Research report: English as an additional language or dialect (EAL/D) effective school practices

 Research report: English as an additional language or dialect (EAL/D) effective school practices is a session for School Leaders from PETAA's 2021 Leading with Literacy Conference: Powerful Practices for all Learners, and is presented by Dr Gill Pennington and Margaret Turnbull.

About the presenters: Dr Gill Pennington has worked as a primary school EAL/D teacher and consultant within the ACT and more recently as an EAL/D consultant in south-western Sydney. She has taught at the University of Sydney, where she completed her PhD in 2018, researching Storytelling in a Multilingual Community. Her current research interests include the use of home languages in the classroom, and multilingual ecologies which support English language learning. She is a Council member and past president of ATESOL NSW
Margaret Turnbull is currently undertaking doctoral research in EAL/D education while working as a Principal Policy Analyst in the NSW Department of Education. As an Instructional Leader at a culturally and linguistically diverse school in South Western Sydney she led teacher learning in EAL/D pedagogy and assessment practices. As the coordinator of the EAL/D program in NSW Department of Education, she led assessment, curriculum and research projects and policy development for EAL learners.

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• Explore the research methodology of this EAL/D school practices research study conducted jointly by CESE (the Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation) and the Multicultural Education team within the NSW Department of Education.
• Analyse the main findings of the report in application to EAL/D student growth. 
• Learn which practices are most effective based on individual school and teaching contexts. 

In this session, Dr Gill Pennington and Margaret Turnbull walk us through a recent study to find the best EAL/D practices in schools.

In addition to the large number of EAL/D students in Australian classrooms today, Margaret tells us that "It actually takes 5-7 years, or their full school career, for EAL/D learners to be on par with their peers in learning English."

"And if language and subject teaching is essential for EAL/D students, it's beneficial for all students."

The goal of their research study was to build on existing research findings: we know that scaffolding is important for EAL/D learners, for example, so its aim was to lay out more explicit practices. 

To find out these key teaching practices, they used a mixed method approach in the schools that were "doing it best" for their EAL/D students, and employed a unique observation framework. 

A student in one of the classrooms that was observed for the study said "My teacher knows all about me... good teachers know about their students" That student clearly knows the importance of teacher-student connection, which was one of the five main findings of the study overall. 

The other key findings included: distributed leadership, high challenge/high support programs, sustained teacher knowledge, and recognition of EAL/D expertise. 

They touched on specific recommendations from these findings like having bilingual volunteers or support staff to help increase engagement. They also presented a model for sustained teacher knowledge-building across the whole staff, so that we can refine our skills, share our skills, and talk with others about what we are learning. 

Gill’s Recent webinar on Supporting EAL/D students in mainstream classrooms is another great resource to share with your colleagues. 

Our critically acclaimed teacher reference text, An EAL/D Handbook, features both Gill and Margaret. 

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