Learning English Out of School: An Inclusive Approach to Research and Action

Emilee Moore

The contributors to this volume set out from a first premise that taking action to improve the competences in English of socioeconomically disadvantaged youth is a meaningful contribution towards more equitable educational outcomes and more inclusive future opportunities for them. The contributors also share the conviction that young people learn not only in schools, but also in the myriad of interactions across space and time that they encounter beyond formal education (see Moore, Vallejo, et al., this volume). Amalgamating these positions, the volume reports on the main findings of the research project ‘Inclusive epistemologies and practices of out-of-school English learning (IEP!)’, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, which ran from January 2019 until June 2021. The aims of the project were:

1) To collaboratively research teenagers’ existing practices of using and learning English out of school time;

2) To implement new, inclusive, nonformal English language educational initiatives;

3) To evaluate the impact of the nonformal English language educational initiatives implemented;

4) To support the sustainability and transferability of the initiatives.

The project responded to the transversal objective of the Spanish Science, Technology and Innovation Strategy to generate knowledge that contributes to greater social welfare. It also responded to the Horizon 2020 challenge of building an inclusive Europe. By placing intersectoral cooperation – between university, schools and other educational agents – as an epistemological pillar (see Section 3 of this chapter), the project also addressed the Horizon 2020 aim of promoting effective cooperation between science and society in order to embed social awareness and responsibility into the pursuit of scientific excellence. It further responded to the Horizon 2020 vision of boosting employment, and more specifically to the European Commission’s Europe 2020 recommendations that member states take actions that improve young people’s competences in foreign languages as a means of boosting their domestic and international employability.

This introductory chapter continues in Section 2 by presenting the research context in more depth, drawing on some of the ethnographic data – i.e. fieldnotes and a focus group – gathered from different IEP! project sites in doing so. Following that, in Section 3, the overarching methodological approach followed in the research is introduced, although individual contributors to the volume present their specific approaches in the different empirical chapters. Finally, in Section 4, the overall organisation of the volume is presented.

2. The research context

Our research was conducted in a town in the metropolitan area surrounding Barcelona, in Catalonia. The town is home to approximately 13,500 people and has an area spanning less than one square kilometre. A main feature of the town is thus its high density, with families living in rows of similarly designed apartment blocks, some as low as five stories in height, but most of which are approximately 10 to 15 floors high. All these residential tower blocks were originally constructed as public housing in the 1970s – towards the end of the Franco dictatorship – to provide accommodation for workers who mainly migrated from other parts of Spain to take up employment in the state-owned electricity or railway companies. The town plan was based on the map of the Iberian Peninsula and the Balearic Islands, and the street names are different Spanish places and landmarks. The town is bordered by two major highways from which it is separated by sound barriers installed in recent years. The following extract from fieldnotes written by Víctor Corona, one of the researchers in the IEP! project, reflect his first impressions of the municipality:

Extract 1

El instituto está situado muy cerca del centro de la ciudad. Está rodeado por bloques de apartamentos muy altos. Se pueden contar muchas ventanas, todas ellas muy pequeñas. […] Salta a la vista su carácter industrial, así como su condición de ciudad dormitorio. No hay muchas zonas verdes ni parques. Tampoco es que sea demasiado grande.

The high school is located near the centre of the city. It is surrounded by very high blocks of apartments. You can count lots of windows, all of them are very small. […] Its industrial character stands out, as does its condition as a dormitory town. There are not many green spaces nor parks. It’s also not very large.