Supporting pupils with EAL in mainstream primary classrooms: How do teachers facilitate communication to facilitate progress within lessons?

"This research will investigate how primary school teachers interact with their pupils who are acquiring English as an additional language. The research adopts a sociocultural perspective, viewing learning as a social process whereby social interactions are fundamental to cognitive development. The English as an Additional Language (EAL) pupil status is defined by government documentation as pertaining to children for whom the 'first language... is known or believed to be other than English' (DfE, 2015, p.7). The Office for National Statistics' (2015) summary of migration trends highlights the continuing increase of net migration to the UK of both EU and non-EU citizens, with recent figures indicating a total of over one million pupils with EAL currently studying in England (DfE, 2015). The situation is particularly concerning when considering findings that immigrant pupils 'tend to have more restricted access to quality education, leave school earlier, and have lower academic achievements than their native peers' (OECD, 2010, p.12). The current educational and social contexts surrounding the issue of EAL pupil provision and attainment highlights the need to develop a more holistic understanding regarding the learning requirements of these pupils and the ways in which teachers can meet these needs more successfully.
This study aims to fill this research gap by implementing a qualitative, micro-ethnographic case study employing conversation analysis (CA) methods, through means of a single, embedded case study of one particular school to reveal issues facing schools nationwide. CA looks at real-life interactions to reveal the ways in which people make sense of each other in real time. The emic perspective which such a method promotes seeks to analyse data without a prior bias or stance (Patton, 2015). Existing research has demonstrated benefits in adopting a CA-informed pedagogy for both teachers and pupils (Barraja-Rohan, 2011; Waring, 2010; Mori, 2007). There will be three main stages to this research. The first stage will involve interviews with the school senior leadership team (SLT) in order to arrive at an understanding of how EAL support is managed and considered at the whole school level. The particular individuals who will be interviewed from this group include the head teacher, EAL co-ordinator and Key Stage leaders. Interviews will be semi-structured to allow for the possibility of probing and asking 'follow up questions to elicit further description' (Roulston,
2010, p.14). Observations of school activities will then be carried out to identify situations where EAL pupils need language support and how this support is (or is not) provided through both teacher-pupil and pupil-pupil interactions. This will inform selection of the types of interactions to focus on more specifically through CA; at this point it is anticipated that these are likely to occur primarily during small group work. This will lead directly to the third stage of research where situations will be selected for closer CA analysis. Interactions of interest will be those where the EAL child becomes actively engaged with their interlocutors, thus providing opportunities for language learning to take place.
This study will be supported through a collaborative partnership secured with the researcher's primary school. This will allow access to the school in recruiting participants and collecting data, as well as providing opportunities for discussion with colleagues and attending in-service training throughout the research project. The research project will therefore be grounded in the professional context being investigated.
The following research questions have been developed to address the aims of this research:
- How do primary school teachers facilitate communication to enable progress within lessons for pupils with EAL?
- Do these approaches encourage child participation and communication in the learning tasks?