Webinar Follow-up Discussion: 'Researching with Young Learners'

Date: 28 January to 8 February 2013
Guest moderator: Shelagh Rixon
Location: ReSIG YahooGroup

For details of the webinar, please click here

Click on the link below to read online or download a copy of Kuchah and Pinter's recent article:

Kuchah, K. & Pinter, A. (2012). 'Was this an interview?' Breaking the power barrier in adult-child interviews in an African context. Issues In Educational Research, 22(3), 283-297.

This event is open to ReSIG members and non-members.
You can join our YahooGroup for free here.

How to participate:
- Join our YahooGroup at the link above. if you're not a member yet.
- Attend the webinar - please see details here.
- Download the article at the link above.
- Read the article.
- Read the summary of webinar and a few questions below (to be posted shortly after the webinar).

The Moderator
Shelagh Rixon's early career was with the British Council with administrative, training and teaching roles in varied countries. Between 1991 and 2010 she was a Lecturer then Associate Professor at Warwick University, co-ordinating the MA in ELT for Young Learners. Her interest in the appropriate assessment of Young Learners developed from her interest in appropriate child-friendly pedagogy. She has recently completed a PhD in on pedagogical systems and practices in the early reading instruction of Young Learners of English. With Szilvia Papp, she is co-author of a book for the Cambridge ESOL SiLT series on assessing Young Learners.

Researching with Young Learners Webinar - organised by ReSIG in cooperation with IATEFL Young Learners SIG
Date: Sunday, 27 January 2013
Time: 1.30-3.30 pm GMT
Presenters:  Harry Kuchah Kuchah & Annamaria Pinter   
Location: IATEFL online conference room

LATEST NEWS: The webinar has now finished. A full recording is freely available here (this takes some time to download but is worth the wait!)

Follow-up event: There will be a follow-up discussion on our YahooGroup, open to members and non-members. Please click here for further details.

The Webinar

As adults and teachers, we all have personal and shared opinions about pedagogic practices that can motivate young learners in the language classroom. However, it is rarely suggested that our opinions and practices might be at odds with the opinions and interests of the same learners for whom we develop these practices. While it is common practice to elicit feedback on teaching practices from adult learners, there is still little research in which adult researchers and teachers seek children’s perspectives about the way teaching should happen in their classrooms.

In this webinar talk we will be sharing some thoughts about what ‘good practice’ may mean when ‘adult outsiders’ attempt to elicit interview data from children. The talk will start with a discussion about the methodological and ethical dilemmas relevant to interviewing 10-year-old children in elementary schools for research purposes. The context (Cameroon) and the actual procedures of the data collection will be described next, and we will share some of the data and our analysis of it, focussing on the complexities and challenges of interpretation, bringing together both process and product (how the conversation unfolded and what the children actually said). Then we will match children’s perspectives with those of their teachers to show that, while there may be shared perspectives of good teaching practices, adult perspectives of what constitutes good teaching with young learners may not always be enough to rely on. Finally, we will summarise the most important implications for both classroom teachers and researchers working with child subjects.

Click on the title of the article below to read it online or download the pdf:

Kuchah, K. & Pinter, A. (2012). 'Was this an interview?' Breaking the power barrier in adult-child interviews in an African context. Issues In Educational Research, 22(3), 283-297.

The Presenters

Annamaria Pinter is an Associate Professor in the Centre for Applied Linguistics, University of Warwick, UK. She lectures at masters and doctoral levels and supervises theses in the area of teaching languages to children. Her particular interests include task based learning, socio-cultural theory and materials design. She has been involved in teacher development programmes both at Warwick and overseas. She has published widely in the area of teaching English to young learners. She is the author of Teaching Young Language Learners (Oxford University Press (2006)) and Children Learning Second Languages (Palgrave Macmillan (2011).

Harry Kuchah Kuchah has worked for 14 years as ELT teacher trainer and inspector at primary and secondary levels in Cameroon. He is Teaching Fellow in Applied Linguistics in the School of English, University of Sheffield and currently completing his PhD research at the University of Warwick. His interests are in teaching and researching young learners, context-appropriate ELT methodology, teaching large and multi-grade classes, learner autonomy and teacher development. He has published widely about the African ELT context.