Provision for the EAL learner in England can offer a purposeful and communicative learning environment, that is, the mainstream classroom, where there is a prescribed curriculum from which
teachers can derive both content and language learning objectives and appropriate activities and tasks to encourage meaningful language learning. However, continuing debate persists with respect not only to assessment for funding, curriculum achievement, and language proficiency but also to mainstreaming versus withdrawal, specialist language teaching versus provision to promote the inclusion of ethnic minorities, and school-based versus local education authority resourcing. EAL teachers must be prepared to respond in diverse ways to the needs of learners and to engage more proactively with mainstream pedagogy to assist schools in delivering inclusion and to empower learners. They will also need to continue to engage with and challenge government policies in order to increase understanding of EAL as a specialist field and to ensure that policies that relate to equality and educational access take full account of EAL learners. In order to do this, they will need the convictions of an informed professional knowledge base afforded by opportunities for further professional development and research. This chapter discusses the challenges that face the EAL profession and suggests possibilities for a future agenda. |