Researching Tutor Participation in the EAP Learning Context

Abstract

The first person mentioned in the vignette that opened this volume was an EAP tutor, on a fixed-term contract, writing feedback on a draft essay one late July afternoon. The choice of setting was deliberately not a face-to-face learning and teaching sequence but a space for reflection on where students are in their learning journey and where they need to go next to demonstrate that they have met the intended learning outcomes of the EAP course. Although students are at the centre of EAP, and therefore at the centre of this volume, students’ successful participation in learning and teaching practices is facilitated by tutors who are often employed on a fixed-term basis or have teaching-intensive contracts, which are likely to offer limited reward and recognition for research that can feed into professional development. Student success and tutor professional development are necessarily connected. The present chapter turns the research lens onto tutor participation in the EAP learning context, and defines participation as tutors’ understanding and deployment of the knowledge, skills and abilities needed for the EAP classroom, both in general and particularly with reference to materials design, classroom language, providing feedback on student performance, assessing student work, observing peers and engaging in other forms of professional development. These key aspects are the focus of the chapter, as they are central to an EAP tutor’s role.