Description

EAL it seems, is always in crisis. Crises in funding, sources of funding, pedagogy, training, the National Curriculum, assessment, the literacy strategy – to name but a few – have kept EAL teachers feeling permanently under siege. Whilst no teacher of English, science, or art feels any pressure to justify the basis of their subject – its given place in the educational order of things – EAL teachers are still nervous that they are just one step away from vanishing from the landscape; subsumed by EMAG into the woodwork of that ill-defined – and therefore at risk – category of support staff. We – by which I mean teachers and researchers in the field – need to challenge and change this.