 20.4%), and
only one student in the second survey responded in the category ‘disagree’.

52
Figure 6.4: EAL learners acquire language best through participating in mainstream classes.

It is interesting to note from Figure 6.5 the variation in opinion and the considerable stability
in the pattern of response to the statement: ‘EAL learners acquire English best through being
withdrawn from mainstream classes for targeted intervention.’ In both surveys around a
third, (30.3% in the 1st survey, 33.3% in the 2nd survey), were ‘unsure’ as to the truth of this
statement. Just under half of respondents (45% in the 1st survey, 42.6% in the 2nd survey)
‘disagreed’ or ‘strongly disagreed’ with the statement and a quarter indicated agreement.
(24.7% in the first survey and 24.1% in the second survey answered in the categories ‘agree’
and ‘strongly agree’.)

53
Figure 6.5: EAL learners acquire English best through being withdrawn from mainstream
classes for targeted interventions

There is a strong consensus in the EAL literature (e.g. Conteh, 2014; Garcia, 2009; Anderson
et al, 2016a) on the value of EAL pupils being able to draw on their own languages in school.
The findings presented in Figure 6.6 suggest that this message has only been taken on board
to a limited degree by the students within our surveys and show no positive shift in opinion
in the time period between the first and second survey. Almost equal proportions of students,
(43.8% in the 1st survey and 42.6% in the 2nd survey), answered in the categories ‘agree’ and
‘strongly agree’. A somewhat greater proportion of respondents in the first survey, 42.1%
compared to 35.2% in the second survey, were ‘unsure’ as to the truth of this statement; and
proportionately more in the second survey actually disagreed with it, 22.2% as opposed to
13.5% in the first survey. This set of findings would seem to indicate a need to convey more
forcefully in initial teacher training the message concerning the value of the use of home
languages in the classroom.

54
Figure 6.6: EAL learners will learn better if they can use their home languages in the
classroom

Language and literacy: central themes

We now move to consider central themes that have emerged from the analysis of the
qualitative data gathered in the project, starting with the topic of learning Englishes.

Learning Englishes

Observations made by a considerable proportion of staff and student participants revealed

that they explicitly, or more implicitly, recognised that EAL pupils faced the task of not simply
learning a unitary, discrete body of knowledge about English, but rather needed to master a
variety of forms of English and different academic literacies. An appreciation of the variety of
forms of English within the UK itself comes through very clearly in the following comment
from a member of staff: ‘You could in one sense argue that the vast majority of our students
are EAL in the sense that we all speak at least one dialect, at the very least, as well as standard
English.’ On the topic of EAL learners needing to understand a local dialect, one lecturer
remarked that:

55
 Well, I was just thinking that because if they’ve [EAL pupils] had some schooling in
English in the home counties and then they come to somewhere like the Black
Country where it’s not just an accent but it, you know, there’s dialect.

Another staff participant pointed up how certain features of accent and dialect can be
narrowly specific to a particular locality: ‘even the variation within the region is enormous, if
you go from Dudley to Wolverhampton, Birmingham’s completely different’.

One student highlighted the example of an EAL pupil who had wholly assimilated a local
dialect, while another student talked about the case of a pupil whom she perceived as not yet
speaking the everyday language of his peers.

… when I was at a school in X where one of the girls came in with a really strong
Black Country accent … she tried to show a text to the teacher and said in the Black
Country dialect, ‘Oh, well, you can’t read it ‘cause it’s in Russian.’ … So she was an
EAL child but you wouldn’t have known.

There’s a lad in one of my groups and he’s Indian but has just moved from Italy …
He’s got an Indian language, he’s got the Italian and now he’s trying to pick up the
English; and he does very well but it is so overly formal. I don’t know what he reads
at home ‘cause it’s not how the kids speak. … It’s really, really overly formal.

The difficulties that may arise for EAL pupils when schools set out to ‘police’ the forms of
English spoken in the classroom are captured in the following account from a student of an
incident in class:

At my school there’s a big issue at the moment of correcting people’s language

‘cause they’re trying to correct this Black Country accent that’s dominating our
school … And I had an EAL pupil last week say something like ‘wor’, I can’t even
pronounce it to you. But I tried to correct it and he just looked at me … he’s just
like completely blank, going straight over his head. And I thought how can I correct
his English when that’s what he’s learnt. So like for me to correct him, he’s got to
learn something completely new. But it’s our school policy that they’re making us
do. It’s confusing matters even more.

The resources that we developed in this project draw attention to features of dialect, a matter
that tends not to receive any sustained attention in EAL education programmes. They also
involve participants in considering differences between the grammar of spoken and written
language.

The cognitive demands of moving between languages

A number of student and staff participants showed an awareness of the considerable

cognitive, and associated emotional, demands that EAL learners may face in moving between
their first language(s) and English – a first language that may have very different phonological,

56
morphological, syntactic and textual structures from English. On this theme a student
respondent to the second questionnaire stated that:

Being able to speak another language has enabled me to empathise with and
support EAL student needs: such as understanding how tired you can feel when
translating for prolonged periods of time. How children (EAL) who seem to be
working at or above the expected level in all subjects can sometimes struggle with
a complex task such as syntax.

It is a fairly common practice in sessions alerting students to the experience of EAL learners to
subject them to ‘language shock’, i.e. to make them listen to a short talk or attempt to
decipher a text in a language with which they have no, or very little, familiarity. We have also
used this approach with success in past initiatives and in this current project. While this
approach has distinct value, there are clearly limitations in the extent to which it replicates
the classroom tasks faced by many EAL learners. Accordingly, our draft resource on ‘Language
Detectives: Exploring structures and patterns across and within languages’ used a modified
Linguistic Olympiad (http://www.uklo.org) puzzle to allow a rather closer approximation to
the active problem-solving, hypothesis-testing and inferencing that EAL pupils may often need
to employ in moving between the structures and lexis of their own languages and English. This
activity was well-received by the teacher educators when we trialled it in one research site.
The following comment from a teacher educator points up the value of such an exercise that
provides a clear sense of the cognitive challenges, and their associated emotional demands,
that may be faced by many EAL learners:

I think the activity to put them in the place of the learner is really important,
because it’s all very well telling someone it’s different, it’s hard, but that’s the
closest they’ll get, possibly, to really having an understanding of. Because if you
think about how long we spent on one, two, three, four, five, six, seven sentences,
and analysing it and talking about it. But in the classroom, the kids, the sentences
come and go, and there are hundreds within a lesson. So when you multiply what
we went through to decode just seven sentences, and that they’re having to do
that in real time as the speech is happening, reading ‘s going on and we’re moving
from one activity to the next, to the next. And the emotional impact that that can
have on the kids, and how exhausting it is.

Another lecturer pointed out how EAL learners may often face the large cognitive load of
dealing in parallel with reading a text and attending to teacher talk that may have only a
tangential relation to that text; and made the following suggestion for a training activity:

Well it might be quite interesting actually, on that point, to almost replicate the
environment that some of our students find themselves in by presenting them
with some text in that language but also having someone speaking that language
but completely different to what’s on the text; because that’s what we do, isn’t it?
We present a worksheet, and then we talk about something that’s vaguely related
to the worksheet that’s different to what’s on the words – they’re trying to
translate that and what you’re saying, and, I think, if we can put trainees into that

57
 kind of pressure situation a little bit it might make them appreciate a bit more
what an EAL learner is going through.

Vocabulary development: what does it entail?

On the topic of vocabulary development one staff participant noted that a ‘positive side’ of
the new curriculum is that ‘vocabulary development is very much emphasised, as is the
teaching of grammar.’ However, this participant then went on to qualify this enthusiastic
statement by stressing the need for any approach to vocabulary development to be infused
with an alertness to ‘the importance of world knowledge’:

Thinking about the importance of world knowledge, and prior knowledge. And
this again, this is about good teaching of reading. Recognising that whilst pupils
may be able to say their words, we can’t be sure that they understand what those
words mean. … There’s a lot of, you know, children are very quick to pick up how
to use phonics and decode words. But, you know, children from another culture
you’ve got to be, you know, particularly aware of the fact that they might not
know what a bedspread is, or a piggy bank … you would want them [students] to
be doing that with all pupils, but I think that’s particularly important for children
who [are EAL learners].

As the concluding chapter of this report will reveal the resources that we devised to aid
vocabulary development aim to move tutors and students away from a narrow denotative
definition to considering the network of meanings associated with a word and the contexts
of their use.

Subject specific literacies

There was a recognition on the part of quite a number of the interview participants of the
challenges that the lexis, syntax and text structures of individual school subjects might pose
for EAL learners. The following quotation from a staff participant encapsulates the main thrust
of talk on this topic:

Scientific literacy … I don’t think students realise that the absorption of English
takes as long as it does – and then on the outside a child could be functioning,
speaking, getting on with peers but, you know, when it comes to specific subjects
like science actually it’s got a whole language and literacy of its own that need sort
of an understanding.

Her comments here resonate with the well-established finding that achieving literacy in
English in academic subjects has a much lengthier trajectory than that of achieving fluency in
English for general communicative purposes (Thomas and Collier, 1997; Cummins, 1984,
2000). Implicitly at least, they also point up the need to unpack the form as well as the content
of school subjects.

58
The following statement reveals how one of the student participants appreciated the
additional challenge that can arise for EAL learners when difficult concepts cast in subject-
specific lexis are being explicated in English:

… [for EAL pupils] it would be very difficult especially with physics because you
need to have a good grasp of English. Like, for instance, when you, say, explain the
concepts of mass and weight – English kids themselves think of it as the same
thing. But in physics it’s different. So, I imagine for an EAL child, even if they’re
fluent, like for them to kind of grasp that will be difficult … I can imagine it being
extra difficult.

Another student participant brought out clearly the difficulties that can arise for EAL pupils
when they lack secure knowledge of English to serve as a foundation for literary analysis:

… one of my biggest challenges is the accessibility of the texts that they’re

studying, which is really difficult. So I can’t get the whole of the Shakespeare play
translated into Slovakian; and then on top of that we’ve got to go through literary
devices … I’m trying to teach what personification is and stuff like that. And they
haven’t even got a clue what the sentence is in front of them. So it’s like all the
requirements for English, it’s just extremely difficult for pupils whose basic English
isn’t good enough. Because if you’re not understanding what the sentence is
saying, how can you explain what the techniques are.

For one of the study sites the current project created a session for delivery to student teachers
on EAL and subject literacies. Staff commented favourably on this session, with one lecturer,
for example, stating that:

… they [the students] saw it as really relevant, they were really interested by it.
They found it really accessible. They understood all of the concepts. They were
able to draw local comparisons. And I think it enhanced their practice of what they
do with EAL pupils who they have in the classroom.

This session was also seen to have had a more general benefit in enhancing students’ thinking
about supporting the literacy of all their students. Here is a Modern Foreign Language lecturer
on this theme: ‘It was kind of dual purpose. It enhanced what they were doing in MFL, but also
made them think about the wider issues. And, and supporting literacy in general, but I thought
it was a really good opportunity to raise awareness as well.’

A teacher educator in PE echoed this message concerning the benefits for all pupils of focusing
students’ attention on EAL and subject literacies, and in addition highlighted the message that
the session gave that attention to language is a key part of the teacher’s role.

But it’s also, I think, it’s made them think about in terms of PE terminology,
especially when it comes to theory, that it’s not just the students having English as
an additional language, but often the students who have got English as a first
language they’re having to learn a new set of language … And it’s been beneficial

59
 for some of the teaching of pupils who have perhaps got low self-esteem about
their own level of English and they’re the, you know, English speakers. … And, and
their attitudes about what their role as a PE teacher, developing what their role is
as a teacher of the pupils; and taking on board, no it is, it is part of their skill set
and toolkit that they need to think about these things.

The importance of knowledge about language(s)

A number of the staff participants recognised that students’ engagement with subject-specific
literacies and literacy across the curriculum was strengthened when they possessed a
foundation of knowledge about language and a metalanguage in which to discuss language
and literacy. A science educator observed that:

I think one of the key challenges with, you know, subjects like science where
there’s a lot of specialist terminologies, one of the things that helps teachers is an
awareness of what I’m going to call … basic linguistics ... just an understanding of
how language works. But I find when I’m talking about that with our trainees, they
don’t really understand even simple ideas about language. They don’t know what
a prefix is, or a suffix, you know … And so I think an understanding for the trainee
teachers of that could help them, help their EAL learners quite significantly. But
it’s how to get them to really go back to square one.

It was noted that a foundation of knowledge about language would allow students to monitor
their own language use in a more informed manner and be alert to how it might impact on
their pupils:

And it’s almost as if we’re trying to get them to, you know, understand what, what
does each bit do within that word or, you know, in phrases and sentences, what’s
the function of each part there. And an awareness of … their own vocabulary, and
where it’s likely to cause young learners, and in particular EAL learners, obstacles.

Chapter two of the report has set out the range of grammatical knowledge that teachers can
be expected to acquire to meet the expectations set out in the current National Curriculum in
England. In that chapter we also presented UKLA’s, and our own, critique of the National
Curriculum’s failure to take a sufficiently expansive view of knowledge about language. As part
of our critique and suggestions for expansion we observed that: ‘Assisting EAL learners to
understand the grammar of English will also be enabled if teachers have at least a basic
knowledge of how structures and forms vary across languages.’ This point was raised by one
of our lecturer participants who talked of how:

I think I’d also want students to appreciate linguistic features. So having

appreciation or an understanding that a child’s first language, or their home
language, might well impact on the way in which they access English, and the way
in which they develop English, and that not all children will develop English
necessarily in the same ways. So that they might then be mindful of the kind of
misconceptions, or the issues that children might have in their written English, or

60
 indeed their spoken English, and appreciate that that might well be that the child
is directly translating from a first language, or another language. That, that for me
is absolutely key.

This has also been a key consideration for us in developing the resource that we have created
within the project that seeks to give tutors and student teachers a clear sense of central ways
in which structures and forms differ across languages.

61
Chapter 7: Meeting Language and Literacy Needs

Historically, reading and writing were considered to be the standard markers of literacy.
However, it is now recognised that this is too limited a conception and that literacy is more
complex than traditional perspectives allow (Foley, 2017). A body of work associated with the
term New Literacy Studies (NLS) views literacy as a set of socially and culturally situated
practices, rather than simply as a range of technical academic skills that operate at an
individual level (Heath, 1983: Street, 1984; Gee, 1990). This shift in perspective has embraced
the plural and discursive nature of literacy and integrates ways of being and doing in the world
(Luke, 1995; Gee, 2005).

‘Literacy education is often seen as a key pedagogic site for inclusion and social justice as a
great deal of academic learning done in schools and beyond is contingent upon students’
literacy capabilities. Without the capacity to make meaning with texts, people remain limited
in their participation as learners and citizens’ (Dooley et al, 2013, p.65). The central
importance of the development of students’ literacy capabilities raises questions for us about
the current organisation and content of teacher education programmes in terms of how they
prepare student teachers to adapt to the literacy demands in today’s linguistically and
culturally diverse classrooms. It is recognised within research exploring the development of
literacies that students’ participation in, and success beyond school has a great deal to do
with the conditions we set up for them as learners (Rodgers, 2013, p.9; Schleppegrell, 2004;
Anderson et al, 2016a; Foley, 2017).

Pennycook acknowledges that the various sites in which teachers work have become places
of struggle as they actively engage within ‘complex sociopolitical and cultural political
space[s]’ (2004, p.333). This is particularly relevant when considering the development of
literacy, which is not a culturally or politically neutral term. Dooley’s work aligns with such
notions and highlights the fact that ‘literacy, teaching and literacy teacher education are
critical social practices…learning from and with students occurs in social, cultural and highly
polticised spaces’ (Dooley et al., 2013, p.65). It is therefore important to prepare teachers
who are capable of, and disposed to, developing literacies for all students that are connected
to their lifeworlds and content area studies (Dooley et al, 2013, p.70).

The questions then arise of the extent to which teachers currently entering the profession:
possess the dispositions to recognise the linguistic and cultural resources that EAL pupils
bring; and the capacities to meet their language and literacy needs in a responsive manner.
In addition, to what extent do teacher educators feel prepared to extend the knowledge base
and skills of student teachers to allow them to interact with EAL learners in an appreciative
and capable fashion? The following sections present findings from our study that shed light
on these questions, starting with relevant results from the two student teacher surveys.

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Openness to recognising the cultural, linguistic knowledge of EAL learners

A number of the survey questions explored the student respondents’ openness to recognising
the cultural, linguistic and literacy knowledge and experience of pupils learning EAL. Given
the strong consensus in the literature on the importance of schools recognising and
appreciating the languages that pupils speak outside the classroom, a question in both
surveys asked for responses to the statement: ‘Schools should recognise and value the
languages that their pupils speak at home and in their communities.’ It will be seen from Table
7.1 that there was a strongly positive pattern of response to this statement, with 89.8% of
students in the first survey and almost all, 96.9%, in the second survey answering in the
categories ’strongly agree’ and ‘agree’.

Table 7.1: Responses in the first and second surveys to the statement: ‘Schools should
recognise and value the languages that their pupils speak at home and in their
communities’.

Survey Strongly Agree Unsure Disagree Strongly

agree Disagree
First survey (97) 55.1% (61) 34.7% (5) 2.8% (1) 0.6% (12) 6.8%
Second survey (34) 63.6% (18) 33.3% (1) 1.9% (1) 1.9% (0) 0 %

A second question focused attention on the responsibilities of individual teachers, as opposed

to the preceding question that located responsibility in schools: ‘It is important for all teachers
to know what languages their pupils speak outside school.’ Table 7.2 displays the similar
pattern of response to this question, with 93.7% in the first survey and 98.1% in the second
survey, i.e. all but one, answering in the categories ‘strongly agree’ and ‘agree’.

Table 7.2: Responses in the first and second surveys to the statement: ‘It is important for all
teachers to know what languages their pupils speak outside school.’

Survey Strongly Agree Unsure Disagree Strongly

agree Disagree
First survey (96) 54.2% (70) 39.5% (3) 1.7% (0) 0 % (8) 4.5%
Second survey (36) 66.6% (17) 31.5% (0) 0 % (1) 1.9% (0) 0 %

Two following questions broadened the scope of attention out from language to pupils’ prior
schooling experience and degree of acquisition of literacies in languages other than English.
Preceding research (Arnot et al., 2014; Anderson et al., 2016a has highlighted the value of
teachers learning about EAL pupils’ experience of schooling. Accordingly, we asked the
respondents in both surveys to indicate their level of agreement with the statement that:
‘Knowing about their pupils’ schooling before coming to the UK is necessary for all teachers.’
Table 7.3 shows the strong level of support for this statement with 88.7% answering in the
categories ‘strongly agree’ and ‘agree’ in the first survey and 92.6% in these categories in the
second survey. A broadly similar pattern of response, displayed in Table 7.4, was evident in
reactions to the statement: ‘It is important for all teachers to know about their pupils’ literacy

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skills in languages besides English.’ (In the first survey 82.6% responded within the categories
‘strongly agree’ and ‘agree’. In the second survey 92.6% responded in these categories.)

Table 7.3: Responses in the first and second surveys to the statement: ‘Knowing about their
pupils’ schooling before coming to the UK is necessary for all teachers.’

Survey Strongly Agree Unsure Disagree Strongly

agree Disagree
First survey (79) 44.6% (78) 44.1% (11) 6.2% (4) 2.3% (5) 2.8%
Second survey (30) 55.6% (20) 37.0% (4) 7.4% 0 0 % 0 0 %

Table 7.4: Responses in the first and second surveys to the statement: ‘It is important for all
teachers to know about their pupils’ literacy skills in languages besides English.’

Survey Strongly Agree Unsure Disagree Strongly

agree Disagree
First survey (65) 36.5% (82) 46.1% (24) 13.5% (3) 1.7% (4) 2.2%
Second survey (27) 50.0% (23) 42.6% (3) 5.6% (1) 1.9% (0) 0 %

Meeting the Language and Literacy Needs of EAL Pupils: Actions and Challenges

Consonant with these survey responses, student teachers and teacher educators within this
study all agreed on the importance of taking action to meet the language and literacy needs
of EAL pupils; and often drew on their experiences to exemplify their perceptions about needs
in this area. Key messages that emerged from the student surveys, and teacher educator and
student focus group interviews in relation to this topic are exemplified in the following
paragraphs.

When participants were asked what they perceived to be helpful approaches to meeting the
language and literacy needs of EAL pupils, there was a range of different responses in the
survey data. Several students referred to specific ‘strategies’ while others wrote about the
importance of immersing pupils in English, and the recognition of a pupil’s home language
being a valuable asset for learning in the classroom:

Using lots of images, creating lessons they can relate to. Using translations of key
words.

extra time, images as support, hard copies, large font.

Immersion in the language, but also not to expect that target language will be
produced immediately.

… involving EAL learners in lessons more by incorporating multicultural elements and

additionally the use of visual aids to help students in their understanding.

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 I think allowing the pupils to continue to develop their home language can be used as
a useful tool to assist with their learning, and ensure they understand the content of
the lesson.

Responses in the surveys from several students drew on input they had received on their
courses and in schools about meeting needs and highlighted the importance of understanding
and empathizing with the experience and challenges of being an EAL pupil in English medium
classrooms:

An understanding of their position. Best lessons I was ever given was when a Swede
gave a 15-minute lesson in Swedish and gave us worksheets to complete to
understand the perspective of EAL students in class.

Be patient and smile, try to be relaxed, as it could be terrifying for the student.

Identifying, and empathising with, the problems EAL learners may face constantly
when not being taught effectively.

Student teachers in the focus groups at the two main research sites described a number of
strategies that they were employing to meet the needs of EAL pupils. Providing space and
tools for operating in other languages, along with engaging in particular communication
strategies featured in discussions about how best to support pupils:

I’ve also found that what really, really helped the EAL students is that if you give them
a laptop and they’re unsure about a certain word they can google it and use the
translator – and then that really helps them. It’s easier than using a dictionary ‘cause
you say part of the word and it translates it.

So I rely heavily on the dictionary. It’s like my, my classroom it’s like Slovakian and
Polish [dictionaries]. And it’s like they’re the best things. So on my planning sheets it’s
got ‘see a dictionary, see a dictionary’ all over my planning sheet. So I find them really
useful.

Well I, I’ve never been a performer, never been into drama or anything like that. But
now I find myself actually acting out lines.

What is interesting in the excerpt below is that this student teacher was aware that dealing
with a range of languages raises questions about how other pupils would feel when a
language is being used to teach one student that is not necessarily relevant to others in the
classroom. This highlighted the diversity that student teachers are working with in
classrooms:

I think if you label things and say if you’ve got, it’s difficult if you’ve got like eight
different languages in the class, you’ve then got a list [students laugh]. But if you know
you’ve got a couple of one and, you know, you’re not doing the other kids any harm.
In fact you’re fulfilling your, your cross-curricular learning. If they come away, like you
said about your geography lesson in Spanish. If they come away with knowing I’m,

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 like I’m doing Oliver Twist and I’m labelling things for the, for the kids anyway ‘cause I
thought they won’t know what a ladle and a copper pot is and all of those sort of
things. You know, if you put it in Polish underneath so as that your Polish students
have got that word, it’s not gonna hurt the kids who don’t need it. And they’ll learn a
few Polish words.

The following account from the same focus group reveals the ways individual student
teachers are trying to think about complex language issues as they practise, and develop their
own understanding about difference and the pedagogical approaches necessary for
multilingual contexts.

We’ve got an English-only policy in all classrooms. And they’re not allowed, unless I
invite, you know, if I said, ‘Oh, can you explain’. Other than that they’re not allowed
to speak any other language than English. But at social times it’s very much
encouraged ‘cause they need, you know, so they’ve got that Identification with
everybody who speaks their language and comes from their culture and, yeah,
freedom of choice (Student 1).

See I, I was sat here and said that yeah I encourage my pupils to write in their language.
But I kind of refrain from them from speaking in their language unless I’m trying to
speak to somebody in English and they’re looking at me completely blank face, and I
look to another and say ‘Can you, please, help me’. And they’ll translate to what I’m
saying. But even though I encourage them to write and then translate it, I try and get
them to speak, to have conversations in English (Student 2).

These extracts provide insights into how student teachers’ interactions with EAL pupils were
bounded by school policies and we catch glimpses of how other languages may be positioned
in classrooms. It would appear that there is a lack of available ways of thinking about the
multilingual nature of classrooms and how languages develop within such contexts.

Teacher Educators’ Perceptions about Needs

The majority of teacher educators talked about the approaches that would help student
teachers meet the language and literacy needs of EAL pupils in classrooms in terms of
principles and broader strategies, rather than specifics. The following account exemplifies
this:

I suppose, on the one hand making them aware of these fundamental principles, if you
like. But, you know, exclusion may not be best. You know, you know, the importance
of world knowledge, the importance of, you know, cultural, recognising, you know,
cultural gaps, etcetera, on the one hand. But on the other hand, giving them, you
know, a bank of, not, you know, not earth-shattering activities, but just basic
strategies, if you like, of what, you know, what works. Using visual aids, using graphic
organisers, using paired talk, using partners. You know, drama, having key phrases.

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 All that sort of, I guess, thinking about the, or knowing something about the benefits
of letting children work in their home language sometimes (Teacher Educator x).

But actually trying to get across to students things like guided reading, and that side
of things, verbalising the comprehension process that's going on in their own head.
(Teacher Educator y).

However, a more specific and lengthier response was provided by a teacher educator from
the Teach First route to teacher training. She initially talked about more practical strategies
that would support learning, making an important distinction between simplifying content
versus making it accessible. She then moved on to foreground what she felt was an important
issue, i.e. the development of teacher empathy when there are significant barriers to
accessing the curriculum.

Lots [of specific actions], well I mean in terms of primary practice, emphasis on visual
cues, emphasis on practical experiences, emphasis on making learning meaningful,
whether that might be the use of words in home languages, the use of displays. I don’t
necessarily mean, and this is what I challenge the students on, making it simpler, but
making it accessible so the children can actually achieve at an appropriate level, as
opposed to it just necessarily being dumbed down.

Another one would be, and again you could argue that it would be a feature of good
literacy teaching, but the provision of scaffolds. So again encouraging students to
empathise. It’s something, there's an activity that I did with some of the Teach First
students. The Teacher First students like to construct themselves as being very able;
and I, I think for a lot of them they struggle to empathise with what it must be like
when you don’t quite get something straight away.

But some of our participants have never encountered barriers to their learning. So I
think to get them to put themselves in the shoes of barriers that EAL children might
face, or indeed any children might face, it helps them then to think about well, if you
were encountering this barrier, what would help you. So for an EAL child it might be
that you've heard a story once, you've heard it repeated, how would it help if you've
got a copy of the text on your desk when you're then asking, you know, you're being
asked to write, or you're being asked to do something related to it? Or how would it
help if you've got some key words translated into your first language, assuming you're
literate in your first language. So we do activities like that to try to get them to
empathise, and also to move them away from the deficit, slightly benevolent model
[of] these poor EAL children who don’t speak a word of English.
(Teacher Educator z).

The concerns raised by teacher educators in this study about the perceived lack of empathy
that some student teachers may demonstrate when working with EAL pupils is given attention
in other studies in Anglophone countries (e.g. Lucas and Villegas, 2011; Gabriel and Wagner,
2014). These studies highlight the fact that issues of language and culture are not often
addressed on ITT programme courses, thus inhibiting the development of a differentiated

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understanding among student teachers about the need for sensitivity and responsive
approaches to linguistic and cultural difference.

Differences and Gaps in Cultural Knowledge Impacting on Comprehension

Comments made by both student teachers and tutors about the needs of EAL pupils revealed
an understanding of how lessons may position these learners as cultural outsiders when they

were engaged in literacy events. It was recognised that the provision for EAL pupils to
participate in a common curriculum, and to be exposed to ‘common’ texts used in
mainstream classrooms, was not enough to allow pupils to gain an understanding of the
written and spoken meanings that were being constructed within a particular cultural setting.

Student Teachers

Focus groups with student teachers identified cultural and prior knowledge as being
important aspects of the development of literacy during reading events or vocabulary
learning. There were very positive discussions around classroom practices with some student
teachers who intentionally set out within their lessons: to connect with EAL pupils’
backgrounds; and to draw on their cultural knowledge and perspectives on particular political
issues and events. The following brief statement illustrates these inclusive actions:

And last week I did Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling, so I had my Indian boy was
describing all the terms to the children, and clarifying the words. And I let him
basically lead the session (Student Teacher 1).

The extract beneath shows clearly a student teacher’s close attention to how connections can
be forged to EAL pupils’ backgrounds and experiences and intention to take the perspective
of pupils who may have had direct, and troubling, experience of political and social conflicts.
This extract gives the sense of an ethically aware teacher who recognises and is attempting
to negotiate the moral complexities that may arise in a multicultural classroom.

Something just, kind of, to add to this kind of idea that we're not really sure sometimes
when people have arrived how advanced are they. To what extent we need support,
etcetera. For myself, and maybe this is just, sort of, for my area; because I'm a history
teacher and I do a lot of politics and I do a lot of war. I do, like, modern, sort of,
international relations. For me at times it can be a little bit iffy if I'm not sure where
the student's from. So, for example, a Sri Lankan girl, and she's wonderful, and I do
teach bits and pieces about the Tamil Tigers, and her family were directly involved and
had to leave due to the violence within that region. And obviously in knowing that,
that would change what I'm teaching, or how I'm teaching it to some extent, because
I'd never want there to be, sort of, this underlying tone of almost are we pro- or anti-
immigration. Is it okay? So, for example, I was doing nuclear war at one point. Well, I
was teaching nuclear war at one point, and having the knowledge, for example, if I
had an Asian student in there who'd had a background who was linked in some way,

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 it might change my pitch because it becomes somewhat more relatable, and mostly
relatable to some students (Student Teacher 2).

In a follow-up focus group interview at one of the main research sites, student teachers drew
on input they had from their teacher educators who used our project’s resources to talk both
about cultural knowledge and about how the English language works in terms of word forms
and syntax when developing vocabulary.

Or for some, yeah, and for someone who isn't, when you're thinking of that EAL
learner. And she [programme tutor], she talked about how we construct things and
how we use existing knowledge. Like the fairy tale thing is, but how we use it, you
know, existing knowledge to what you bring to the lesson to enable you to learn that.
So, it's having that, yeah, that cultural knowledge that enables you to access stuff that
goes on.

… we need, it's very important to know where the kids come from.

Yeah. And we've got that passage, haven't we, when she said, you know, how can you
work out, it was nonsense wasn't it, but how you can work something out of it, and
because of your knowledge of verbs and your knowledge of…

Of sounds as well.

what sort of endings you've got that determined what sort of word it was? And it's
having that sort of knowledge, isn't it, about the structure and knowing that 'ly' words
and 'ing' words, and stuff like that, but they won't have. And I think that's the thing
that pupils actually, a boy in my year seven class, his word endings, it's his grammar.
He knows the words, he can't adapt the words. He doesn’t know whether it's and
'ing', or an 'ed' …
(Student Teachers)

Teacher Educators

Teacher educators also displayed cultural awareness and saw the need to adopt an approach
that was guided by such an awareness:

You know, just bringing in all of that. Everything that's going to help them. This is a,
here's the hare and the tortoise, what do you think this is, you know, what do you
know about fables? And, so you know, yes, it's cultural, but it also affects
comprehension development (Teacher Educator a).

I mean, one of my favourite examples I always, you know how you have your
favourite…I always tell the students when I'm talking about, I was once watching a
lesson and the teacher said, and I said the same thing myself, put your hand up if
you're a packed lunch. I, there happened to be a little boy. I think he was from Iran.
... And I was looking, and I thought …we say that sort of thing all the time. If you're a

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 packed lunch, go over there, and if you're a hot dinner, sit. You know, and of course
they always laugh. I said no, but think about it, you know. It's that sort of, you know,
implicit… because if you're listening to that, sort of, imprecise language, your day is
going to be far more confused than it needs to be (Teacher Educator b).

I said about the early years principles, it's going back to well if, it's almost if these
children were three, you would have a lot of that stripped away ‘cause you'd know
that as a teacher, that this child may not have had that experience, or that life
experience, etcetera, and so you would adapt the learning. And it's about those
principles being drawn upon and utilised regardless of the age of the children, because
well there is a lot of short cuts in language and literacy. And, and it's that that many
children can struggle with when, along with all of the ways that language is, is used
and inferred (Teacher Educator c).

It is clear that some student teachers and teacher educators recognised that the lack of
content or cultural knowledge linked to a text is often a major cause for difficulty in
understanding. It is recognised within academic literature that cultural knowledge is not
necessarily shared across different languages. These differences can leave large chunks of
text semantically disconnected as the demand for culturally specific knowledge in the text
increases (Bernhardt, 2003). Misunderstandings can also occur when learners draw on L1
cultural knowledge and apply it to the interpretation of texts created within a different
culture.

As recognised by Student Teacher 2, specific words or topics can activate different meanings,
images and emotions from an EAL pupil whose family has fled to the UK from difficult
circumstances in their country of origin. Such experiences can conjure up different social and
cultural understandings and interpretations of the world. It could therefore be argued that
the first language and experiences pupils have had become a ‘cocoon that wraps around the
interpretation of the second-language text’ (Bernhardt, 2003:10).

These were important matters we took into account during the design process. We designed
activities and tasks that enabled teacher educators and student teachers to reflect on the
cultural knowledge and experiences embedded in English vocabulary and classroom texts.
We sought to raise awareness and develop an understanding of how literacy events could
make space for an exploration of embedded meanings and allow for different interpretations
of a word or a text to be considered, thus legitimising the diversity within the profile of the
class.

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Chapter 8: Teacher Confidence and Teacher Education

Background

Given that EAL pupils are taught in mainstream classes, mainstream teachers are responsible
for meeting their language and literacy needs (Leung, 2001). However, the literature shows
that despite the policy of mainstreaming since the 1980s, and opportunities for professional
development that helps teachers to understand the language and learning needs of EAL
pupils, there have been limited changes to every day practice. One of the key issues that is
recognised within the literature is that there is a need to investigate the reasons associated
with why change in practice is slow. Some researchers argue that in order to gain insight into
this issue, there is a need to explore the perceptions and beliefs that underpin teachers’
classroom practices (Franson, 1999; Borg, 2006; Gibbons, 2009; Johnson, 2009). We have
sought to contribute to this project by exploring teacher educators’ and student teachers’
perceptions within this current study.

Franson’s (1999) study conducted in England recognises that while teachers have an
important role in ensuring that EAL pupils are included in common classroom practices, they
are often daunted by such responsibilities. Lucas and Villegas (2001) researching in the United
States have reported similar experiences to those in the UK. They found that despite changes
to national policy and the emphasis placed on the inclusion of EAL pupils into mainstream
classes, mainstream teachers had not been given sufficient preparation for teaching in
culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms (2001, p.40). Grant and Wong also raise
questions concerning English language learners in mainstream schools and ask: ‘Why do
barriers continue to restrict access to full literacy for many language-minority learners in the
United States?’ (2003, p.386). Grant and Wong (2003) posit that the reason there is a lack of
equality within school systems for English language learners is related to the failure of teacher
education programmes to prepare mainstream and reading teachers to meet their specific
needs. They also propose that a first crucial step to address these issues is to enable such
teachers to become aware of their own linguistic and cultural deficit models (Grant and
Wong, 2003, p.393).

Both Cummins (2000) and Hawkins (2011) observe that while policy specifications and
classroom practices are non-discriminatory in their intent, and seek equal opportunity for
pupils learning EAL, the lack of teacher knowledge in relation to EAL pedagogy often results
in discriminatory experiences for these pupils. Such practices, as argued by Reeves, not only
flatten differences (Reeves,2004:46) within classrooms, but render the linguistic and cultural
capital brought into such contexts invisible (Bernstein, 1996). As a result, pupils learning EAL
experience educational inequalities as they engage in literacy practices in mainstream
classrooms. One way in which to limit discriminatory experiences within schools and

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classrooms is to include within ITE a critical dimension in education about language. Hawkins
and Norton argue that teachers are in ‘a key position to address educational inequality, both
because of the particular learners they serve, many of whom are marginalised members of
the wider community, and because of the subject matter they teach – language – which can
itself serve to both empower and marginalize’ (Hawkins and Norton, 2009, p.32). The
question then arises of how teachers can be assisted to employ language and literacy
practices that are tools for inclusion rather than exclusion? Addressing this question has been
a key concern of this current project.

The following sections give an account of how student teachers and teacher educators talked
about their sense of self and their confidence as they considered the language and literacy
needs of pupils for whom English is an additional language. These findings raised questions
that had important implications for the project in terms of appropriate input on teacher
education programmes and what we might understand to be ‘good practice’ when
monolingual assumptions about literacies are reflected upon.

Teacher Identity

Moving towards more inclusive practices may involve not only the acquisition of new
perspectives, strategies and techniques but also a shift in teachers’ self-image and
professional identity. Street (2003) and Gee (2008) argue that the ways in which people
engage in literacy practices are rooted in specific ways of knowing, being and identity formed
within particular social contexts and what Gee (2004, 2008) terms as ‘Discourses’ with a
capital ‘D’. How teachers enact literacy practices in their classroom impacts on the
opportunities that are made available for EAL pupils to establish new identities and engage in
the wider society (Freire, 1974; Wallace, 2003; Janks, 2010; Masuda, 2012). Ball argues that
teachers’ views about reading literacy practices are often built on the dominant Discourses
within their professional contexts that may determine what counts and what doesn’t count
(Ball, 1993).

Studies, both national and international, recognize that the increasing responsibility that
teachers face in meeting the needs of diverse learners within classrooms, impacts on their
sense of identity and their confidence as professionals (e.g. Foley, 2010, 2013; Anderson et
al, 2016a; de Jong and Harper, 2011; Kosnik et al, 2013). Teachers across these studies
recognized that they needed a broader knowledge base in terms of theory and practice that
would allow them to meet the needs of a diverse range of learners more effectively. As
Howard aptly states teachers ‘can’t teach what [they] don’t know’ (Howard, 1999).

It can be concluded that what was previously regarded as knowledge and expertise in a
monolingual English-speaking classroom is now no longer fully fit for purpose. Teachers
report feelings of being de-skilled and disempowered as they apply a known context-specific

72
pedagogy to a multilingual and multicultural classroom (Foley, 2013; Foley et al, 2013;
Anderson et al, 2016). Within these particular studies, teachers’ feelings of being deskilled
seemed to diminish their sense of agency as they sought to meet the needs of EAL learners.
A reframing of what constitutes ‘good practice’ within teacher education settings and
classrooms has become a pressing matter in the light of the complexities associated with
meeting the language and literacy needs of EAL learners. This would enable teacher
educators to consider the need for a shift in their own professional identities and sense of
self as they recognise the change in the knowledge, skills and dispositions that student
teachers need to develop. Such a shift would provide opportunities for student teachers to
be inducted into professional learning communities that make space for their own
professional identities to become grounded in the lives of the diverse student population that
they are serving.

Findings: Teacher Confidence and Teacher Education

A central theme that emerged from the data sets in this project foregrounded issues of
confidence and professional learning. The following sections report on the ways in which
student teachers and teacher educators communicated limitations in their agency and
knowledge in relation to meeting the needs of EAL learners. Teacher educators’ perceptions
of the lack of opportunities for professional development that would enable them to continue
to build a repertoire of pedagogic practices for today’s diverse classrooms are also reported.

Questions in both surveys set out to gain a sense of how confident student teachers felt in
their ability to support EAL learners. It will be seen from Figure 8.1 that there was
considerable variation in the ratings of confidence by respondents to the first survey, (not
confident at all, 5%; little confidence, 26%; some confidence, 41%; confident, 25%; very
confident, 3%). Responses in the second survey display a certain increase in confidence with
only 18% answering within the categories ‘little confidence’ and ‘not confident at all’, as
opposed to 31% answering in these categories in the first survey. However, it might be seen
as troubling that around a fifth of the respondents at this stage of their training still saw
themselves as having ‘little confidence’. 35% in the second survey as opposed to 25% in the
first survey declared themselves to be ‘confident’. Almost equal proportions across the two
surveys stated that they had ‘some confidence’.

Some caution is required in interpreting this set of findings. In addition to the general notes
of caution sounded in the Methods chapter on making comparisons between the surveys, it
needs to be recognized that by the time of the second survey respondents had had a greater
amount of teaching experience that may have led to a general increase in their confidence in
their teaching.

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 Figures 8.1a, 8.1b: responses to the question ‘At this point in your ITE programme how
confident do you feel in your ability to support EAL learners?’

First Survey Second Survey

Very confident 6 (3%) Very confident 2 (4%)

Confident 45 (25%) Confident 19 (35%)

Some confidence 73 (41%) Some confidence 23 (43%)

Little confidence 46 (26%) Little confidence 10 (18%)

Not confident at all 9 (5%) Not confident at all 0

0 20 40 60 80 0 5 10 15 20 25

Total responses = 179 Total responses = 54

Preparation for meeting EAL learners’ needs

These findings concerning confidence need to be read against the findings from the second
survey and from interviews concerning the levels of input that the student teachers had
received concerning EAL matters. We look first at findings from the second survey on this
topic; and then report observations that student teachers made in focus groups concerning
their confidence in, and preparation for, responding to EAL learners.

Respondents in the second survey were asked the question: ‘Looking back at your training
course from the beginning, have you had any input during the institution-based part of your
course directly related to working with EAL/bilingual learners?’ Of the 53 responses to this
question, only six indicated that they had received no input during the training course,
(although a seventh answer can be seen to belong to this category, ‘only in my own lessons,
using my resources’). Seven stated that the only input they had been given was a single
lecture: ‘one lecture’, ‘lecture on EAL at the university’. A few reported getting a lecture that
had an activity associated with it: ‘EAL lecture, framework task to complete.’

One student mentioned only one session on EAL, but this single session had been distinctly
valuable: ‘We had an extremely informative session about teaching EAL learners. This session
gave us strategies and resources.’ This comment can be read as pointing up the need to give
attention to the quality as well as the quantity of input concerning EAL.

Several students wrote that they had had input on EAL in relation to the subject areas that
they were teaching, for example:

Yes, one lecture on different types of language used and seminar sessions
related to my subject.

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 Yes, within our English lectures we have discussed how we might
appropriately engage EAL learners with certain texts/lessons in general.
Also in maths lectures we discussed how difficulties in language may
impair students in demonstrating their maths knowledge.

While the general pattern that emerged in response to this question was of somewhat to
distinctly limited input concerning EAL in initial training, there were a few answers which
described a more extensive and intensive experience:

We had an EAL day in which we observed pupils with EAL and spoke to
the EAL coordinator of the school. ….

Yes. We completed a ‘buddy initiative’ whereby we paired up with EAL

students and took part in various activities with them over the course of
6 weeks. We then completed an essay on our experiences and reflected
on the barriers to teaching EAL. We also worked closely with MFL
students and took part in a teaching workshop which allowed a select
group of students to teach a sport in a different language.

While comments presented later in this chapter indicate student teachers’ dissatisfaction with
the extent of the training they had been given on practical strategies concerning EAL, a few
appreciative notes were also sounded, as in the following survey response:

I have had several students within my lessons and have used useful tools
offered from the course to help me deliver the lesson content to these
students. This has included useful ideas for resources and differentiated
homework examples.

Respondents in the second survey were also asked ‘While you were in schools did you receive
any specific training in relation to meeting the language and literacy needs of pupils learning
EAL?’ 25 of the 53 respondents to this question indicated that they had not received input
while in schools. In addition, a student gave the response ‘before the course’, and another
wrote ‘very basic’. Quite a number of the positive responses to this question appeared to refer
to input from the university part of the course rather than to ‘in-house’ school provision. Two
students had also gained ‘school-based’ input by taking the initiative to extend their
knowledge in this area:

Only through my enhancement stage – I moved to a different school so I

could gain experience in this area.

As my school does not have many EAL learners I visited another school
where there are many EAL learners. I received information and support
from a number of members of staff there including the EAL lead.

Given the shift in the balance of teacher education from universities towards schools, that was
outlined in Chapter Two of this report, this set of findings has to be seen as troubling. Some

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students were themselves critical of the lack of input concerning EAL while they were in
schools, as in the following statement: ‘No, we even had a letters and sounds phonics CPD day
and EAL was not mentioned and there are children learning EAL in the school.’
When support was mentioned, it had sometimes taken the form of a whole school CPD session
or sessions:

Yes – staff training days. Best approaches with EAL students.

Yes, X city’s EAL coordinator gave a presentation on the difficulties pupils

face and strategies.

CPD at host school – inclusive literacy throughout the curriculum.

A few responses mentioned advice from an EAL specialist:

Yes, by EAL specialist who would offer support and advice on specialist
pupils.

Yes, from EAL coordinator.

For one student interaction with experienced staff had been helpful: ‘School with 24 languages
spoken. Often discussed with staff the approaches needed to support EAL pupils.’ Another
student had ‘spent time with the new starters class, this is run by a teacher who is passionate
about EAL.’ This last comment sparks the suggestion that while the bulk of student teachers
might not be able to have direct experiences of skilled practice in relation to EAL they might
have the vicarious experience of watching, and reflecting on, recordings of skilled practice.

The questions in the second survey that have been considered in the preceding paragraphs
were followed by two which asked students to rate the input or support they had received to
date. It will be seen from table 8.1 that there is a somewhat positive picture in relation to
general understanding of the needs of EAL learners, with the bulk of respondents answering
in the category ‘some increase in understanding.’ (An argument could be made, however, that
even 13% answering within the category ‘no /very little understanding’ is a troubling figure.)

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Table 8.1: responses to the question ‘Thinking about the input or support detailed above [i.e.
on the training course in general and in schools themselves], to what extent do you feel that
it has given you a better general understanding of the needs of EAL learners?

No/ very little Some increase Considerable

understanding in increase in
understanding understanding
13.2% (7) 66% (35) 20.8% (11)

Table 8.2: responses to the question: ‘To what extent do you feel that you have
been able to develop extra strategies, ideas and resources for responding
effectively, (within your own subject specialism(s)), to EAL learners?’

No/ very Some increase Considerable

little increase in strategies increase in
in strategies and ideas strategies and
and ideas ideas
26.4% (14) 50.9% (27) 22.6% (12)

Turning to the levels of gains in strategies and ideas, here we see a spread of responses that
may well reflect the variation in input and experience revealed in the answers to the preceding
questions. It would seem to be a matter of concern that a quarter are answering in the
category ‘no/very little increase in strategies and ideas’.

A follow-up question to these ratings asked respondents if there had been ‘any particular type
of input that you found to be particularly helpful?’ Of the 42 responses to this question, seven
answered ‘no’ or indicated that they had not received any input. In addition, a few students
used the question to signal a desire for opportunities to explore the topic further: ‘It would be
helpful to be able to talk to someone in our placement school to support us with EAL more
specifically.’

Some respondents cited a lecture and accompanying materials/resources or an assignment

on EAL as types of input that they found particularly useful, as in the following answers:

I found the EAL lectures particularly useful as they gave me a greater

understanding of the importance of encouraging students to become
bilingual, and to continue using their home language to help their
learning.

The lecture and all of the materials exhibited in the lecture that can be
used to support EAL learners.

The assignment in MFL. This gave me the opportunity to explore the

subject more in-depth.

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Several students pointed up experiences in schools that had proved useful. Such experiences
included being shown school resources and having conversations with EAL coordinators, as
well as practical experience of teaching EAL pupils:

School support and advice from other teachers most helpful as well as
experience in class and trying out strategies.

Working with teachers in the school who have been working with EAL
students for a long time.

The students also wrote about specific knowledge, strategies or techniques in relation to EAL
that had proved helpful such as an appreciation of academic vs. conversational language,
visual aids, and scaffolding.

I found the suggestions regarding using visual materials, providing

scaffolding for writing tasks, and generally explaining about how language
acquisition develops particularly helpful

A few answers referred to input that helped them to consider how to empathise with, involve
and integrate EAL pupils in the classroom, for example: ‘Identifying, and empathizing with, the
problems EAL learners may face constantly when not being taught effectively.’

A subsequent question sought to explore the impact of any input on EAL on student teachers’
current or anticipated classroom practice: ‘What strategies or ideas have you encountered
regarding EAL that you now mean to put into practice in the classroom? Has any input or
support on EAL changed your classroom practice?’ Of the 44 responses to this question, five
gave a negative reply, ‘no’, ‘N/A’; and a few noted that they had not received help and support
to implement strategies in the classroom: ‘I don’t feel like I have had any support.’

A considerable number of responses described the use of visual aids and media, sometimes in
combination with other strategies:

Using interactive media as a learning medium.

Use images to consolidate understanding and sit them next to a pupil who
could model excellent language use.

Visual aids, using lots of pictures, peer mentoring. I found out most
strategies from my EAL day, however some ideas were briefly covered in
university sessions.

One student highlighted that: ‘Differentiation is key to teaching EAL pupils. I always have key
words defined on the board and make sure that I make the lesson accessible to EAL learners.’
Other answers referred to strategies such as ‘buddying’, scaffolding practices and classroom
seating arrangements.

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A number of respondents wrote about the use of L1 in the classroom as a result of their
learning regarding EAL:

Using pupils’ home languages to create personalised worksheets to

support learning.

The celebration of cultural understanding. Bringing the child’s MT into the

classroom so we can all learn together.

Use of books in their language so they can follow structure and be familiar
with the characters being discussed, use of labels in both languages
around the classroom to pick up key school related vocabulary, use of role
play to provide opportunity to try new language and respond to others,
also highlighters to learner and teacher areas that need further support
which can influence planning.

One student described how an increased awareness of, and responsiveness to, the needs of
EAL learners had led to a general enhancement of classroom practice:

It has made me more aware of the different needs of all pupils, and I have
been able to look at my planning and delivery closely to check it is
accessible for all; including grammar on any presentations, or how
accessible my resources are.

Respondents in the second survey were given the opportunity to ‘indicate, in relation to
support for teaching EAL learners, a) any matters that you felt were not covered that should
have been covered, b) matters that were covered, but that you felt needed to be addressed
in greater depth.’ Four out of the 45 responses to this question answered ‘none’ or ‘N/A’ and
there were a few positive comments about the coverage of EAL issues, such as ‘all covered
very well’ and ‘I feel matters were covered as much as possible.’ Other respondents felt that
there was a clear lack of support and that their programme should place greater emphasis on
addressing EAL issues:

There is very little support or resources, systems in place to support these

students. I would have liked to have been given clear examples and
scenarios to work and learn from.

I understood we were meant to have more lectures on EAL at a later date

but we never did. One lecture was not enough, especially seeing as in the
schools where I was placed, in one 29 out of 30 were EAL learners and in
the other one all 30 were EAL learners.

I gained no experience when on placements and was given very little in

the way of strategies that I could use in schools from workshops or
lectures at university.

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Many respondents detailed exactly what they felt was missing from current provision. These
responses in the main fell into four categories: the need for more strategies and resources;
more subject-specific input; more opportunities for practical experience or observation; a
greater focus on specific teaching techniques and strategies.

… More about strategies for teaching as this was only discussed quite
broadly, for example ‘visual aids’, would prefer more in-depth examples.

Strategies for helping trainees work with EAL students in their specialism.

a/differentiation
b/lecture on specific strategies to use and not just say 'use of visuals’

It would have been helpful to observe more lessons that catered well to
EAL learners. I feel like we discussed more than actually trialling teaching
techniques.

Putting our learning into practice before entering a classroom

environment.

The calls here for clearer delineation of techniques and strategies and greater specificity in
illustrating appropriate practice in working with EAL pupils have been taken on board in the
design of resources within the current project.

Confidence and Preparation: Interview findings

Student teacher confidence issues were also evident in the focus group interviews and this
appeared to be linked to what they experienced, or were taught on their programmes and in
schools. There was a strong impression from the student interviews in both main sites that
there was not enough input or models of good practice in relation to EAL from their
programmes. Some felt that this may have been a result partly of lack of tutor expertise. A
student in Site 1 near the start of their course commented:

Sometimes I feel that maybe the lecturers themselves don’t have a lot of
knowledge about EAL. It might be because some of them haven’t been in
schools for a long time so they won’t have come across EAL [pupils] as
much as what teachers come across today.

Other students in the same focus group seemed to feel that the brief input they had had did
not address their need for practical classroom strategies:

We had a brief conversation about it. I actually said something about EAL
and one of my colleagues said, ‘Well, what’s EAL?’ And we had a brief
like, ‘this is what they are.’ And we carry on. [all laugh] But there hasn’t
been anything like, ‘This is what you need to do’, or the scaffolds that you
need to put in place to help them with maths.

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As well as this perceived lack, some students seemed to link their lack of confidence to
concerns they had about the models of practice that they observed in schools. A focus group
in site 2, which comprised both primary and secondary students, talked about the mixed
experience they had in schools; while there were some positives, there was the clear
perception that some of the pupils they encountered were not getting the kinds of support
they needed.

And then occasionally, sort of, you would have moments where suddenly
you think that this boy was sitting across the classroom, and he was
maybe sitting there not doing anything ‘cause a lot of it is just straight
over his head. And that's not to say I didn’t see the progress while I was
there because I definitely did. And we had some little breakthroughs

which were fantastic to witness, and really were exciting. But yeah, it's,
when you don’t have support in the class, or if you don’t have any of the,
sort of, targeted EAL interventions then I worried that, you know, we
weren't giving him the time he needed to, sort of, pick up the language.

Indeed, a few students in a focus group in Site 1 had clearly been exposed to a model of very
poor practice in one of their placement schools and foregrounded the lack of available EAL
classroom practices:

I, when I was observing at my first placement school I went into a drama

lesson. And [the drama teacher] she had a few EAL [pupils] and they were
just sitting there and not actually taking part. And I said to her, I asked
her why they weren’t taking part. And her answer was that she sees them
as a nuisance sometimes. So the fact [is] that she says, ‘I don’t know what
to do with them’. She says ‘they’ll just’, you know, ‘just ignore them’. I
don’t think that’s bad on her. Well I do think it’s bad on her. Of course, I
think it’s a lack of training. The training’s not widely available in schools.

Notwithstanding the ways that courses were structured and arranged because of recent shifts
to school-based training outlined in Chapter Two, students seemed to feel that their
programmes had responsibility to address this situation. One Teach First student at Site 2
made this clear, at the same time as commenting on the ambivalence – from her perspective
– of her position in school:

Interviewer: This comment you made about the input, where do you
think that maybe should've come from? Would it be from the school or
from the university?

Student: I think it probably would have to come from the university.

‘Cause the school, the school is my employer and I've had CPD about it,
but I haven't had any input from the, we have had some but nothing very
extensive.

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The figures presented earlier in this chapter have revealed the distinct variation in
students‘ratings of the degree to which their schools had acted to give them a greater
understanding of, and strategies to meet, the needs of EAL learners. In line with these ratings,
students whom we interviewed revealed concerns about the disparities in experience across
different schools. The student quoted above, for example, said that she was the only one in
her cohort who had had any significant experience of EAL during her training:

Interviewer: You were really the only student who was in a school with a,
you know, a significant number of EAL learners?

Student: Yeah, I think that is the case, yeah.

Interviewer: So, when you talked to your friends on the course, and so
on.

Student: I think possibly some of them have got one, or two, or none.
Most of them haven't got any [EAL pupils].

This concern was also raised by students in another focus group discussion. They shared their
experiences of different placement schools and pointed up different issues, such as in
searching out data on EAL pupils and even in identifying EAL as a feature of provision in their
school at all:

Student 1: I think I struggled, I struggled finding the data as well. I asked

at the school and was given a printout and it had the children's names on,
their year group, and it had their home language. So, that was a good
starting point. But then going in deeper into that, so how many were, sort
of, new arrivals in the country, and how many had been here for a while?
That was harder information for me to get hold of.

Student 2: I feel like it's never really talked about. It's never really on the
radar. There's no, like you said, there's no specific provision, and all of
those children are, but the fact [is] that I've got one child who speaks
Punjabi at home in my class. And, I don’t know, just the fact that he
struggles writing in English is never seen as an EAL issue necessarily. It’s
just that he is a struggling or reluctant writer.

A number of student teachers felt they were aware of the need to empathise with the
experience of EAL pupils, and they foregrounded their concerns about the evident lack of
detail in terms of practical pedagogical advice to meet the language and literacy needs of such
pupils. These concerns were taken into consideration as we designed professional
development resources for this project. The following extracts illustrate how student teachers
expressed their anxieties about the lack of detailed input on how to respond effectively to
EAL learners:

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 I feel we are informed of theories and methods to overcome problems but we never
see these/hear examples of these applied to the classroom environment. It is more
just bullet point advice such as 'use picture books' and 'relate some lessons to their
own cultures'. We are not given examples of picture books to use or how to follow
these up with activities or how to incorporate their cultures into lessons that aren't
just Geography.

There is not enough input on what we can actually do to support EAL learners,
especially those who may be the only student who speaks their language in the class
or the school. As a result, EAL learners who understand very little English end up
getting ignored by teachers because we just don't know what to do with them.

The observation in the immediately preceding statement concerning EAL pupils being ignored
by teachers in schools was echoed by another respondent who noted the isolation she
observed EAL pupils experiencing in classrooms when neither pupils nor teachers spoke their
languages:

There is a wide range of theories and strategies. What I feel hasn't been covered is if
there is one EAL student of a language which no peer or teacher speaks. The student
inevitably seems to result isolated, apathetic to lessons he can't understand, and a
teacher who is forced to resort to 'Google Translate’ handouts as the only way to
support and differentiate lessons. I feel this area needs to be targeted and hasn't been
adequately answered.

Teacher Educators’ Reflections

Chapter Five has described how the teacher educators in our study recognized their
responsibilities in relation to EAL and presented the case of a participant who had begun as a
teacher educator to ‘learn on the job’ by taking opportunities when in school to sit with EAL
learners and work out for himself what strategies might help them to access the curriculum.
At the same time, in general they expressed a lack of confidence in their own knowledge and
in focus groups at both of the main research sites talked at some length about their own lack
of experience, as mainstream teachers, with EAL learners.

Participants not only spoke about their own lack of knowledge or confidence, but highlighted
their uncertainty about how informed schools were in terms of supporting student teachers
in developing the knowledge and skills required to meet the needs of EAL pupils. They
perceived a lack of professional learning opportunities for teachers in schools:

I think the general perception in schools, and I'm not saying whether this can be
justified or not, but the impression I get is a lot of teachers in the schools feel, feel
that this is a new situation for them that they haven't been trained to deal with, and
they haven't had the CPD input or, or provision that would, would enable them to
develop these skills, and they've just been sort of left to get on with it. That may be
quite unfair, but it's a perception they have.

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Participants from different routes to teacher preparation recognised the influence of the
political climate in relation to matters of diversity and EAL and the impact that a diluted focus
on EAL can have, including a failure to recognize the levels of anxiety experienced by student
teachers concerning EAL:

And the wording of the NQT surveys is wholly politicised, isn't it? And I think those of
us who work within ITE are very aware of that, and I think the questions relating to
EAL, and to aspects of diversity, have become increasingly diluted. So really they're
not necessarily measuring [these areas].

You know, the fact that for years we've had NQT surveys showing, you know, that this
is an area newly qualified teachers worry about, but it's not picked up in the same way
as the phonics was, you know, and all of that.

Opportunities for Professional Learning

Professional learning opportunities are key to enhancing the knowledge base of teachers and
teacher educators and to transforming pedagogical practices for working in diverse
educational contexts. Accordingly, participants were asked questions, not only in relation to
their experience of working with EAL learners in schools, but in terms of their professional
development opportunities for EAL. An extended excerpt from a focus group captures
responses to these questions:

Interviewer: if you think yourselves back to when you were in schools yourselves. At
that point did you have much experience of teaching pupils who had English as an
additional language, or not? How was that experience for you, yourselves?

Teacher Educator 1: I had virtually none. Partly because, you know, it was a while
ago, although it's not that long ago, it's 13 years since I was teaching in school. But
also the nature of the schools I was working in at that time, they just didn’t have a
significant population of pupils in that category at that point.

Teacher Educator 2: Similar experience for me as well.

Teacher Educator 3: Yeah, and, and for me. Same.

Interviewer: And in all those years of working in schools and, you know, authorities,
would you say you had any CPD or, you know, kind of further development in EAL, or
was that something that, no?

Teacher Educator 1: Very little – to be perfectly honest, I can't remember. I think as

part of my – when I did, did the NPQH qualification, the headship qualification which
I have, we did have to spend some time in a multi, in a, it wasn't so much about EAL,

it was about multi-cultural schools. And that is about the only focus I can remember.
Although I did spend time in schools with, you know, a lot of pupils with EAL who had

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 very strong practice established. But in terms of CPD, there might've been the odd
staff meeting along the way.

Teacher Educator 2: I had no training at all, no. I think I've, I've actually taught
children, particularly when I was overseas with very little experience and, you know,
giving them one-to-one support with things, or giving them a teaching assistant to help
and, and those sorts of things. But no, I haven't had any input at all CPD wise.

While there were many teacher educators who acknowledged that they had no systematic
professional development around matters relating to EAL, one participant provided a
contrasting view by drawing on her experiences of teaching overseas to demonstrate where
she gained practical experience in teaching linguistically and culturally diverse learners?

Teacher Educator: However, I have quite a lot of experience in EAL –and teacher
training, which I can tell you about later. I taught for 14 years in a primary school in X

city after I graduated from Y university; and then after four years I went to work in
Hong Kong where I gained a lot of practical, practice experience of teaching English as
an additional language ‘cause, I mean, there everybody's, it's British schools you were
in.

I would say the course I did in Hong Kong … I would say that was my best training. But
my best training was really practice based, teaching children. You know, learning it as
you're going along. But definitely that course had some of the best training, and I
would say that is applicable to children in this country with EAL.

The findings in the preceding sections highlight how many student teachers and teacher
educators across the teacher preparation routes feel that they lack confidence and requisite
experience as they work to address pupils’ needs within linguistically and culturally diverse
settings. Their statements are brave reflective insights into their experiences. It would appear
that they often find themselves in weak positions as they seek to meet the language and
literacy needs of EAL learners within contexts where high stakes testing and discourses of
accountability are prevalent.

The need to prioritize sustained and coherent professional development opportunities for
teacher educators in schools and university settings is urgent. The lack of such opportunities
would appear to have given rise to a distinct lack of confidence for many of the teacher
educators in this study as they reflected on how they prepare student teachers to address the
needs of EAL learners in schools. It is a matter of urgency to upgrade ITT and professional
development programmes in order to address these gaps.

We now turn in the concluding chapter to outline the resources that were informed by the
central findings of the study. We then draw out what appear to be key implications for ITT
and professional development programmes.

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Chapter 9: Resources, Key Findings and Recommendations

Professional Development Resources

A set of professional development resources were designed as an outcome of this project in

order to address the reported needs across the data sets of teacher educators and student
teachers studying and working across the different routes into teacher training. These
resources were mainly constructed as professional development materials for teacher
educators as this allowed us to shape student teacher learning at the core of their initial
teacher education experiences. To achieve this we drew on the findings from the study, key
areas of research within academic literature, and from our own previous work within the
fields of teacher education and English as an additional language (Anderson et al, 2016b;
Foley et al, 2013). This allowed both a bottom-up and a top-down approach to the
development of professional learning materials.

The underpinning conceptualization of learning, language and literacies across these

resources was linked to matters relating to social justice. Given the increase in global
migration and the fact that Anglophone countries have become places where complex social,
cultural, linguistic and political issues intersect, we felt it was important to sensitize teacher
educators to the experiences that pupils learning EAL often face in school contexts, where
deficit views of them as language learners may limit their opportunities and potential for
achievement (Kubota and Lin, 2009). We also felt it was important that the resources were
informed by current areas of research. These considerations allowed us to focus on languages
and literacies from a transformative, critical perspective in order to create conditions for
teacher educators to consider issues of race, languages, literacies, cultures and identities.
Many of these issues were evident in the data, though direct references to race and identity
were either missing or limited during group and individual interviews, which is in itself a
finding.

In using a transformative critical literacies lens to design the resources we sought to replace
monolingual standard literacies, and to enable teacher educators to recognise the often
invisible literacies that EAL pupils and student teachers bring with them to the classroom.
Such an approach addresses issues of power, identity, language and culture, and enhances
the current literacy framework for the English curricular context. The aim was to make
classroom literacies more representative of society and easily deployed for daily life, both
inside and outside of the classroom.

In terms of implementation at a programme level, our aim was to ensure that ‘new’ bodies
of knowledge ‘fit’ into existing programmes and courses in order to enhance what is already
being done. We adopted a ‘dual approach’ where a number of sessions would give a
grounding in knowledge and strategies. The bulk of input and the requirements placed on
student teachers for reflection and action would then be ‘infused throughout individual
subjects, e.g., drama, mathematics, and importantly, across all of the core concerns of a
Teacher Education programme. This approach requires a re-contextualisation of what is

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already being taught to include a more holistic, inclusionary perspective on languages and
literacies and to enable teacher educators to provide opportunities for student teachers to
plan for diversity. It also allows for, and indeed requires, a very subject-specific response to
EAL issues, strategies and techniques. Each of the professional learning sessions use open-
ended activities which aim to promote reflection on current practice, give clear pointers to
classroom practices and activities, and encourage group discussion around the issues and
learning points that are highlighted across the various themes. A short summary of the
session content for each set of resources is outlined below:

1. Conceptualising EAL (1 half-day session)

The aims of this half-day session are to engage teacher educators in a reflective process about
the contexts for EAL in England in order to help them understand the current situation and
current debates. Uncertainties expressed by teacher educators and student teachers across
the data sets around EAL and languages directed us to see the importance of raising critical
awareness of the range of languages and cultural experiences brought by EAL pupils to
classroom settings. The role of bilingualism and multilingualism in education is also
foregrounded as a way of enabling teacher educators to consider critically the implications of
these issues for provision for EAL learners across the whole curriculum and for their own
practices.

2. Talking and Thinking about Language (2 half-day sessions)

Session one within this theme foregrounds the importance of developing knowledge about
languages and of gaining an understanding of the cognitive demands of moving between
languages. Exploratory approaches are used to examine differences across languages in
structures and forms, and to consider the implications of these differences for day-to-day
practice in multilingual classrooms. Attention is given to features of English that, experienced
practitioners have found, may prove problematic to EAL pupils and to an exploration of how
EAL pupils may be assisted to understand these features and deploy them appropriately.
Activities to develop an understanding, and a degree of felt experience, of the demands of
moving across languages are included. In addition, teacher educators are provided with
opportunities to explore an English dialect in order to assist them in appreciating the variety
of ‘Englishes’ that EAL pupils are likely to encounter.

Session two uses exploratory approaches to understand language in use. The session engages
teacher educators in experiential activities that illustrate the various challenges often
experienced by EAL pupils, and indeed all pupils. There are opportunities to reflect on how to
integrate language-focused activities into a variety of subject areas in order to support
student teachers to meet the needs of EAL pupils. A focus on how to support academic
language development in writing, along with activities that develop an understanding of how
to move from simple to complex texts in writing are also a part of this session.

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3. Meeting Language and Literacy Needs (2 half-day sessions)

Session one within this theme focuses on providing experiences for teacher educators to
understand what a language barrier feels like as they engage in literacy practices. An
exploration of how vocabulary develops for those learning an additional language, along with
an understanding of the social and cultural meanings associated with words, enable
participants to consider factors that aid or hinder comprehension as pupils engage with
spoken, written, visual or digital texts.

Session two develops this theme further by looking at subject literacies and learning in and
through English. It moves teacher educators beyond vocabulary learning to consider the
importance of talk to develop literacies across the curriculum. Language as a means of
meaning-making is a core construct. The term ‘reading’ is used in its broader and more global
sense to include skills that develop enquiry, inferencing, questioning and a critique of the
social and cultural constructions related to a variety of texts. A focus that allows EAL pupils to
engage in translanguaging to complete activities is foregrounded as an element of ‘good
practice’.

We turn now to the Recommendations, where we consider the question of how coherent
professional development in the area of EAL for teacher educators in school and university
settings might best be achieved; and draw out from our findings what appear to be key
implications for initial teacher education and professional development programmes.

Recommendations
A number of headline recommendations can be seen to flow from the findings of this study.
These are outlined to address a range of audiences, i.e., teacher education providers,
professional development providers, and policy makers.

Teacher Education Providers and Policy Makers

The students whom we surveyed and interviewed, drawn from different training routes and
training sites, recognised the need for input concerning EAL across a broad front. Preceding
sections have noted how the resources created within the study have aimed to address
important gaps that the student teachers identified. Interviews with student teachers flagged
up distinct disparity in the degree of their experience of working with EAL learners during
their training period. The student teachers whom we surveyed were also coming with
markedly contrasting levels of prior interaction with EAL learners. The teacher educators
within our study in the main recognised a lack of confidence in their knowledge concerning
EAL.

An overview of the study’s findings does not support a simple, black-and-white deficit view
of initial teacher education related to EAL; but it does show variation in the extent and
adequacy of the coverage of EAL. In addition, the study provides a number of pointers as to
how this situation may be addressed.

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 Initial teacher education in the context of career-long learning: Before we set out these
pointers to the enhancement of initial teacher education concerning EAL, it is
important to place initial teacher education within a wider frame, as only the first
stage in a career-long process of professional development and the enhancement of
day-to-day practice. Attention needs to be given to how input concerning EAL in initial
teacher education is aligned with the training that individuals receive during their
period as newly qualified teachers, and indeed with schools’ general schemes of CPD
in this area for all teachers. The Bell Foundation is itself well-placed to establish a
working group that could create a detailed blueprint of how a more integrated, career-
long approach to teacher education concerning EAL could be achieved.

From the margins to the centre: It can be argued that a shift in mind-set concerning
EAL would greatly enhance both the education of student teachers entering the
profession and CPD for serving teachers and teacher educators. Rather than viewing
EAL as simply a specialised area of expertise that needs to be squeezed into a packed
teacher education curriculum, the accent could rather be on assisting student
teachers to make all lessons more accessible to the multilingual, multicultural classes
that they will encounter in many English primary and secondary schools. Such a shift
would conceptualise multilingualism and multiculturalism as the new norm, thus
transforming a monolingual, English-only mainstream.

Professional Development Providers

Teacher education in schools: Given the shift in the balance of teacher education away
from universities and towards schools, there is a need not only for teacher educators
in universities and training agencies to be adequately prepared to guide student
teachers to meet the needs of EAL pupils but also for this preparation to be extended
to teachers within schools who have key mentoring and training responsibilities.
Accordingly, the following paragraphs adopt a broad definition of the term ‘teacher
educator’, using it to refer to staff in schools who have key mentoring and training
roles as well as members of training institutions and agencies.

Teacher educators and EAL: Such a shift in mind-set clearly requires teacher educators
themselves to engage in development activities, (underpinned by literature reviewed
in this study), that raise their awareness of the needs of EAL learners and provide input
on how these needs can best be met. Resources developed within the current project
have been designed to broaden the knowledge, understanding and strategies of
teacher educators as well as of student teachers.

A key challenge in taking ahead such a programme of ‘education for the educators’ is
in finding mechanisms for the mutual sharing of expertise and resources between
universities, other training providers and schools. As a preceding paragraph has
advocated, there is a strong case for creating a more ‘joined-up’ approach to teacher
education in relation to EAL and a national programme of development.

89
EAL learners in initial teacher education programmes: The results of our surveys serve
as a reminder that initial teacher education programmes themselves contain student
teachers for whom English is an additional language. It is important that their needs
are considered and the contributions they can make are recognised.

EAL within initial teacher education programmes - a way ahead - a ‘dual’ approach:

Preceding survey and development work in Scotland on ITE and EAL led us to suggest
that a ‘dual’ approach is taken to the development of EAL practice within teacher
education programmes’ (Anderson, et al., 2016, p.183). In this dual approach a
number of sessions would give a grounding in knowledge and strategies. The bulk of
input and the requirements placed on students for reflection and action would then
be ‘infused throughout individual subjects, e.g., drama, mathematics, and,
importantly, across all of the core concerns of a Teacher Education programme, such
as differentiation, feedback, assessment, group work, etc.’ (Anderson, et al., 2016,
p.183). The findings of the current study can be seen to provide strong backing for
adopting such a model.

Such a ‘permeation’ of EAL throughout a teacher education programme can be seen

to possess a number of advantages. Principally, it ensures that EAL is given a central
place where the focus is on making all lessons accessible, rather than treating EAL as
a ‘bolt-on’ addition to existing programmes. It also allows for, and indeed requires, a
very subject-specific response to EAL issues, strategies and techniques. This would
include attention to issues surrounding the assessment of EAL learners in individual
subjects – a matter which the students in our first survey very much flagged up as one
where they required guidance.

Teacher Education Providers and Policy Makers: Central Matters

While prevailing policy has prioritised integration and inclusion, little attention has
been given to expanding the knowledge base of pre-service teachers that would
enable them to address to the language and literacy needs of linguistically and
culturally diverse classrooms (e.g. Anderson et al, 2016; Foley et al, 2013; Brentnall,
2015). It is therefore important for all concerned with teacher education to grapple
with how we prepare student teachers for our future schools.

The value position that we take is that any ‘core’ sessions on EAL for student teachers
should foreground questions of social justice, equity and inclusion.

Salient findings of this study highlight the importance of including the following
messages and topics within the general sessions on EAL provided within a programme,
and of reinforcing these messages throughout a programme.

As we have indicated earlier in this summary, there appears from our findings
to be a need to convey more forcefully in initial teacher education the value of
the use of home languages in the classroom.

90
 While one can expect that current teacher education programmes will include
knowledge about the English language to prepare student teachers to teach
the grammar and spelling content of the National Curriculum, a strong
argument can be made that it is important for trainee teachers to also have
some wider knowledge about languages. They will be able to act in a more
aware way towards EAL learners when they have a clear sense of how
structures and forms differ across languages.
A more informed understanding of the challenges faced by EAL learners is also
fostered when student teachers are given a direct experience of the cognitive
and associated emotional demands of moving between languages. Activities
can be provided which give student teachers a close approximation of the
active problem-solving and inferencing that is customarily involved in moving
between the structures and vocabulary of another language and those of
English.
Student teachers will expand their understanding of literacy and be able to act
more responsively towards EAL learners when they are assisted to reflect on
the cultural knowledge and experience embedded within the texts used in
classrooms, allowing them to recognise how differences and gaps in cultural
knowledge impact on comprehension.
A similar point can be made in relation to vocabulary development where, as
we have noted earlier, attention needs to be given to the importance of world
knowledge, prior experience and the culturally specific meanings associated
with words.
It is also desirable that student teachers appreciate that EAL learners face the
task of learning Englishes, of mastering a local dialect as well as the ‘standard’
English employed in classrooms; and also consider the differences between the
grammar of spoken and written English.

School experience: We recognise that it may be difficult in some regions to ensure

that all student teachers interact with EAL pupils during their training period.
However, it is clearly desirable that as far as is possible, student teachers do have such
experience.

When this cannot be put into practice, they can, as we have suggested in an earlier
report: ‘[have] the vicarious experience of watching teachers in a range of classrooms
interacting with EAL learners and then talking about their practice’ (Anderson et al.,
2016, p.182) Such recordings would also be a valuable resource for all student
teachers and better prepare them for the diversity that is now ‘the norm’.

Conclusion

We conclude this study by recognizing that concepts of mainstreaming and inclusion are
powerful engines that drive the need for all educators to develop the knowledge, skills and
dispositions that allow them to become linguistically and culturally responsive to the needs
of pupils learning EAL. It is important for teacher educators to receive the support and
professional development opportunities that will enable them to prepare student teachers to

91
achieve this informed responsiveness. Such preparation needs to be tied to the realities in
today’s classrooms.

The centrality of diverse languages, literacies, and cultures within schools makes such
knowledge a fundamental requirement across all teacher-training routes. This requires a
joined up, systematic approach that enables professionals in schools and universities to work
collaboratively, despite the different programme philosophies, goals, and understanding of
teaching and learning, in order to improve the quality of teacher education. Collaborations of
this kind can break down the ‘silos’ that may exist in these domains and allows the expertise
of the various participants across these settings to prepare teachers who are equipped to
meet the needs of EAL pupils, thus enabling them to develop well-rounded literate lives.

92
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 Glossary

Classification and Framing

These concepts come from Bernstein’s explorations of the social organisation and hierarchical
nature of academic disciplines and their participants. ‘Classification’ refers to the boundaries
that are established within and between academic subjects and is concerned with identifying
how they are established and maintained. ‘Framing’ refers to the ways in which control is
constructed and managed within and between disciplines through all the discourses, both
spoken and written, that participants engage in.

Cognitive and psycholinguistic approaches to Second Language Education

An important distinction can be drawn between these approaches and more sociolinguistic
approaches to language education. The first see humans as biologically predisposed to
develop language whereas the second are more concerned with the ways in which humans
use language in interaction with others and with the communities and societies in which they
are situated. Thus, for cognitive linguists and psycholinguists, the emphasis is more on
language as a system to be acquired and learned while for the sociolinguistically inclined, the
emphasis is on language as social practice, on the ways in which people use language to do
the things they want to do and the educational implications of this.

Field, Habitus and Practice

Bourdieu’s work aimed to develop a ‘theory of practice’ in sociology in order to overcome the
rigid objective-subjective divide. His ideas relate to the ways in which power is negotiated
and distributed in society. The first, ‘field’ refers to the settings in which social action takes
place, where individuals interact and negotiate their relative positions. Closely related,
‘habitus’ is defined as a system of embodied dispositions that individuals develop in response
to the objective conditions they encounter. Both of these concepts sit within the idea, key to
Bourdieu’s theory of practice that individuals do not operate according to external rational
criteria, but in response to implicit practical logic and bodily dispositions.

Multilingualism
The academic literature on multilingualism has grown exponentially over recent years. In the
project, we use the term ‘multilingual’ to refer to societies where the use of different
languages is a normal and unremarked part of daily life, and where individuals use their range
of language skills and competences to communicate, achieve their purposes and construct
their identities and to classrooms where teachers and learners have knowledge and
experiences of other languages besides the one which is the medium of instruction.

Region (as opposed to ‘discipline’)

In discussion of classification and framing, Bernstein uses the notion of ‘region’ to describe
and allow for changes to established academic disciplines. A ‘region’ is an inter-disciplinary or
applied field which uses theories and practices from different disciplines and thus opens up
new possibilities for theory, research and practice.

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