Our research team is led by Dr Naomi Flynn working with PhD student Aniqa Leena and Professor Suzanne Graham.
Naomi Flynn is a teacher educator at The University of Reading’s Institute of Education. Her research specialism is in how teachers can improve their teaching for children who are learning English as an additional language (EAL). Naomi recently spent three months in the USA, on a Fulbright Visiting Scholarship, studying the impact of The Enduring Principles of Learning in elementary schools in Indiana. For the Talk Rich Teaching project she is delivering professional development using this approach, in three primary schools in England, in order to evaluate whether The Enduring Principles of Learning can improve teachers’ classroom practice for EAL learners.
Aniqa Leena is a qualified primary teacher, studying for her PhD at the University of Reading’s Institute of Education. Aniqa is a recipient of the ESRC-SeNSS collaborative studentship award, and she is interested in how EAL learners can be best supported through classroom practice. Before joining the Talk Rich Teaching project, Aniqa taught upper Key Stage 2 pupils at one of the largest, linguistically diverse primary schools in Reading, and completed her Master’s in Education at the University of Oxford. In this project, Aniqa will be testing and examining the impact of the Enduring Principles on pupils’ language and literacy development.
Suzanne Graham is Professor of Language and Education at the Institute of Education, University of Reading. She has led a number of large research projects in the field of second language education, exploring teaching and learning in a range of different contexts. She has published widely in the area of language comprehension, with a particular focus on listening comprehension and self-regulation. Formerly a teacher of French and German in secondary schools, she has been a teacher educator at the University of Reading since 2000, where she leads the Modern Foreign Languages Initial Teacher Education course. In the Talk Rich Teaching project Suzanne’s expertise is supporting the development, implementation and analysis of the pupil tests’
Our project draws on the research of Annela Teemant, Professor of Second/Foreign Language Teacher Education at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, and architect of The Enduring Principles of Learning. She is actively engaged in developing, implementing, and researching quality teacher preparation for teachers of multilingual learners using these principles. She has been awarded five U.S. Department of Education grants focused on teacher quality ($11 million). Her current federal funding focuses on how school leadership teams can scale up pedagogical innovation using the Enduring Principles of Learning, and reciprocal family, community and school engagement, in pursuit of equity.