Abstract
This chapter explores issues raised by teachers working to develop children’s language. In the first vignette, Diane, an early years professional, talks about the increasing numbers of children starting the nursery school with speech and language needs, and insufficient school capacity to meet these. In the second, a group of teachers reflect on some of the ‘challenges of EAL’ (English as an Additional Language) and different school responses. The academic contributions, from Heather Price and Maggie Maclure, reflect on the tensions that language presents for schools and teachers. Desires and pressures to ‘correct’ and to ‘remedy’ deficits in English communication contrast with aspirations to change classrooms and home–school relations to capitalise on the range of different language practices in which children are immersed. The various contributions in this chapter also raise the question of continuity and change. Are the issues discussed here perennial ones that successive generations of teachers, leaders and politicians continue to grapple with? Or are social and technological changes, and expectations of schools, creating new challenges to which both teachers and academics must respond?
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Notes
- 1.
See Jordy Kaufmann’s forthcoming research at BabyLab (Swinburne University, Melbourne) and Rosie Flewitt’s ongoing research at UCL Institute of Education, discussed at http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jan/08/are-tablet-computers-bad-young-children (Accessed: 30 April 2015). There is a lack of research on preschoolers from socio-economically disadvantaged groups and tablet use.
- 2.
Peter Elfer notes, ‘In a recent conversation with a nursery head, I was told that the nursery had been asked by Ofsted what it had done to increase local rates of breastfeeding. The head was bewildered and demoralised by the escalation of expectations beyond the provision of high quality nursery education for local children. Community development tasks are quite different in their implications for organisation and practice, and it is not surprising that staff should express uncertainty and anxiety about their roles’ (Elfer, in Armstrong and Rustin, 2014: 293).
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Bibby, T., Lupton, R., Raffo, C. (2017). Language and Communication Difficulties. In: Responding to Poverty and Disadvantage in Schools. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52156-9_5
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