Teachers' evaluations of creative collaboration - With speakers Jane Andrews and Maryam Almohammad (MOSAIC Seminar)

MOSAIC Group for Research on Multilingualism seminar series 2018-19

What happens when artists and teachers generate arts-based approaches to supporting English language development in schools? 

Speakers: Dr Jane Andrews, Associate Professor (Education), UWE Bristol and Dr Maryam Almohammad, University of the West of England

This presentation will be based on a thematic analysis of teachers’ and teaching assistants’ evaluations of their first-hand experiences of integrating arts-based approaches to teaching and learning with children developing English as an Additional Language, across primary, secondary and special schools in England during the school year 2017-2018.

The research was conducted within the “Creating Welcoming Learning Environments project” project (AHRC, AH/R004781/1). The project was a follow-on from the AHRC large grant Researching Multilingually at the Borders of Language, the Body, the Law and the State (AH/L006936). The RM@Borders project sought to explore uses of language when people face pain and pressure while at the same time conceptualising and using creative arts methods as a form of language from the earliest stages of the project.

The CWLE project built on this work by exploring the potential benefits for teaching and learning of connecting the creative arts methods developed in the RM@Borders project with supportive approaches for learners of EAL. While it is not new to link creative arts approaches with teaching EAL, given, as an example, the work of Cummins & Early (2011), the work reported in this presentation offers theorisation and evaluation of innovative practices in school contexts.

Biography:

Jane Andrews teaches and researches in a range of areas within the field of education and has a particular interest in multilingualism and learning. She supervises doctoral students and jointly leads the UWE EdD programme. Current research interests include children's perspectives on being multilingual and researching multilingually. Her most recent research project was funded by the AHRC Translating Cultures theme and was entitled "Creating Welcoming Learning Environments: Disseminating arts-based approaches to including all learners in their education.

Since 2017 Dr Maryam Almohammad has worked as a Research Associate at the Department of Education and Childhood, University of the West of England simce 2017. Research projects include an AHRC funded project titled Creating Welcoming Language Environments (for EAL learners). Maryam is also an Arabic Language Tutor (2015-present) at the School of Modern Languages, the University of Bristol. Maryam's PhD thesis was an ethnographic research study on the role of English in constructing the identities of Syrian language learners within a new market order.

All welcome at this free seminar.