Description
Classrooms are often characterized by considerable linguistic and cultural diversity. Meeting the educational needs of students who use a language other than English poses challenges for teachers who are routinely unprepared to teach these students. Teacher training programmes across the UK rarely dedicate extended periods of time to linguistically and culturally relevant teacher education modules and at best, the training would be focused on theoretical knowledge and approaches or orientations, and less on particular practices, moves, and contexts based on empirical understandings of these students. Research on teacher education (Ball & Forzani, 2009) has identified high leverage practices and tasks of teaching that are known to progress student learning. Less is known, however, about what differentiates classrooms in which English as Additional Language students (EALs) progress most from those other classroom making the least. Also, what understandings of and about language do classroom teachers draw on to realize the tasks of teaching EALs in mainstream classroom ecologies?Drawing on classroom ecology perspective (Van Lier, 2004) and practice-based theories of teaching (Grossman et al. 2009), this paper presentation addresses the question by examining the tasks of teaching that are central to the work of teaching EALs in classrooms.
| Period | 27 Feb 2026 |
|---|---|
| Held at | Ulster University , United Kingdom |
| Degree of Recognition | Local |