Cecilia Gialdini, Nataša Pantić | 17th December 2024 | Policy Papers
Scotland’s educational landscape has evolved, with approximately 9% of the 700,000 pupils in publicly funded schools speaking a home language other than English. Scotland follows a universalist approach, integrating newly arrived migrant students into mainstream classes supported by EAL (English as an Additional Language) teachers. This immediate inclusion aims to foster both linguistic and social integration from the onset.
The ‘TEAMS: Teaching that Matters to Migrant Students’ project was carried out by researchers from the Universities of Edinburgh, Jyväskylä, Stockholm, and Turku. This four-year study focused on how teachers and school staff support migrants in seven public high schools in Scotland, Sweden, and Finland. The study applied mixed methods, including social network surveys, teacher reflective logs, student surveys, classroom observations, and policy document analysis.
Findings suggest that effective teacher collaboration with each other, with families and with other professionals is essential but often happens informally. Structured collaboration, such as regular meetings and progress bulletins, is recommended to improve communication and support. Currently teachers rely critically on EAL services to focus on supporting individual students directly, while the role of EAL teachers in training and supporting all teachers to integrate EAL learners is underdeveloped. A shift towards comprehensive knowledge development for all educators is required. Initiatives promoting diversity as the norm, such as decolonizing the curriculum, Culture Days, or allowing students to take exams in their heritage languages, are well received. Similarly, teachers with migrant backgrounds are valuable resources due to their shared lived experiences with migrant students and their ability to offer guidance.
Policy recommendations call for rethinking EAL support in Scotland, shifting more towards capacity building to support diverse learners; encouraging structured opportunities for teacher collaboration, such as weekly meetings and resource hubs; and finally embracing diversity as a norm in education.
Introduction
This policy brief draws insights from a four-year cross-country study on teaching support for migrant students in Scotland, Sweden, and Finland. Through the lens of inclusive education and focusing on teachers’ agency, the project examined actions and collaboration patterns of teachers and school staff to aid the learning and socialization process of students with a migrant background in seven public high schools in the three countries. The underlying principle guiding this study is that, in a context where migration fluxes have increased, changing the demographics of cities and schools, diversity should be considered the norm. Migration is often addressed as a challenge or crisis to overcome rather than a natural process in human history.
The recommendations proposed in this brief are tailored to the Scottish and, more broadly, UK context but are informed by research in different contexts. The UK adopts a universalist approach, meaning that newly arrived migrant students are immediately included in mainstream classes and supported in the integration process by specialist teachers, class teachers, and other school staff. Consistent and structured collaboration among teachers and initiatives promoting heritage language learning foster academic learning of migrant students and socialization with their peers. The study in Scottish schools has shown a critical reliance on specialists, particularly in English as an Additional Language (EAL) services. This policy brief proposes adjustments to improve the effective use of these services.
The Scottish Model of Includion of Migrant Students
Over the past two decades, Scotland has experienced a significant increase in immigration. There are approximately 700,000 pupils in publicly funded schools in Scotland, with around 62,000 pupils (9%) speaking a home language other than English. This trend highlights the critical role of schools as hubs for integration, similar to other European countries. The recent influx of migrants, including Ukrainian refugees fleeing conflict, has emphasized the urgency of addressing the needs of migrant students in educational systems. With over 15% of the world’s migrants being children and young people, schools need to adapt to accommodate the increasing diversity of student populations, making this a fundamental aspect of modern education. Teachers are key figures in this integration process, supporting pupils with their academic learning and fostering a sense of belonging and social engagement within the school community.
In Scotland, the education model for migrant students relies on specialist teachers, particularly those providing support for EAL. The ‘EAL Framework for Inclusive Practice’ by city councils defines EAL learners as individuals from various backgrounds, such as first and second-generation migrants, and refugees. The framework focuses on helping learners acquire English while engaging with academic subjects taught in English (Murray, 2017). The Scottish government provides language support through EAL teachers, who offer specialized assistance to EAL learners or those using languages other than English at home, emphasizing their diverse profiles. EAL teachers are employed at the council level, working across different schools, performing several tasks: they assess students’ English proficiency with EAL, guiding the type and level of support these students receive. They do not typically teach classes but work with the school staff on best practices for supporting EAL learners. In schools, EAL-related activities are often managed by the ‘Support for Learning’ (SfL) departments, which include SfL leaders, teachers, and Pupil Support Assistants (PSAs). These teams handle literacy and numeracy lessons and provide in-class support, ensuring that students with diverse needs, including EAL or migrants, receive appropriate assistance.
Historically, EAL services supported learners directly in the classroom, with EAL teachers assigned to a single school. Consequently, available resources for schools have diminished, leading to fewer EAL teachers, each serving multiple schools; this has created a peripatetic model, where EAL teachers now rotate between different schools on various days of the week or fortnight (Flockton and Cunningham, 2021). These changes have largely been driven by budget cuts affecting integration-related social services, leading to a revaluation of how EAL support is delivered.
Additionally, the national framework mandates schools to establish Equality Committees to ensure the inclusion of all pupils. Furthermore, a council-level procedure is in place to address racist incidents and monitor the effective promotion of diversity within Scotland.
'TEAMS: Teaching that Matters for Migrant Students'
TEAMS was an international study conducted by teams of researchers from the Universities of Edinburgh, Jyväskylä, Stockholm and Turku, supported by the NordForsk British-Nordic research programme. The study served two purposes: 1) shedding light on how schools and teachers address barriers and create opportunities for migrant integration in schools, and 2) helping teachers and school leaders meet the needs of migrant students. The researchers applied mixed methods, collecting data over three years through social network surveys, reflective logs for teachers, surveys for migrant and non-migrant students, school and classroom observations, interviews with school staff and students (Pantić et al., 2024), and analysis of policy documents. With respect to the Scottish context, three schools were involved in the project, and they reflected different socio-economic and cultural environments (please note that the names of the schools and the city they were located are anonymized to protect the privacy of students and personnel):
Juniper: located in a very diverse and deprived area in the outskirts of the city;
Beech: very diverse located in a neighbourhood with a mixed socio-economic population;
Rowan: quite diverse school population within a relatively affluent neighbourhood.
This study was based on the principles of inclusive education, which sees diversity as a normal part of human life and treats it as a resource rather than a problem. Teachers use ‘what is ordinarily available in the community of the classroom as a way of reducing the need to mark some learners as different’ (Florian and Black-Hawkins, 2011: 826). The study and its recommendations focus on ‘drawing on the widest range of resources’ (Florian and Black-Hawkins, 2011: 826), highlighting the importance of using diverse materials and resources to meet all learners’ varied needs. Moreover, recognizing diversity as a norm within schools requires a shift in perspective. This approach underpins the proposed policy change: creating structured opportunities for all teachers to access specialized support for EAL learners, who are viewed as having additional needs, in order to equip teachers with relevant skills and build their capacity to educate all their students effectively. Inclusive education promotes collaboration as a critical resource, encouraging teachers to work with various stakeholders, including support staff and specialists, to remove learning barriers and enhance participation for specific groups, such as migrant students, ensuring equal educational opportunities for everyone.
Evidence from the Study
As Pantić (2022) highlights, teachers play a crucial role in supporting migrant students’ integration but often feel unprepared for dealing with the unprecedented diversity of student populations. Across the three schools studied – Juniper, Beech, and Rowan – teachers showed a great deal of proactive support-seeking and resourcefulness. They used knowledge from various sources inside and outside the school, coming up with creative solutions to meet their students’ needs. Their collaboration with EAL teachers was especially important, highlighting the critical role of specialist support in helping migrant students succeed academically, socially, and emotionally. Our social network data showed that EAL educators were predominately sought to support students directly and only occasionally as sources of knowledge for teachers themselves, indicating that support for EAL learners is largely an additional demand for which teachers are not fully equipped. Ideally, all staff would collaborate to support every student systematically, with EAL teachers guiding with advice but not solely responsible for dealing with EAL learners. School culture and practices greatly influence how teachers seek the support of EAL teachers. TEAMS revealed interesting differences in the way the three schools sought the support of Vera, the EAL teacher. Beech School relied less on support from the EAL teacher whereas Juniper and Rowan made more use of EAL specialists. The results showed that, while the policy setting is the same for all three, the schools exhibit different strategies for accessing resources to support migrant students. In terms of the use of support, some teachers reach out in order to delegate tasks, while others use the EAL teacher as support for themselves.
Vera’s quote exemplifies how collaboration with specialists is performed in the three schools in Scotland:
‘Beech, at the management level, is very committed to celebrating diversity and equalities, but […] I don’t get much interaction with the staff. […] [Rowan] is definitely in the middle in that it wants to be better. I’ve been there the longest, so I’ve managed to establish myself there; everybody knows who I am, and I’ve managed to do whole-school training. […] Juniper School, because it’s so diverse, […] I think just generally a lot of stuff is in place. […] In Rowan and Juniper, [staff] do email and say, ‘I’ve got so-and-so in my class; I don’t think I’m managing to teach them, can you give me some advice.’
Given the limited resources, the role of EAL could be rethought as knowledge development support for class teachers, through systematic training opportunities that consider ways of incorporating diversity as a resource for all students in different subjects.
TEAMS also revealed interesting differences in how teachers in the three schools worked together. Collaboration, based on inclusive education principles, is essential for supporting all students, not just migrants. While overall policies stress the importance of integration and teamwork, the implementation varied widely and was often unstructured. For example, interviews and teacher reflections showed that modern language teachers and teachers with migrant backgrounds were often sought to help with communication with migrant parents or to support students navigating the school system.
However, the study has shown that these collaborations were often more serendipitous than structured: rather than having scheduled meetings, teachers and specialists communicate on a more case-by-case basis. Nonetheless, teachers interviewed in the TEAMS project have shown a willingness to go beyond the limits of their roles to support migrant students. An example of this is provided by Andy, a class teacher at Juniper School:
‘I think the formal stuff has a place, obviously. When a pupil has been enrolled, we need to know where they’re at to begin with. Where are we working from? Absolutely, it’s very important to get a formal handle on that. However, thereafter, it’s good to just chat informally sometimes. And so the EAL teacher would maybe come and see me or one of the guidance teachers and say, ‘Right, who do I need to chase up today? Who do you want me to go and speak to today?’ And that’s what I’m saying, it’s the more informal side.’
Another crucial finding of TEAMS revolves around the idea of diversity as the norm in schools; migration is an ongoing phenomenon, and school populations are becoming increasingly diverse, not only among students but also among teachers. Teachers with migrant backgrounds are a crucial resource in integrating migrant students. Data from the project has shown that their support is often sought by school staff due to their shared lived experiences with migrant students, giving them a deep understanding of the challenges the pupils face. This allows them to better gauge the students’ needs based on their own experiences.
In addition to leveraging the internally diverse workforce, other ways to incorporate diversity in schools include giving visibility to culture, race, and language. During interviews, students appreciated initiatives promoting cultural diversity, such as the ‘Decolonizing the Curriculum’, rejecting discrimination, removing language barriers, and strengthening anti-bullying policies. For instance, Beech School has been working with Intercultural Youth Scotland, an NGO supporting BAME and migrant pupils. While adhering to the national curriculum, the school has incorporated extra-curricular initiatives like ‘Culture Day’ and workshops organized by NGO volunteers to educate teachers on colonialism and minority representation. These efforts have created a space for BAME students to have a voice and representation. Interviews and follow-up discussions with the Head Teacher, students and activists from the organization revealed that the programme has been warmly received, not only by BAME students but also by students from Scottish backgrounds.
Moreover, some initiatives aimed at including students’ heritage languages have been well received. For instance, Rowan and Juniper schools offer students the possibility to take exams in Italian, Polish, and Chinese, as there are class teachers with Italian, Polish, and Chinese heritage who can read those exam papers. These initiatives have been positively received, according to student interviews.
Policy Recommendations
While the study was based in Scotland, the results can generally be applied to the UK, as the systems for integrating migrant students are similar, and England, Wales and Northern Ireland also apply a universalist approach, meaning newly arrived students are included in mainstream classrooms and supported by EAL teachers. Drawing from the findings of the project, the following recommendations are offered:
Recommendations for UK-wide Policymakers and Decision-Makers in Local Authorities
The Role of EAL Support should be redesigned to build the capacity of all teachers. The shift from one-on-one support for individual students to that of EAL support for teachers needs to be made explicit with a clear plan for adequate support during the transition period. This transition will require a scaffolded approach to build capacity and confidence for teachers to be fully prepared to take responsibility for teaching EAL learners. Equipping and empowering teachers should start with training in necessary skills and knowledge (provided by EAL in each school to include all teachers), followed by intensely structured opportunities to exchange knowledge with class teachers and school staff. We recommend that national and council-level policy guidelines make more explicit the requirements for meeting the needs of increasingly diverse student populations, and adapt current support systems to treat diversity as a norm given ongoing migration trends. This involves a major shift in how resources are deployed to utilize better existing knowledge and actively represent cultural and linguistic diversity in schools, for example, to use expertise in heritage language teaching.
Recommendations for Teachers and School Staff
Structured opportunities for Teacher Development and Collaboration among schools have been essential but limited to serendipitous exchanges that cannot meet the increasing demand for sustained, quality support for all EAL learners. Teachers are already committed to the integration of migrant students, and they often create initiatives to promote diversity and inclusion. However, the findings of this study suggest that a more structured collaboration, e.g. regular meetings to discuss and update class teachers and school staff, has a positive impact on students’ progress in learning and socialization. Given the significance of the transformation in teachers’ roles, it is critically important to include regular structured opportunities for teachers to develop relevant knowledge and have continuing access to specialist advice. Gaining confidence in new ways of working will require safe environments for sharing new skills and dilemmas. Our findings provided examples of effective school-embedded opportunities such as weekly meetings of class teachers and support staff in Sweden, monitoring and discussing students’ progress, engaging with families, EAL and Modern Languages teachers to build capacity for intercultural communication; for instance, one Scottish school created an in-house hub (EAL café) for exchange of resources for curricular and pedagogical adaptations. Including student voices in such initiatives helps make diversity an asset for all in the school community.
References
Flockton, Gabrielle and Clare Cunningham. 2021. ‘Teacher Educators’ Perspectives on Preparing Student Teachers to Work with Pupils Who Speak Languages Beyond English’, Journal of Education for Teaching, 47(2): 220–233, https://doi.org/10.1080/02607476.2020.1855942.
Florian, Lani and Kristine Black-Hawkins. 2011. ‘Exploring Inclusive Pedagogy’, British Educational Research Journal, 37(5): 813–828, https://doi.org/10.1080/01411926.2010.501096.
Murray, Elizabeth. 2017. ‘Modern Languages in Scottish Primary Schools: An Investigation into the Perceived Benefits and Challenges of the 1+2 Policy’, Scottish Languages Review, 33(4): 39–50, https://scilt.org.uk/Portals/24/Library/slr/issues/33/33-04%20Murray.pdf.
Oral, Didem, Anna Lund. 2022. ‘Mother Tongue Instruction: Between Assimilation and Multicultural Incorporation’. Education Sciences, 12(11): 1-19, https://doi:10.3390/educsci12110774.
Pantić, Nataša, Mirja Tarnanen and Anna Lund. 2022. ‘Introduction to a Special Issue - Migrant Integration in Schools: Policies and Practices’. Education Sciences, 12, https://www.mdpi.com/journal/education/special_issues/MigrantEdu#.
Pantić, Nataša, Marc Sarazin, Thibault Coppe, Didem Oral, Eveliina Manninen, Kaisa Silvennoinen, Anna Lund, Hökkä Päivi, Kayja Vähäsantanen and Shupin Li. 2024. ‘How Do Teachers Exercise Relational Agency for Supporting Migrant Students Within Social Networks in Schools From Scotland, Finland, and Sweden?’ Teaching and Teacher Education, 139: 1-14, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2023.104442.
Cite this article
Gialdini, Cecilia and Nataša Pantić. 2024. ‘Rethinking EAL Services to Support Inclusion of Migrant Studies’, Languages Society and Policy, https://www.lspjournal.com/post/rethinking-eal-services-to-support-inclusion-of-migrant-students.
About the authors
Cecilia Gialdini is a Research Associate at Trinity College Dublin and a Visiting Scholar at Queen's University Belfast. Previously they were a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, investigating policies and practices of inclusive pedagogy for migrant students. Their research interests focus on migration studies and linguistic justice.
Nataša Pantić is a Professor in Educational Change and Diversity at the University of Edinburgh, School of Education. Much of her recent work has focused on teachers and their education as agents of change for educational inclusion and diversity. Her research in this area has informed policies and practices that had impact on addressing social challenges, such as migrant integration in schools.
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