Editor: Viv Edwards (University of Reading, UK)
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Volume: 14 Number: 1 Page: 1–17
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Multilingual Classrooms, Standards and Quality: Three Children and a Lot of Bouncing Balls
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Jean Conteh
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Primary age children in England tend to perform poorly in international comparisons of achievement, particularly in numeracy and literacy. Current ideologies framing attempts to raise standards in schools
focus strongly on improving the quality of teaching, and are often based on a static, product-oriented model of teaching and learning. Evidence gained from analysing the teacher-child and child-child talk
collected as part of a longitudinal, ethnographic study of life in a vertically-grouped, Year 3/4 multilingual class in an inner-city first school in the north of England reveals the complex, subtle processes
involved in the interactive negotiation of meanings between teachers and learners and the joint construction of a 'new' culture of learning. The teachers are shown to be skilled managers and interpreters
of these meanings and the children active and eager collaborators. If evidence such as this is not taken into account in the design and planning of curriculum and assessment reform, the long-term effectiveness
of the reform will be called into question.
© Multilingual Matters 2000
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