Collaborative community research

working in a multi-lingual setting

to investigate english language education in

Burngreave in Sheffield

Burngreave: inner city area of superdiversity

Burngreavecampaign 2009against cuts to classes

Burngreave students key campaign against cuts

ESOL as the key to:

Burngreave English classesby Amal AhmedFor the last three months we have been fighting to keep our

ESOL classes. At last we got some good news this month from the Council. Our classes will now be able to run twice a week as normal. There were a lot of people who stood with us and gave support, thank you to everyone who came with us and helped us. Thank you also to the Council for returning our classes.

We hope the Council will never cut or reduce our classes again. English classes are very important for parents and their children. We gladly accept the good decision that the Council has made and we say to parents – be strong and never give up.

Burngreave Messenger

The local newspaper was an integral part of our learning programme across the area

with students writing for the Messenger as part of their classes.

The Messenger has campaigned on behalf of individual students in asylum cases.

The Messenger remains key in campaigning against cuts in education spending.

Burngreave Messenger as a positive cohesive voice in the community

purpose of the research

to work with adult students and other interested people to consider the role of the english language classes in the community

Using a survey

• first task is an audit of the english language classes in the Burngreave ward to document what provision is there and who uses it• to gather information about how

and if English learned in the classroom is used in the wider community

qualitative interviewsto gain a deeper understanding of how language is

negotiated by adult students within their families and in the wider community particularly when their use of English is limited

to ask learners about their connections within the community and their opportunity to use the English they have learned

to collect stories about language use which will illuminate the role of English as a language amongst other languages

working with a small team of researchers in a 'super-diverse' community

• multi-lingual team which reflects the multi-lingual and ethnic student body

• researchers all students from higher level classes

• able to interview in English or another language

• somali, arabic, french, urdu, punjabi, deri and tikrin

where is the collaboration?The first idea for research came from students who valued the community language classes.

The research model was developed with adult students and colleagues

We decided to use a survey to collect statistics as well as stories and adapted a survey from an area audit used in Leeds (Simpson 2010)

The collection of stories was considered important as part of the oral tradition of many communities but also as Burngreave Messenger readers and reporters

methodology of emergence

"The university need to develop relationships and networks... and to carefully avoid imposing pre-emptive theoretical frameworks"

issues

• time constraints to analyse and discuss• different levels of collaboration and

interest• considering the research process

across the ward as a way of bringing providers, learners and tutors together

So far…

• Visited 35 classes•Met 17 teachers• In 9 venues• Conducted 360 survey interviews• Involved 6 providers• Adult learning working group

snapshot

• Attendance on day• Looking for patterns to confirm

theories or to initiate new ideas• Looking for background information

which will inform more qualitative work

Data analysis

• Initial letters and statements in support of the provision•Notes from class visits• Survey analysis using SPSS which is

software programme for the social sciences

Findings so far

• Different sizes of classes• Different level of support for the

classes• Different levels of attendance in

classes• Students are predominantly women• Students are predominantly

mothers•Many different language

backgrounds• Students report more contacts as

their level of English increases

Next..

• Take findings to different groups to students, to teachers and to providers

• Develop further questions from the findings to inform the next stage