Download - EnglishAgenda - British Council

Research that focuses heavily on interview data, such as this study, must alsoacknowledge that the interview process itself has the potential to be flawed, if theinterviewer is not aware of the idea of an interview as social practice, meaning thatparticipants’ contributions should not necessarily be taken at face value at theanalysis stage (Talmy, 2010). The analysis of interview data here adopted a fairlytraditional thematic approach with the themes being drawn from the interviewguide as well as from the data itself.Having considered the methods adopted for this study, findings are now presentedfollowed by a discussion of their implications. Interview data is principallysummarised in the following section, with some additional verbatim responsespresented in Appendix 3.Findings and discussionThe provision of support for bilingual children, L1 use in school, and attitudestowards bilingualism were all key themes raised in the interviews that are relevantto an exploration of the links between research and current practice in northernEngland.We shall first consider the provision of support available for EAL children acrossthe participating schools, attempting to draw conclusions about regionaldifferences in terms of the nature of the bilingual education being offered.Provision of support for bilingual learnersTaking a look back at the summaries of the linguistic and socio-cultural researchperspectives, we might expect to find the following in our schools:■■■■■■■■trained and qualified staffgood resources availablea personalised approach to the provision of support, with one-to-oneinteraction commonactively avoiding stigma when children need support.Appendix 1 shows that the EAL population varies hugely across the eight schoolsand we might expect this to have a bearing on the level of support and knowledgefound in each school. Most schools in this study had one nominated staff memberas a co-ordinator for the provision of support for bilingual learners, but this wasnot always clear-cut and differed across the schools, as shown in Table 2.UK Primary School | 137