Dr Jean Conteh
Senior Lecturer
Tel: +44 (0)113 3437958
Room: BT G.07
Email: J.Conteh@education.leeds.ac.uk
I am responsible for the English component of the PGCE Primary Programme and also a Professional and Link tutor on the course. I am a member of the Language Education research group, and supervise PhD students
Member of Centre for Language Education Research, CCHRE.
Interests
Professional experience and interests
I have worked as a primary teacher and teacher educator in different countries for many years, including, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Nigeria, Pakistan, Bulgaria and Poland. All this experience has fuelled my interest in how children learn, and the roles of language and culture in the processes of learning, particularly in multilingual settings. I have now spent almost 20 years as a teacher and then a Language tutor on PGCE Primary, BA QTS and MA courses in West Yorkshire.
Working in multilingual contexts in Britain has strengthened my awareness of the ways in which socio-political issues affect children's chances for success, at all levels of their education.This fed into and was developed by the research I carried out with successful bilingual learners at KS2 in Bradford leading to my PhD, which I completed, part-time, in 2001 while I was working as a teacher-educator in Bradford.
Since then, I have published several books, chapters and articles about these issues, and continued working with primary teachers and students.
Current professional activities
I am currently working with EAL consultants in Bradford to evaluate and document their work with teachers, which has involved developing training materials from the action research we carried out together in 2005-2006. I also work with a group of qualified primary teachers who run bilingual complementary classes where they support children's learning in all the languages they bring to their classrooms.
I am a member of NALDIC (National Association for Language Development in the Curriculum), and am involved in developing a set of principles and materials to foreground bilingual approaches to teaching and learning.
I am a member of the TDA-funded Multiverse advisory group, which promotes understanding of issues of diversity and inclusion through the Multiverse website: www.multiverse.ac.uk
I am a member of the BAAL Linguistic Ethnography Special Interest Group and have presented papers at seminars.
I very much enjoy keeping my links with Africa alive in whatever way I can, and work with Macmillan Education publishers to develop materials for teachers and pupils in African primary classrooms, such as the Reading Worlds series, for which I am the editor - details can be found here: http://www.macmillan-africa.com/books/1readers.htm
Research interests
My abiding interest in issues of equity and social justice in multilingual primary classrooms has led me to pursue linguistic ethnographic research methodologies to investigate and understand processes of teaching and learning from the points of view of the participants, and the ways these both mediate and are mediated by national and global imperatives.
I am very interested in understanding children's learning experiences in 'complementary' and mainstream contexts, and also the professional experiences, roles and identities of bilingual primary teachers.
Selected Publications
PAPERS
Conteh, J., Beddow, D. and Kumar, R. (2008). "Investigating pupil talk in multilingual contexts: sociocultural learning, teaching and researching". Education 3-13, 36 (3), 223-235.
Conteh, J. (2007). "Opening Doors to Success in Multilingual Classrooms: Bilingualism, codeswitching and the professional identities of ‘ethnic minority’ primary teachers". Language and Education, 21(6), 457-472.
Conteh, J., Hussain, S. and Rehman, R. (2004). "More than just a ‘rich resource’? - the skills and knowledge of bilingual teachers". Race Equality Teaching, 23 (1), 11- 15.
Conteh, J. (2000). "Multilingual classrooms, standards and quality: three children and a lot of bouncing balls". Language and Education, 14 (1), 1-14.
BOOKS
Conteh, J., Martin, P. and Robertson, L.H. (eds.) (2007). "Multilingual Learning Stories in Britain". Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books. Read Abstract.
Conteh, J. (ed.) (2006). "Promoting Learning for Bilingual Pupils 3-11: opening doors to success". London: Sage.. Read Abstract.
Conteh, J., Gregory, E., Kearney, C. and Mor-Sommerfeld, A. (2005). "On Writing Educational Ethnographies: the art of collusion.". Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books. Read Abstract.
Conteh, J. (2003). "Succeeding in Diversity: culture, language and learning in primary classrooms". Stoke-on Trent: Trentham Books.. Read Abstract.
CHAPTERS
Conteh, J. (2009). "Making links across complementary and mainstream classrooms for primary children and their teachers" in: P. Martin and V. Lytra (Ed.) Sites of multilingualism: complementary schools in Britain today. Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham. Read Abstract.
Conteh, J. (2007). "Bilingualism in mainstream primary classrooms in England" in: Z. Hua, P. Seedhouse, L. Wei and V. Cook (Ed.) Language Learning and Teaching as Social Interaction. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Conteh, J. (2006). "Widening the inclusion agenda: policy, practice and language diversity in the curriculum" in: R. Webb (Ed.) Changing Teaching and Learning in the Primary School. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Extended list of publications.
This page last updated by Jean Conteh on 14th May 2009