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Kamil Trzebiatowski, University of the West of ScotlandEAL Coordinator & EAL Academy Associate
Languages in the Globalized World conference, Samuel Beckett University, Leeds, 28 May 2015
EAL pupils and classroom teachers’ attitudes to class withdrawal vs mainstreaming
http://valuediversity-teacher.co.uk/
RESEARCH QUESTIONTo what extent do the attitudes and opinions of EAL pupils and classroom teachers to class withdrawal vs mainstreaming differ?
1. Do subject (mainstream) teachers and EAL pupils have different views on whether or not they should be mainstreamed or withdrawn for EAL support?
2. Establish the ratio of preferred number of withdrawal sessions to the time spent in mainstream classrooms
3. Reasons for both parties’ opinions
England and EAL: National background
• The Calderdale Report (CRE, 1986) = mainstreamed approach now expected (Green, 2012)
• OFSTED (2014): subject teachers have the responsibility to plan for language and content and collaborate with EAL staff
• EAL is not a subject: Leung (2001): EAL is “supra-subject” phenomenon and “diffused curriculum concern”
• Chen (2007): “children are treated the same despite their differences” – their linguistic needs ignored• Often placed with little in-class support, teachers are not EAL aware
and resources are minimal
• Mainstream: problematic = EAL peripheral? (Reeves, 2006)• Mainstream teachers “better” and EAL teachers not “proper”
(Creese, 2005)• Mainstream teachers found unprepared to teach language and
grammar to EAL learners (Cajkler and Hall, 2009)• Creese (2005): metalinguistic function of language vs
referential function of language in English schools• Places of submersion with little focus on form
England and EAL: National background
Ainscow and Booth (2002): Index for Inclusion: listen to all pupils’ voices
Are EAL pupils’ opinions on mainstreaming vs withdrawals the same or divergent?
Is EAL pupils’ education done for them or to them?
Research gap: scarcity of research investigating the views that pupils themselves hold
regarding EAL withdrawalsChen (2007) appears to be the only one conducted in England.
Context• Conducted in spring 2015• Comprehensive mainstream secondary school for girls in north-east
England• Attended by approx. 700 pupils• 21.7% EAL pupils• Social/economically deprived area• EAL Coordinator + 2 EAL Teaching Assistants with no formal
qualifications• EAL pupils on short withdrawal course, combining English Language,
English, Literacy and Maths)• Pupils leave for the mainstream upon achieving satisfactory level of SLA
• 5 EAL learners and 5 mainstream teachers involved• EAL learners: Poland, Portugal, Chad, Lithuania and Latvia• Learners in the mainstream – not higher than EAL(QCA) level 2• Teachers: all white British (English, Arts, Food, MFL)• Semi-structured interviews with all participants
Design
Findings
Mainstream or withdrawal preferences
Number of preferred EAL
withdrawal sessions (out of 15 lessons per
week)
Pupils’
reasons
Teachers’ reaso
ns
EAL PUPILS TEACHERS
PREFERENCE: Mainstreaming
Teachers: Emotions teaching EAL learners
“Help me!” (Teacher C)
Teachers: language of uncertainty
“I try to pre-plan” (Teacher A)
“I think I'd be able to do – I mean, I – some of the standard procedures. So, things like having bilingual dictionaries. Things like having perhaps a list of key terms, maybe some word ((shifts)) and some picture associations.” (Teacher B)
“I think as a language teacher, I could probably say, yes. I think I c- +could–you know, quite easily, because if we deliver, which we do as majority, the language–the lessons in the foreign language, we're almost teaching EAL learners anyway.” (Teacher E)
Teachers: EAL training
“No.” (Teacher A)
“Apart from the stuff that you have done, no. Not that I remember but that’s 21 years.” (Teacher B)
“No. None.” (Teacher C)
“Only that coming into our graphic organizer–our own in-house training; but as training to be a teacher, no. Not at all.” (Teacher E)
Interviewer: What did your teacher do for you to learn English language? Did they--?
Pupil D: Uh–They–{NS}
“Yes, I have help. Yes, if I ask for it myself.” (Pupil E)
”If I call them I don't understand something, they help me.” (Pupil B)
“the teacher help me to find in tablet.” (Pupil D)
“for example, sometimes he gives me an iPad, and it’s easier somehow.” (Pupil E)
“She writing–writing–and I am copy what she writing.” (Pupil C)
Pupils: Support from teachers
Negative emotions
• Guilt and feeling overwhelmed
• Pleading for help
And…
• Language of uncertainty
• Not grounded in EAL pedagogy
• Only most basic strategies used
• No EAL CPD
Thus…
• Unfounded assumptions of teachers
• Little consideration of what English language needs teaching
Teachers: Benefits from participating in the
mainstream“Also, the longer you have a student withdrawn, for whatever reason, the
less a bond they have with their peer group, and also the less up to date they are with their learning as it happens in the classroom, so I would always say
the priority for a student is to be absorbed in that learning, the
mainstream learning, as much as possible.” (Teacher A)
“I think that would help them develop their communication even more because they're in with peers”
(Teacher E)
“I think sometimes students can be overwhelmed, so it depends on the student as
well.” (Teacher A)
“I think for a lot of these students, if they're coming in, they genuinely are gonna be shell
shocked.” (Teacher B)
“So they are – they are very scared, I think.” (Teacher C)
“because it must also be quite scary for them” (Teacher E)
Teachers: Perception of pupils’ stress in the mainstream
Social benefits
• Interaction with native speaking peers
• Less interaction in EAL withdrawals
But…
• Elevated levels of stress in mainstream classrooms
• Krashen (1982): Affective Filter Hypothesis
Thus…
• Language confidence and social confidence less likely due to stress
“low anxiety appears to be conducive to second language acquisition, whether measured as personal
or classroom anxiety” (p.32)
Pupils: Struggling with the English language in
the mainstream
“reading I don’t understand” (Pupil A)
Because sometimes I understand what the teacher says, but
sometimes–they–they talk very quickly–and sometimes I don't
understand. (Pupil E)
“It’s a bit difficult, because I don’t know many– words and such.”
(Pupil E)
Pupils: On being differentiated for by mainstream teachers
Interviewer: “Ok, uh–Do you ever get something from them–like a piece of paper–something–”Pupil D: “No.”
Interviewer: Do you get any additional materials, for instance, from teachers?Pupil E: “No, I never get any.”
Pupils: The value of withdrawal
Pupil B: “There teach you slowly slowly, understand more, but in–”
Interviewer: “the subject lessons–”Pupil B: “Yeah, they talk, like, difficult English. “
“Here, is like more family. “ (Pupil D)
“In here, every time helping me. In other lessons, sometimes.” (Pupil B)
“I think if I don’t understand something, I will learn it here better, and if I have some
problems with writing, I think it would be great to learn it here again.” (Pupil E)
Pupils: Disadvantages of withdrawals
“Because every lesson is different, and in every lesson I learn something different, and here in those EAL I only learn English.” (Pupil
E)
“Yeah, because here we just have PE, English and Maths, and in normal lessons we have all
the subjects.” (Pupil D)
“I found it boring because the same – like easy.” (Pupil B)
Effectiveness for embedding subject knowledge
• Agrees with NALDIC’s distinctive pedagogy and DfE
But…
• Pupils difficulties understanding vocabulary
• No reported differentiation from teachers
Thus…
• Very similar to Chen’s (2007) findings: pupils are lost in mainstream classrooms
More subject domains available
• EAL is only one subject as opposed to many in the mainstream
But…
• Ignoring difficulties understanding vocabulary and language
Teachers: Planning / time issues
“now you've got 2 EAL students who don't speak any English, and it's that extra thing on top that it's hard to–it
adds to the planning.” (Teacher D)
“because I have her on a Monday, whereas before, Thursday nights, you
get done what you can get done–” (Teacher A)
“So that's probably my weakest area: trying to be firm with them and say no.” (Teacher C)
“Is what's written down legible for them? I don't know. And that unknown worries me, because I don't know if I am expecting too much of them or – if they are–” (Teacher C)
Teachers: expectations of EAL pupils
Low expectations
• EAL last group considered in the lesson planning process
• Language barrier leading to deficit view of EAL learners
And…
• Despite mainstreaming benefits, teachers still want 2x more withdrawals than pupils - counterintuitive
Thus…
• “Integration” talk (vs. “inclusion”)
Pupil D: Because–in lessons, we do English, but not English like vocabulary and listening–We do English like tests, we–
Interviewer: So you do everything in English.
Pupil D: Yeah.
“English teachers are not teachers of English.”
(Teacher E)
3 out 5 students: believe they learned more English in the mainstream
Teachers: What language is to be taught?“I want to say you would be covering the sort of the
basics of English language and understanding: comprehension, grammar, spelling and things like that.
(Teacher C)
“You'll teach them English, and not worry about Science”(Teacher C)
“the role of the EAL teacher would be more specialised approach” (Teacher A)
“we should start ((encoding)) them into some basic comprehension of what we do.” (Teacher B)
“we have to worry about the rest. “(Teacher C)
“And then from my own point of view, it's then to pick up from there and to help them to be starting to make
progress in my subject” (Teacher D)
“you would want them to focus on the core subjects rather than – the foundation subjects, first of all” (Teacher
C)
“Probably leaving in practical things. Like PE or Food or Textiles where–if–they don't necessarily need to have their language–they can observe and go from there.”
(Teacher E)
Teachers: Integration vs inclusion
“to enable and facilitate that child integrate” (Teacher B)
“they could spend some time learning the basics of the language, and then perhaps some integration into lessons” (Teacher C)
“most of the girls I’ve seen coming to my classes, have certainly integrated very quickly” (Teacher D)
“because they would see that these students were making that effort and getting that support to integrate into that system” (Teacher E)
English language in the mainstream
• Belief pupils learn more English language in the mainstream
But…
• Mistaken belief that learning in English is learning about English
• Not truly provided with English language teaching in the mainstream
Thus…
• “Diffused curriculum concern” (Leung): no discussion of what language should be learned
• Content is primary, EAL is secondary
EMERGING ISSUES
• EAL as a non-subject• Superiority of the mainstream = little linguistic differentiation• Little differentiation = EAL pupils’ stress = social/linguistic benefits of
the mainstream nullified• EAL difference perceived as a deficit due to lack of teachers’ training• Children think in English = learning English language• Children not aware that not teaching English language has become
normalized in their schools• Choose content over language as metalinguistic function of
language is not required of them
CONCLUSIONS
• Teacher and pupils: hope for very different educational outcomes• Lack of EAL pedagogy awareness leads to pursuit of myths and false
assumptions• urgently needed: professional EAL training to all mainstream teachers
• EAL to become a subject• Establishing criteria for what language is to be taught by mainstream and
EAL teachers alike• Elimination of the confusion that learning in English is the same as
learning English language• The voice of new arrived EAL children to be heard more often
• More research needed to build a more comprehensive picture
REFERENCES• C.R.E. (1986) Teaching English as a Second Language: Report of a Formal Investigation in Calderdale Local
Education Authority. London : Commission for Racial Equality• OFSTED (2014) English as an Additional Language: Briefing for Section 5 Inspection. Available at:
http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/20169/5/English%20as%20an%20additional%20language%5B1%5D.doc [Accessed 26 May 2015]
• Leung, C. (2001) 'English as an Additional Language: Distinct Language Focus or Diffused Curriculum Concerns?', Language and Education, Vol. 15(1). Pp.33-55
• Chen, Y. (2007) 'Equality and Inequality of Opportunity in Education: Chinese Emergent Bilingual Children in the English Mainstream Classroom', Culture and Curriculum, Vol. 20(1). Pp. 36-51
• Creese, A. (2005a) Teacher Collaboration and Talk in Multilingual Classrooms. Multilingual Matters: Clevedon• Cajkler, W. and Hall, B. (2009) ''When they first come in what do you do?' English as an additional language
and newly qualified teachers', Language and Education, Vol.23(2). Pp. 153-170• Reeves, J. (2006) 'Secondary teacher attitudes toward including English-language learners in mainstream
classrooms', The Journal of Educational Research, Vol. 99(3). pp. 131—143• Ainscow, M. and Booth, T. (2002) Index for inclusion. 1st ed. Bristol: CSIE