Complementary – Mainstream Partnerships

Project Director: Dr Charmian Kenner

Funded by Paul Hamlyn Foundation and Tower Hamlets Children’s Services, the project explores how community language teachers and primary teachers can form partnerships in order to develop bilingual learning. The teachers, from complementary and primary schools in Tower Hamlets, East London, visited each other’s classes and jointly planned a programme of topic-based lessons using bilingual strategies adapted to each context. Parents and grandparents supported the activities through intergenerational learning. Results show how children's bilingual development can be supported in both mainstream and complementary schools.

Publications

• Enriching cross-curricular work
• Co-constructing bilingual learning
• Connecting children's worlds
• Interim report to Paul Hamlyn Foundation
• Teacher partnerships for bilingual learning
• Teacher partnerships between mainstream and complementary schools: from parallel worlds to connected curricula

Presentations

• Model of Partnership  
• Bilingual learning from margins to mainstream
• Linking parallel worlds