by Adam Lewis
When deciding how to structure language support for students with lower English proficiency, international schools adopt a range of models depending on their particular contexts and needs (Lehman, 2018; Lehman and Welch, 2022). While the nature of that support might vary, there is a generally accepted dichotomy between ‘push-in’ support, where the English as an Additional Language (EAL) support teacher goes into the mainstream classroom to target support to students during mainstream lessons, and ‘pull-out’ support referring to the practice of withdrawing students from mainstream lessons to offer sheltered provision, usually in small groups.
We know that international schools take a range of approaches to EAL provision: in one survey, approximately half of the teachers working in international schools reported using a blend of push-in and pull-out provision in some way. Meanwhile, approximately a quarter relied entirely on pull-out provision and approximately a fifth entirely on push-in provision (Lehman and Welch, 2022).
What do we actually mean by ‘push-in’ and ‘pull-out’? As with so much of the jargon related to EAL, we throw these terms around without really taking the time to unpack them. There is unfortunately scant research on what actually happens once an EAL teacher is ‘pushed in’ to the mainstream international school classroom, and the research that has been done is hardly cause for optimism, suggesting ad-hoc approaches and little suggestion of what ‘best practice’ might actually be.
Lehman (2018) found that push-in support translated into various approaches to provision, including being a ‘co-teacher’ for the whole mainstream class; being focused only on students with language acquisition needs; or else the role simply being ‘unspecified’ (p. 120). These differences of approach don’t only exist between schools, they even exist within the same schools: Houston and Neal (2013) observed push-in practice at an international middle school, finding that push-in support looked different in different classrooms, with some EAL teachers sitting next to EAL students throughout lessons, while others stood back and observed, only intervening during pair- or group-work (p. 7). For all that push-in support seems to be held up as the gold-standard model of language support, qualitative research into the models of push-in that persist in our classrooms is difficult to find - and don’t even ask for authoritative guidance on what a pushed-in teacher should actually do.
Despite the fairly even split between the push-in and pull-out approaches outlined above, there remains a lingering sense among international schools that push-in provision represents best practice, and that pull-out should be avoided unless absolutely necessary. Maurice Carder, for example, has described cases of international school administrators physically pushing EAL teachers into mainstream classrooms, telling them ‘this is where you should be’ (2015, p. 64). Both English-language teaching specialists and mainstream class teachers continue to report hesitancy towards withdrawal models when asked about their preferred approaches to supporting EAL learners (Lehman, 2022).
Why is this the case? Carder suggests that international school leaders are likely to import the policies and practices of their home countries into their international schools (Carder et al, 2018), which presents a problem when those teachers and leaders have backgrounds in the British education system: the history of EAL in the UK is deeply politicised (Leung, 2001; Flynn & Curdt Christiansen, 2018), with an orthodoxy towards blanket mainstreaming of EAL learners and resistance to withdrawal through fears of accusations of racism if EAL students are separated from the rest (Leung, 2016). This orthodoxy has become so deeply embedded as to be ‘an unquestioned official disposition’ enshrined in the National Curriculum (Leung, 2016, p. 168). The risk is that this unchallenged orthodoxy from British schooling is transplanted into the very different context of the international school.
It is this orthodoxy about the apparent risks of withdrawal support that I wish to challenge. At the British International School in Hanoi, Vietnam, our provision for EAL students in the primary school is based entirely on pull-out provision. Teachers in the EAL department might advise mainstream teachers on issues around language support, for example supporting them to implement translanguaging routines and on strategies to support oracy among language learners, but beyond this EAL support is delivered through the withdrawal of students in small groups for direct language instruction. We are not pushed-in to mainstream lessons. Withdrawal groups are capped at eight students each and very often number fewer than six.
We know from a study of an international secondary school in Ukraine (Spencer, 2022) that EAL students see the EAL classroom into which they are withdrawn as a ‘safe space’. This feature of the withdrawal classroom is not to be underestimated: there is research suggesting that ‘the most important learning condition for effective English language development was the child’s need for a safe nurturing environment’ (Alderfelder and Alderfelder, 2011, p. 67). We’re also very familiar with Stephen Krashen’s affective filter hypothesis (Krashen, 1985), which proposes that students will only develop language when they feel safe, confident, and motivated. Given this, we should be moved to reflect on whether a student’s language is likely to develop most effectively while still immersed in the mainstream where they are apparently expected to absorb language through a mysterious process of linguistic osmosis, or following withdrawal to a small group of similar students also receiving targeted, level-appropriate support.
My view is clear that we should appreciate the potential of withdrawal support for EAL learners. At this point, however, I need to turn to anecdotal evidence to support why I think the pull-out model of provision is not only effective but is indeed in the best interests of many of our students (and especially those at the lower end of proficiency). I need to rely on anecdotal evidence because the research into how EAL students value withdrawal EAL lessons simply hasn’t yet been done (or, if it has, I haven’t been able to find it).
At BIS Hanoi, we are lucky to have some incredibly gifted young students. We have students for whom English isn’t only a second language, but perhaps a third or a fourth, and the level of English proficiency among our learners is very rightly celebrated. However, for students with much lower English proficiency, entering the mainstream classroom can be daunting. They are most likely well aware that their English proficiency is behind their peers’, and it’s not surprising that for some students (by no means all, I should add), this can cause them to become passive during mainstream lessons conducted in English.
The class teachers of the students I teach tell me that they struggle to get more than isolated words or short phrases out of some of the children, that the children only speak when spoken to, and that the only times they do speak, they do so in their L1.
The same class teachers then give me a suspicious eye when I tell them that, actually, this isn’t my experience of those same students at all, and that during withdrawal EAL classes those same students are talkative, in English, volunteering answers and engaging with our work. Sure, their language remains partial and developing and they need support to speak and write in English. Why else would they be in EAL? But quiet, hesitant and shy, they are not. In the safe space of the EAL pull-out session, our students so often find the voice that they are afraid to use in their mainstream classroom. As a result, we EAL teachers often see a side to these students that their class teachers can’t see, and their enthusiasm is palpable: a common piece of feedback from parents is that these EAL sessions are their child’s favourite parts of the day, and this is surely because they’re in a safe space, surrounded by people who are learning English just like they are, collaborating with these friends and completing tasks adapted and designed for them at their level of English.
It's for this reason that I find myself coming to the defence of pull-out provision, and wanting to push back against this orthodoxy so deeply embedded in the UK education system that it should be avoided where possible. Certainly, in the case of the international school, I can see no good reason why withdrawal shouldn’t be among the very valid options for school leaders. For sure, push-in support has its place, although it still needs research to develop its pedagogy and explore models of best practice support, and that isn’t to say there is a single model of pull out support that every school should follow, either. There is no ‘one size fits all’ solution to supporting EAL learners, but nor should withdrawal be flatly dismissed as representing a risk.
Rather, we should recognise the value of withdrawal as a strategy. I can only speak from my experience, and my experience is that the sheltered provision of the EAL classroom offers my students the safe space they need to express themselves in English and, indeed, to grow their English most effectively.
The challenge now is for interested parties to carry out research and confirm if what I suspect to be true is indeed true. If it is, and if pull-out provision deserves greater recognition for the safe space it offers students, we’ll begin to move towards a wider understanding of how international schools can best support the EAL learners who form majorities of their populations. Who knows: maybe UK schools could also learn a thing or two from us!
References
Alderfelder, D. and Alderfelder, R. (2011). Optimising ESL Programmes in International Schools. International Schools Journal, Nov. 2011, Vol. 31, Issue 1, pp. 66 – 71
Carder, M. (2015). Tracing the path of ESL provision in international schools over the last four decades Part 2. International Schools Journal, 34(2). pp. 59–67
Carder, M., Porter, S. & Mertin, P. (2018). Second language learners in international schools. London: UCL Institute of Education Press.
Flynn, N., and Curdt-Christiansen, X. L. (2018). Intentions versus enactment: making sense of policy and practice for teaching English as an additional language. Language and Education, 32(5), pp. 410–427
Houston, K. and Neal, I. (2013). English as an Additional Language: some lessons from an International School. Education-Today. November 2013.
Krashen, S.D. (1985). The input hypothesis : issues and implications. Harlow: Longman.
Lehman, C. (2018). ESL departments in English-medium international schools in East Asia. Konińskie Studia Językowe, 6(2), pp.111–138.
Lehman, C. and Welch, B. (2022). Second language acquisition instructional models in English-medium international schools: past, present, and future. Erzincan Üniversitesi Eğitim Fakültesi Dergisi. 24(2), pp. 299-305.
Leung, C. (2001). English as an Additional Language: Distinct Language Focus or Diffused Curriculum Concerns? Language and education [Online], 15(1), pp.33–55.
Leung, C. (2016). English as an Additional Language – A Genealogy of Language-in-Education Policies and Reflections on Research Trajectories. Language and Education 30 (2): pp. 158–174.
Spencer, J. (2022). The Other Third Culture Kids: EAL Learners' Views On Self-Identity, Home Culture, And Community In International Schools. TESOL Journal. 2022; Vol. 13. pp. 1 – 18.
Author Biography
Adam Lewis is an EAL Teacher at the British International School in Hanoi, Vietnam. Originally from Liverpool, he has taught English as a second language in language centres, bilingual schools and international schools in Hanoi since 2013. He is currently a doctoral candidate with the University of Bath, writing a thesis on EAL practice and pedagogy in British international primary schools around the world.