Geographies of School Pupils who Speak English as an Additional Language (EAL)

This thesis examines the education of pupils who speak English as an additional language (EAL) and how languages and multilingualism are negotiated across and within school spaces. A lack of existing scholarship on language, and EAL more specifically, within geography presents a gap that this thesis intends to address. This thesis utilises data from ethnographic fieldwork in a secondary school in the English Midlands where I undertook the role of a Teaching Assistant (TA) one day a week for a year to become immersed in the everyday lives of EAL pupils and the staff who teach and support them. Ethnographic fieldwork was followed by 37 interviews with teachers and educators from different schools across the UK, providing wider context around the teaching and support provision for EAL pupils in schools with different demographics and practices.

Through analysis of research data, I argue that the spatialities and geographies of schools impact the way that EAL pupils and their learning and emotional needs are positioned and provided for, and more broadly how languages and multilingualism are negotiated across school spaces. This research contributes a new empirical area to the geographies of education sub-discipline around EAL education. Theoretically, the spatial and scalar lens used within this investigation of EAL pupil education contributes an enhanced understanding of the impact of the spatialities and geographies of schools, whilst also contributing a more nuanced understanding of the reciprocal relationship between space and language. This thesis also contributes to the geographies of multiculturalism, where, in existing scholarship, there is minimal reference to language despite being an identity characteristic that contributes to ethnicity and culture, through placing language as central in shaping young peoples’ educational encounters.