Exploring the Shaping of English Language Teacher Practices While Working With Refugees and Asylum Seekers During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

This chapter reports on a project which began during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK. The project supported a group of UK-based ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) teachers and volunteers as the pandemic forced them to move from face-to-face to online teaching with refugees and asylum seekers. Using an ecological perspective, the authors explored the different possibilities for action that the teachers and volunteers perceive in the ever-changing pandemic environment and consider how language teacher practices and the achievement of organisational aims have been shaped, and in turn are shaping, online teaching. It concludes by considering how the practices developed for online teaching might now shape teaching as it returns, to a large extent, to face-to-face.