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Creating Welcoming Learning Environments: Using Creative Arts Methods in Language Classrooms
Jane Andrews, a Professor of Education at the University of the West of England, describes the Creating Welcoming Learning Environments research project that brings together teachers, the local authority, educators with a specialism in supporting EAL learners, researchers and creative artists to explore arts based methods for promoting English language development and culturally inclusive education.
Jane Andrews
What’s the project about?
Dr Jane Andrews and Dr Maryam Almohammad at the University of the West of England, Bristol, worked on a 12 month research project in September 2017. The project is funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) which has “translating cultures” as one of its current research themes. The project is a collaboration between teachers, local authority, and school staff who specialise in supporting children developing English as an Additional Language (EAL), creative artists and the researchers. Together we are aiming to develop and trial some teaching techniques which combine arts-based methods and supportive techniques for celebrating children’s languages and developing their English language skills. The project is working with school-based staff in both primary and secondary schools. Colleagues who work at Integra Schools in South Gloucestershire (Lois Francis and Dominique Moore) are collaborators on the project.
Why this topic?
The focus for our research comes out of the arts-based methods used in a larger 3-year AHRC funded research project entitled Researching Multilingually at Borders. In that project researchers from different academic disciplines (global mental health, anthropology, law, modern languages, intercultural communication, education) worked together with creative artists using drama, poetry, music and textiles. The project explored the role of language in contexts where people experience pain and pressure at times of migration. The sites for the research included the Islamic University Gaza, the Lira district of Uganda, the border state of Arizona, USA, Scotland, the Netherlands, Romania, Bulgaria and Ghana. The current project was funded by the AHRC to extend the reach of the 3-year project to explore how arts-based methods can be combined with work celebrating children’s linguistic diversity and supporting their developing English.
What has the project done so far?
We have developed our way of working, which has collaboration firmly at its heart. We have built on the work of Julian Edge, who proposed a model of CPD named “co-operative development” which seeks to ensure that all participants are empowered to share their knowledge and expertise while learning with and from others. Using this approach, we offered a series of one-day workshops in which participants shared their current approaches to supporting children’s developing English and celebrated their different languages. Colleagues took part in a hands-on workshop experiencing one or more creative arts techniques and planned how the techniques experienced could be adapted and transferred into their specific school contexts.
The creative arts input was provided by Katja Frimberger who demonstrated drama techniques for use in class including singing in different languages and setting up a “Bristol’s got talent” friendly competition. Katja also shared a film she had made in which students and staff at Glasgow University spoke to camera in their different languages as a way of extending exposure to the institution’s shared languages, see below.
Lyn Ma of Clyde College, Glasgow provided input into how crafting techniques such as collage and model making can be used to provide young people with opportunities to express themselves to their peers and teachers. In the workshop participants created decorated suitcases and explained how and why we had chosen to decorate them as we did.
Naa Densua Tordzro and Gameli Tordzro (University of Glasgow and Pan Africa Arts, Scotland) introduced participants to using musical instruments in an exploratory way to generate a sense of community. Naa Denua and Gameli also shared with us traditional Adinkra symbols from Ghana whose meanings we learned about and discussed. We then chose symbols we wanted to print using silk screen printing techniques.
Naa Densua Tordzro leading one of the workshops
The project followed teachers in their school and supported teachers in the application of the art practices workshop participants and the researchers did interviews with the teachers. Filmmaking projects were planned in two schools and one school audio recorded children and young people making announcements for the school day (for use on the school’s public address system) in their home languages.
How has the Intercultural Language Learner Identity adapted the practices into the teaching and researching of intercultural communication and identity?
Dr Maryam developed a creative approach to researching and teaching intercultural communication drawing on the CWLE research project into the the Intercultural Language Learner Identity course (MSc in Language and Intercultural Communication) by integrating the arts (mainly filmmaking, symbolic systems and collages) into her research-led teaching on culture, intercultural communication and cultural identity. Her approach (de)prepares learners for intercultural communication, dialogue and energizes their critical deconstruction thinking in action of cultural social, political, economic problems in their contexts and perceptions of self and other communication through working with pressing issues such as othering, racism, sexism, nationalism, xenophobia, and bullying. In groups, learners create short films (7minutes) in which they critique a social problem in their context as part of their assessment. While working collaboratively with Dr Maryam and classmates, learners applied and appraised creative art-based methods that facilitated the enhancement of their critical, dialogical, intercultural and symbolic competencies in critical intercultural education in ways that extend thinking in the field. The process of preparing for the film during workshops and outside opens a space for educators and the learners to break the binaries between research and practice, theory and teaching, researchers and participants, and educators and learners in relation to different ways of knowing and being that transcends these binaries where the actual learning and beings happen during the production processes as authentic communication, rather than the outcome. The filmmaking process also creates a platform for learners to be active and wise citizens in raising awareness on problematic issues of racism and othering for a more sustainable future in a world stricken by fascism, the far-right wave, and wars. The course also addresses researching intercultural communication using qualitative research methods, and the arts is presented as one of the methods that students adopted in this course.
