Learning from multilingual trainee teachers to inform working with EAL pupils

Pupils learning through English as an Additional Language (EAL) are in the minority in the UK. Numbers of these pupils has grown considerably over recent years, but EAL pupils receive variable support towards success within England’s education system. Although grouped together in education policy, EAL learners come from heterogeneous backgrounds, and the ‘attainment gap’ between them and their mono-lingual peers is reported as an area of concern. Teachers are publicly held to account for pupil progress, against universal benchmarks and through use of high-stake testing. Trainee teachers must understand the critical impact they have in enacting policy in the classroom and how their own values and ideals will influence their choice of pedagogy to offer alternative ways to support EAL pupils. Set within a Bourdieusian framework and drawing on concepts of capital, symbolic power and symbolic violence, this study explores and analyses the experience and identity of multilingual trainee primary school teachers using narrative enquiry. Few studies with teachers of EAL pupils involve multilingual teachers in Primary settings and even fewer studies involve multilingual trainee teachers in the UK. Thematic narrative analysis of study data captures participants’ journeys of learning in school, their use of translanguaging and their experience of Initial Teacher Education in developing professional identity and shaping choice of professional pedagogy. Themes drawn from the data focus on belonging and inclusion, identity, additive and transformative approaches to language, and Initial Teacher Education. The emotional costs of navigating a school system where participants felt they did not fully belong is evident, as is the importance of relationships with teachers. The lived experience of multilingual trainee teachers taught in English schools is made up of the intersection and relationship between language acquisition and learning dynamics. The impact of this lived experience of trainees is the focus and originality of my research, along with a novel approach to data collection and interpretation. This study seeks to inform the preparation of teachers working with EAL pupils in the current policy context in England. This context determines the conditions for growth of a school system that is ever-evolving and which is affected by global and subsequent national priorities. In this context, although a translanguaging approach to teaching and learning may be the ultimate goal for many teachers, this thesis suggests that the concept of Funds of Knowledge (FOK) may provide a helpful stepping stone on the journey as long as it is viewed as an illustration of the way that pupils bring their cultural heritage, identity and knowledge to the classroom and fuse these with their experience of education in the classroom. Thus, the concept of FOK is presented as a helpful illustration of the importance of pupils’ cultural heritage and experience and of the recognition of these in classroom planning, teaching and learning, whilst avoiding tokenism and ensuring that teachers remain “critically reflexive” to avoid unintentional perpetuation of hegemony (Oughton 2016, p63).