“I think it fits in”: Using Process Drama to Promote Agentic Writing with Primary School Children

Set against the backdrop of children being “alienated” from their writing (Lambirth 2016), this paper is taken from a UKLA sponsored project where primary school teachers were trained to use process drama in order to give children more agency in their writing across the curriculum. Here we use discourse analysis (Gee 2010) to think about the children’s historical creative writing in relation to the drama lessons which are differently framed (Bernstein 2000) by the teachers. Building upon a theoretical model of drama as “blended space” (Duffy 2014) and writing as problem-solving (Bereiter and Scardamalia 1986), a case is made that process drama can lead to what we term ‘agentic writing’. Agentic writing, we demonstrate, involves children actively translating their embodied experience of the blended space into writing by making a range of intertextual borrowings. These borrowing serve both to capture and transform their embodied experience as the children gain agency by “standing outside language” to achieve “double voicedness” (Bakthin 1986). Seeing the relationship between process drama and writing in this light, we argue, provides a means of reconnecting children to the act of writing

Connecting research and practice in TESOL: a community of practice perspective

In line with a growing interest in teacher research engagement in second language education, this article is an attempt to shed light on teachers’ views on the relationship between teaching and practice. The data comprise semi-structured interviews with 20 teachers in England, examining their views about the divide between research and practice in their field, the reasons for the persistence of the divide between the two and their suggestions on how to bridge it. Wenger’s (1998) Community of Practice (CoP) is used as a conceptual framework to analyse and interpret the data. The analysis indicates that teacher experience, learning and ownership of knowledge emerging from participation in their CoP are key players in teachers’ professional practice and in the development of teacher identity. The participants construe the divide in the light of the differences they perceive between teaching and research as two different CoPs, and attribute the divide to the limited mutual engagement, absence of a joint enterprise and lack of a shared repertoire between them. Boundary encounters, institutionalised brokering and a more research-oriented teacher education provision are some of the suggestions for bringing the two communities together

Bridging the Gap: Cognitive and social approaches to research in second language learning and teaching.

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/139862/1/SSLA2014.pd

Submerged in the mainstream? A case study of an immigrant learner in a New Zealand primary classroom

Immigrant children from diverse language backgrounds face not only linguistic challenges when enrolled in mainstream English-medium classrooms, but also difficulties adjusting to an unfamiliar learning community. The culture of primary school classrooms in New Zealand typically reflects conventions across three dimensions: interactional, instructional task performance and cognitive-academic development. All three dimensions are underpinned by the culturally specific discourse conventions involved in language socialisation. New learners may be helped by classmates or their teacher to understand and successfully use these conventions, but left on their own they may sink rather than swim. This is a case study of one Taiwanese 11-year old boy, 'John', who entered a New Zealand primary classroom midway through the school year. John's basic conversational ability was sound, but he did not possess the interactive classroom skills needed to operate in the new culture of learning. Selected from a wider study of the classroom, transcript data from audio-recorded excerpts of John's interactions over several months with his teacher and classmates are interpreted from perspectives derived from sociocultural and language socialisation theories. The article concludes with a brief consideration of the extent to which John constructed, or was constrained from constructing meaningful learning experiences, and suggestions for further research and reflection

Young Children Learning Languages in a Multilingual Context

Luxembourg is a trilingual country where residents communicate in Luxembourgish, French and German concurrently. Children therefore study these languages at primary school. In this paper I explore how six eight-year-old Luxembourgish children use and learn German, French and English in formal and informal settings over a period of one year. Their eagerness to learn and use German and English contrasted with their cautious and formal approach to the learning of French. My findings demonstrate that second language learning in a multilingual country is not an 'automatic' or 'natural' process but, rather, children's language behaviour depends on their personal goals, interests, competence, confidence and understanding of what counts as appropriate language use. These factors are influenced by the formal approach to language learning at school

Beyond paradigm : The ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of classroom research

This article reviews studies in second language classroom research from a cross-theoretic perspective, arguing that the classroom holds the potential for bringing together researchers from opposing theoretical orientations. It shows how generative and general cognitive approaches share a view of language that implicates both implicit and explicit knowledge, and that holds a bias towards implicit knowledge. Arguing that it is implicit knowledge that should be the object of research, it proposes that classroom research would benefit from incorporating insights from a generative understanding of language. Specifically, there is a need for a more nuanced view of the complexity of language in terms of linguistic domain, and the interaction between those domains. Generative second language acquisition research that shows developmental differences in terms of both linguistic domain and interface is reviewed. The core argument is a call for more attention to the ‘what’ of language development in classroom research and, by implication, teaching practice. As such, the language classroom is seen to offer potential for research that goes beyond paradigm to address both the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of language development

Mobile Augmented Reality and Language-Related Episodes

Applications of locative media (e.g., place‐based mobile augmented reality [AR]) are used in various educational content areas and have been shown to provide learners with valuable opportunities for investigation‐based learning, location‐situated social and collaborative interaction, and embodied experience of place (Squire, 2009; Thorne & Hellermann, 2017; Zheng et al., 2018). Mobile locative media applications’ value for language learning, however, remains underinvestigated. To address this lacuna, this study employed the widely used construct of language‐related episodes (LREs; Swain & Lapkin, 1998) as a unit of analysis to investigate language learning through participation in a mobile AR game. Analysis of videorecorded interactions of four mixed‐proficiency groups of game players (two English language learners [ELLs] and one expert speaker of English [ESE] per group) indicates that LREs in this environment were focused on lexical items relevant to the AR tasks and physical locations. Informed by sociocultural theory and conversation analysis, the microgenesis of learners’ understanding and subsequent use of certain lexical items are indicated in the findings. This understanding of new lexical items was frequently facilitated by ESEs’ assistance and the surrounding physical environment. A strong goal orientation by both ESEs and ELLs was visible, providing implications for task‐based language teaching approaches

Beyond Antagonism? The Discursive Construction of ‘New’ Teachers in the United Arab Emirates

The UAE, which celebrated independence in 1971, is a rapidly changing environment where aspects of traditional Bedouin culture co-exist with the immense changes being wrought by the forces of globalization and the wealth brought about by the development of the oil industry. Emirati nationals are a minority within the UAE, comprising approximately 20% of the population, and the majority of the schoolteachers are expatriates drawn from other Arabic speaking countries. Within this context, the Higher Colleges of Technology's Bachelor of Education degree in Teaching English to Young Learners prepares young UAE national women for English language teaching positions in local government schools. The research presented in this paper is drawn from this two-year study of student teachers and explores the discursive construction of the students' systems of knowledge and belief. The paper concludes with a critical consideration of the study's implications and some possible recommendations for teacher education in the UAE that may also have resonance for teacher education programs in other contexts

The mediation and organisation of gestures in vocabulary instructions: a microgenetic analysis of interactions in a beginning-level adult ESOL classroom

There is limited research on second language (L2) vocabulary teaching and learning which provides fine-grained descriptions of how vocabulary explanations (VE) are interactionally managed in beginning-level L2 classrooms where learners have a limited L2 repertoire, and how the VEs could contribute to the learners’ conceptual understanding of the meaning(s) of the target vocabulary items (VIs). To address these research gaps, we used a corpus of classroom video-data from a beginning-level adult ESOL classroom in the United States and applied Conversation Analysis to examine how the class teacher employs various gestural and linguistic resources to construct L2 VEs. We also conducted a 4-month microgenetic analysis to document qualitative changes in learners’ understanding of the meaning of specific L2 VIs which were previously explained by the teacher. Findings revealed that the learners’ use of gestures allows for an externalization of thinking processes providing visible output for inspection by the teacher and peers. These findings can inform educators’ understanding about L2 vocabulary development as a gradual process of controlling the right gestural and linguistic resources for appropriate communicative purposes