Ethical and Methodological Issues in Researching Young Language Learners in School Contexts

This book focuses on ethical and methodological issues faced by researchers working with young language learners in formal school contexts. It uncovers and explicitly discusses a range of ethical dilemmas, challenges and experiences that researchers have encountered and grappled with, in studies of all kinds from large scale, experimental studies to ethnographic studies focused on just a handful of children. The chapters are written by researchers working with children in different classroom contexts around the world and highlight how ethical dilemmas and tensions take on a complex form in child-focused research, requiring researchers to pay particular attention to the social and cultural norms of the different communities within which children are educated as well as their school-based experiences. The book comprises three sections, with the first part focused on involving children as active participants in research; part two on ethical challenges in multilingual contexts and part three on links between teacher education and researching children. The book includes a critical discussion of the opportunities and challenges associated with applying the UNCRC (1989) document in second language research with children which will be of use to any researcher working in this area.

Annamaria Pinter is a Professor at the Department of Applied Linguistics, the University of Warwick, UK. Her research interests focus on all aspects of second/ foreign language education for children, task-based second language teaching and learning and engaging children actively in participatory research. She has published widely in the area of teaching English to children and has a strong international reputation in TEYL and second language teacher education. She is the author of Teaching Young Language Learners Oxford Handbooks for Language Teachers, Oxford University Press (second edition, 2017), Children Learning Second Languages, Palgrave Macmillan (2011), Engaging Children in Applied Linguistics Research, Cambridge University Press (2023). She is also joint series editor of Early Language Learning in School Contexts by Multilingual Matters.

Kuchah Kuchah is Lecturer in Language Education at the University of Leeds, UK. He has served as a consultant on language policy and practice with the British Council, the Council of Europe and Windle Trust International and is currently President of the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL).