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Hub Day 1

Introduction to NCELP:�National Centre for Excellence for Language Pedagogy

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Rachel Hawkes

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NCELP purposes

Connect language teaching and learning research with classroom practice
Develop pedagogy and resources
Improve intrinsic motivation
Increase uptake at GCSE

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Rachel Hawkes

The purpose of this talk is to give you a brief introduction to NCELP, tell you what it is for, what it is trying to achieve, how it came about, and a few indicators of its pedagogy, which you will then hear much more about during the sessions today.

NCELP’s overarching purposes are:

1 to link research and practice more closely than has previously been the case.�Note: Stress the importance of both practitioner knowledge and research – one is no substitute for the other, both are necessary and complementary.

2 to build on these research findings to develop classroom pedagogy – (yes, this does mean adapt and change it)��3 with a view to improving intrinsic motivation – enjoyment of and preparedness to sustain a commitment to language learning��4 and increasing the numbers of students studying a language at KS4.

https://twitter.com/_11Remember_/status/1136087637914247170

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1 Connecting research and practice

Substantial interest from teachers and researchers

But…

Lack of time
Limited or no funding to attend conferences
No funding to do research

Plus…

Problems with accessibility of research (physical, contextual, and conceptual remoteness)

Kasprowicz & Marsden, 2017

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Rachel Hawkes

Let’s take the core purposes one by one.�Why has it been and continues to be a challenge to link language learning research and practice?�It is not for a lack of interest on the part of teachers (or motivation on the part of researchers). �The difficulties are lack of time and money and problems of access – this includes the difficulty of gaining access to high-quality research journals. Once no longer in full-time study, access to these journals is expensive and not supported by school CPD budgets. There are also sometimes issues in a) relating the terminology of research to the pedagogy of the classroom and b) in discerning the applicability of findings from studies in which the contexts differ wildly from our own (e.g. university learners of English in China vs secondary-age learners of FL in the UK).

So, NCELP aims help improve this situation.

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2 Developing pedagogy

Research and teacher-informed
Generalisable
Knowledge-based (phonics, vocabulary, grammar)
Practice-rich
Topic de-emphasised

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Rachel Hawkes

The difficulties just mentioned explain why research and practice are not generally mutually informing.

NCELP’s work aims to articulate pedagogy that has these features: it does take account of relevant and compelling research findings and then works directly with teachers to adapt and align pedagogy with those findings. It seeks to describe teaching methods that are sound and work for as many pupils as possible for as much of the time as possible, with the aim of making language teaching less reliant on personal charisma and craft knowledge of individual teachers.

It stresses the importance of establishing a body of phonics, vocabulary and grammar knowledge and sets out to define what that could look like.

It brings this knowledge together in practice of various kinds, but above all practice that doesn’t lose the connection with the meaning and the function of language.

In all this, the aspect that is downplayed is the topic, for reasons we will come back to.�

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3 Improving intrinsic motivation

Enhancing understanding and ‘ease’ of learning
Increasing the likelihood of success
Teaching students explicitly to ‘sound out’ words
Focusing on high-frequency language

Erler & Macaro (2012) OASIS summary

Taylor & Marsden (2014) OASIS summary

Graham (2004) OASIS summary

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Rachel Hawkes

Leaving aside factors associated with demotivation that lie outside our control (English is the global lingua franca, Brexit, harsh grading at GCSE and A level, etc…),

NCELP is set on developing pedagogy to improve intrinsic motivation, which is something that research suggests we can influence through changes to pedagogy.

The innovations to pedagogy that NCELP suggests are designed to:�1] make explicit / increase the transparency of certain features of a language that are particularly tricky to notice, and therefore to learn�2] increase the level of understanding in the classroom and take sufficient time and include sufficient practice to enable students to feel that they are achieving and progressing

3] explicitly teach students how to decode the L2 accurately (phonics), as research has shown that a) not to do so means that students don’t learn how to do and b) not to be able to do so is demotivating for students�4] ensure that we focus on teaching a large proportion of high-frequency words (and that we are explicit about this) so that students are learning language that is important for communication outside (as well as inside) the classroom, and that they know they are.

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4 Increasing uptake at GCSE

Fewer than 1/2 Y11 students takes a language at GCSE
Only 1/3 of all Y11 pupils achieves a Grade 4 or better
In 34.5% state schools the majority of the Y9 cohort no longer learns languages (with a 2-year KS3)
There is regional and socio-economic inequality of language learning provision

Tinsley, T. & Doležal, N. (2018). Language Trends Survey

Teaching Schools Council (2016) Modern Foreign Language Pedagogy Review �

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Rachel Hawkes

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NCELP beginnings

Teaching Schools Council Report, Nov 2016
DfE Invitation to Tender for Centre for Excellence, June 2018
Awarded, September 2018
Centre began, December 2018

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Rachel Hawkes

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NCELP team

Director:

Prof Emma Marsden (University of York)

Co-Director:

Dr Rachel Hawkes (Comberton Academy Trust)

Resource developers

Dr Inge Alferink�Nick Avery

CPD providers

Victoria Hobson�Stephen Owen

Tech team for Gaming Grammar

Andy Wood�Dr Nick Sephton

Tech team, �Resource Portal

Dr Frank Feng�Dr Sebastian Pelucha

Research and CPD specialists�

Prof Suzanne Graham (University of Reading)�KS2-3 transition, literature, meaningful practice��Dr Rowena Kasprowicz (University of Reading)�KS2 knowledge about language, grammar��René Koglbauer (University of Newcastle)�School FL policy, leadership training, CALL��David Shanks (Harris Federation)�School FL policy, CALL, differentiation��Dr Robert Woore (University of Oxford)�Teaching and learning phonics, reading, vocabulary

Management and administration

Ann Mannion, Heather Bradley, Wendy Burns

The NCELP team includes 18 specialist teachers from nine lead schools, their colleagues and languages teachers from 36 hub schools.

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Rachel Hawkes

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Lead schools

Nine hubs:

9 Lead Schools each with 4 Hub Schools

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Rachel Hawkes

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NCELP: Action

OASIS Research summaries
Research-informed CPD
Principles of practice documents
Resources for French, German, Spanish 🡪 Resource Portal
KS3 SOW development

Connect research and practice

Specialist Teachers deliver training to four hub schools, via monthly Teacher Research Groups, lesson observation & discussion, resource creation, annual Hub conference

NCELP delivers monthly half-day CPD on research & resources to Specialist Teachers

NCELP residential for Specialist Teachers

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Rachel Hawkes

What has NCELP done so far (in its first six months)?�

The model is to provide research-informed CPD and resources to the lead school specialist teachers who then have (a little!) time to reflect and prepare a Teacher Research Group session for teachers from their four hub schools. These are roughly monthly. Between the sessions, specialist teachers work with hub teachers to try out the ideas and activities in their own classrooms/school and through observations and discussions in the hub school classrooms.

The CPD makes research ideas / findings available to teachers through:

1) OASIS Research summaries are one A4 page summaries of 30-40 page full journal articles. I’ll say a bit more about this in a moment.�2) The CPD itself is written by researchers and/or highly experienced practitioners with some substantial experience of research and synthesises key research findings and presents implications for the classroom.�3) The same researchers and practitioners are producing and sharing (on the resource portal) documents articulating the rationale for the pedagogy�4) classroom resources for teachers to use are also being created and shared on the resource portal

5) a KS3 SOW for French, German and Spanish is underway and Y7/8 will be ready for September.��

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OASIS: https://oasis-database.org

Open Accessible Summaries in Language Studies

among many others

One page, non-technical, openly accessible summaries of high quality peer-reviewed, international research

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Rachel Hawkes

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Rachel Hawkes

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NCELP pedagogy

Phonics
Vocabulary
Grammar
Meaningful practice

Pupils need to gain systematic knowledge of the vocabulary, grammar, and sound and spelling systems (phonics) of their new language, and how these are used by speakers of the language. They need to reinforce this knowledge with extensive planned practice and use it in order to build the skills needed for communication. (MFL Pedagogy Review, p.3)

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Rachel Hawkes

I won’t give much in the way of detail about the pedagogy or the research that informs it, as that is what today is about.�However, it does seem useful to provide a few headlines. Our starting point was the pedagogy review, which was in turn heavily informed by research. Some teachers have read the review, some haven’t. �It is a short document, and as an experienced teacher reading it, the conclusion you might quickly come to is that you are already doing everything in it!�It recommends the following (bring up quote)�I know that many, many teachers would say that they do all these things. And yet, there is a lot in the detail of ‘what’, ‘how’ and ‘when’ of each of these strands that give us a lot of food for thought, and reason to adapt, sometimes in small yet significant ways, what we do in the classroom.�

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PHONICS

selection and order of SSC (symbol-sound correspondences)
high-frequency ‘source’ words
staged roll out with more intensive practice activities (and systematic revisiting)
much more time for French

Erler, L. and Macaro, E. (2012) ‘Decoding Ability in French as a Foreign Language and Language Learning Motivation’. The Modern Language Journal, 95(4): 496-518.

Porter, A.M. (2014) An early start to French literacy: Learning the spoken and written word simultaneously in English primary schools. PhD thesis, University of Southampton.

Woore, R. (2007) ‘“Weisse Maus in Meinem Haus”: Using Poems and Learner Strategies to Help Learners Decode the Sounds of the L2’. Language Learning Journal, vol. 35, no. 2, pp. 175-188.

Woore, R. (2009) ‘Beginners’ progress in decoding L2 French: some longitudinal evidence from English Modern Foreign Languages classrooms’. Language Learning Journal, vol. 37, no. 1, pp. 3-18.

Woore, R. (2010) ‘Thinking aloud about L2 decoding: an exploration into the strategies used by beginner learners when pronouncing unfamiliar French words’. Language Learning Journal, vol. 38, no. 1, pp. 3-17.

Woore, R. (2011) Investigating and developing beginner learners’ decoding proficiency in second language French: an evaluation of two programmes of instruction. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Oxford.

Woore, R. (2014) ‘Beginner learners’ progress in decoding L2 French: transfer effects in typologically similar L1-L2 writing systems’. Writing Systems Research, volume 4(2): 167-189.

Woore, R (2018) ‘Learners’ pronunciations of familiar and unfamiliar French words: what can they tell us about phonological decoding in an L2?’ The Language Learning Journal, 46(4):456-69.

Woore, R., Graham, S., Porter, A., Courtney, L. and Savory, C. (2018) Foreign Language Education: Unlocking Reading (FLEUR) - A study into the teaching of reading to beginner learners of French in secondary school. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:4b0cb239-72f0-49e4-8f32-3672625884f0

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Rachel Hawkes

So, in phonics for example, research and practitioner experience informed the selection and suggested order of teaching of each phoneme-grapheme correspondence; the choice of ‘source words’ in which to embed those SSC for practice was informed by their frequency of use and taking into account the previously-learnt SSC. The planning of phonics teaching, taking much more time with French than German or Spanish (which German also taking longer than Spanish) was also informed by several studies that evidence that decoding ability (particularly in French) is fragile and prone to decay if practice is not sustained.

Note: Important to keep flagging the use of research findings (within the UK classroom context, wherever possible) to inform the pedagogy