New times for ESOL in Further and Adult Education. A study of ESOL teachers’ accounts of the changes in their working lives.

Lacey, Catherine Vivien (2019). New times for ESOL in Further and Adult Education. A study of ESOL teachers’ accounts of the changes in their working lives. University of Birmingham. Ed.D.

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Abstract

This thesis presents a study of the major changes in language education policy in the further and adult sector in England from 1997 to 2017, and of the impact of these changes on the working lives of eight adult ESOL teachers in the West Midlands. The aims of the research were to document the specific nature of the changes and to investigate the ways in which the teacher participants navigated the changes and narrated their lived experiences and their agentive actions and reactions within this changing context. The study was qualitative and it was based around iterative interviewing. The data analysis was carried out in two stages: firstly, thematic analysis of all interviews (twenty in all), focusing on themes that recurred across the interviews; and secondly, narrative analysis, combined with positioning analysis, focusing on small stories told by the teacher participants. The orienting theories for the study were drawn from research into teachers’ lives and from the study of policy as process, particularly language policy. In keeping with the latter field, and with recent research in education, language policy-making was seen as a complex social practice, involving enactment on different levels of social life – national, institutional and personal.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ed.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ed.D.

Supervisor(s):