Onwards and Upwards: Space, Placement, and Liminality in Adult ESOL Classes

Onwards and Upwards: Space, Placement, and Liminality in Adult ESOL Classes MIKE BAYNHAM AND JAMES SIMPSON University of Leeds Leeds, England The extensive literature on classroom-based second language learning makes little attempt to situate the classroom itself in social and multilingual sociolinguistic space, in the complex and iterative networks of encounters and interactions that make up daily life Daily life is routinely evoked and ‘‘brought into’’ the classroom as a pedagogic and testing strategy, but how can we understand the classroom as just one of the sites in which daily life, including language learning and use, is played out? In this article we outline an approach to researching the spaces of language learning, and the identity positions that are routinely made available to English speakers of other languages (ESOL) learners, drawing on approaches from cultural geography and linguistic ethnography We illustrate the discussion with data from a study investigating the placement practices by which ESOL students in England are placed and place themselves in particular types of educational provision (Simpson, Cooke, & Baynham, 2008), investigating why some may choose the identity of second language learner and others orient toward mainstream education opportunities We conclude with a discussion of new identity positions, understood as spaces of becoming created by the levels and progressions of curriculum frameworks, drawing on Bernstein’s (1999) notion of vertical and horizontal discourses doi: 10.5054/tq.2010.226852 his article concerns the life situation of adult migrant learners of English in England and how they may find themselves for a variety of reasons placed in classes of English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) or in literacy classes We show how the issue of student placement involves spatial practices, understood as the production, deployment, and appropriation of spaces and their investment with activities and meanings (cf Harvey, 1989; de Certeau, 1988), examining this both in terms of student placement in actual classes and in relation to the abstract space of a National Qualifications Framework (NQF) To T 420 TESOL QUARTERLY Vol 44, No 3, September 2010 so we draw on a distinction made by the philosopher Henri Lefebvre (1974/1991) and the cultural geographer Harvey (1989) between material spatial practices, representations of space, and spaces of representation, discussed later First, however, we introduce the discussion with a short review of relevant policy background on ESOL in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland (there is a different system in Scotland), to set the scene We then describe the context of the study upon which this article draws: a project investigating placement practices (how students are placed or place themselves) in adult ESOL and literacy courses which lie within the scope of England’s Skills for Life policy Using an illustrative vignette, we discuss how a community-based context of ESOL teaching and learning occupies and appropriates liminal material spaces, making them over for pedagogical purposes Turning to more abstract dimensions of practices of placement, we go on to investigate how movement through learning is also constructed in the talk of ESOL learners and teachers as a spatial process, in particular as progression through the abstract space of the NQF, arguing that this is a representation of space in Harvey’s terms Drawing on Bernstein (1999), we sketch out the dimensions of this representation of space, discussing how progression within the NQF can be described in terms of a vertical or a horizontal trajectory: Progression through the curriculum framework is understood as following an upward path, while at the same time other aspects of students’ learning trace a horizontal route which is apparently less valued How are the abstract spaces of the curriculum framework appropriated by students? How are learning spaces understood as central or peripheral? How, if at all, does progress along the vertical trajectory connect with the horizontal? We conclude by considering the new identity positions—spaces of becoming—created by the discourses of progression and placement THE POLICY CONTEXT: ESOL IN THE UNITED KINGDOM Going back to the 1990s, adult ESOL provision in England was largely neglected in policy circles A major watershed came at the turn of the century, with the decision to bring the fragmented field of ESOL under centralised control, linked to a more general overhaul of the provision of adult literacy and numeracy, as the government put in place a national strategy for adult basic education, Skills for Life Through initiatives involving literacy, numeracy, ESOL, and, more recently, computer skills training, the purpose of Skills for Life has taken a human capital approach, aiming to mobilize individual potential and human capital to support economic growth (for a discussion of these issues in ONWARDS AND UPWARDS 421 the Australian context, cf Falk, 2001) ESOL was not originally included as a skill for life; the publication of a government working group report, Breaking the language barriers (Department for Education and Employment, 2000), recommended incorporating the field into the Skills for Life strategy ESOL was thus encompassed by literacy and numeracy policy, yoking basic literacy and ESOL together, mirroring trends in other English-dominant countries such as the United States and Australia, where again the development of human capital through basic skills training is linked to economic growth (cf McKay, 2001) For adult migrant learners of English, having their ESOL classes under centralised control within Skills for Life has meant that both their learning and the ways they and their teachers talk about their learning are funnelled in particular directions, with a consequential shaping and indeed narrowing of the identity options offered to them First, students and their teachers are now subject to a statutory national ESOL curriculum (Department for Education and Skills, 2001), which is accompanied by associated learning and teaching materials The model of language adopted by the curriculum has its origins in the adult literacy curriculum, upon which it is based Language is broken down into word/sentence/text, in contrast to the whole text and genrebased view of language taken in, for example, the equivalent Australian curriculum With Standard English as the referent, and its failure to respond to the multilingual reality of much of modern Britain, the curriculum also contributes to the powerful discourse of monolingualism that is prevalent in education and in British society more broadly Second, and of particular relevance to this article, ESOL students, along with the other Skills for Life students in literacy and numeracy classes, work towards qualifications based on national standards, within the NQF(see Department of Education and Skills, 2001, p 4) The national standards are specified at entry level (broken down into Preentry, Entry 1, Entry 2, and Entry 3), Level and Level These levels are aligned with the school national curriculum: Level nominally corresponds with a GCSE (i.e., school-leaving exam) pass at grades A to C These levels are (again nominally) mapped to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR; Council of Europe, 2007), with Entry Level matching CEFR Level B1 (independent user/threshold) Moreover, students’ achievement of qualification aims is of central importance to their institutions Because the further education sector, where most ESOL provision is situated, operates with a funding regime which requires that most provision leads to qualifications, funding drives practice, as institutions are under huge pressure to ensure students—including ESOL students at all levels—both take and pass exams, preparation for which has come to dominate practice Thus the identity imposed upon students by policy and institutionally—if not 422 TESOL QUARTERLY by their teachers—is that of student as test taker, whose test results contribute towards the achievement of government targets It should be emphasized, however, that the intention of this article is not to deny the educational achievements which are valuably opened up by a qualifications framework and curriculum pathway as such, but simply to point out a turning away from other kinds of outcomes, less easily quantifiable yet arguably no less valuable As well as the effects wrought by Skills for Life, ESOL has been invoked in bigger political debates surrounding citizenship, cohesion and integration, and national security A key plank in recent British policy on ‘‘community cohesion and integration’’ has been the implementation of ceremonies for new British citizens and the introduction of a citizenship test, the Life in the UK test, which brings together ESOL and immigration policy The Nationality, Immigration, and Asylum Act of 2002 requires United Kingdom residents seeking British citizenship, and since 2007 those requesting permanent residence, to show formally ‘‘sufficient knowledge of life in the United Kingdom and of the English language’’ (Office of Public Sector Information 2002) The citizenship test is a multiple-choice test taken on a computer Those who have not reached the level of English necessary to take the test, or who not have the required level of literacy, must enroll on an approved course of English language in a citizenship context and demonstrate that they have ‘‘made relevant progress’’(United Kingdom Border Agency, 2010 ).Hence ‘‘moving up a level’’ on the NQF becomes the de facto requirement for gaining citizenship, and now, indefinite leave to remain This recent focus on citizenship arose out of the high-profile terrorist attacks of the early 2000s, and creates an explicit linkage of citizenship to fluency in English This has had the effect of radically shifting the emphasis from policies that promote diversity and tolerance (multiculturalism and antiracism) to those that promote integration and social cohesion In turn, this has created a new set of constraints for English language learners and teachers, because achievement of particular language levels (as described earlier) is linked with gaining citizenship In sum, the connection between national security, immigration, integration, social cohesion, and language learning and teaching is becoming progressively tighter (Cooke & Simpson, 2008) This then is some of the background on English language provision for adult migrants in England, whose learning sits within a policy environment that makes ESOL a very particular branch of English language teaching It is also the background to the Placement Practices Project (Simpson, Cooke, & Baynham, 2008), the research on which this article draws ONWARDS AND UPWARDS 423 ESOL AND LITERACY PLACEMENT PRACTICES Part of the Skills for Life strategy involved the establishment in 2002 of the National Research and Development Centre for Adult Literacy and Numeracy (NRDC), providing funding for a range of research projects designed to provide the strategy with a research base The NRDC’s Placement Practices Project (Simpson et al., 2008) started with a question: How ESOL or bilingual students get placed or place themselves in literacy and/or ESOL classes? Although colleges or centres in multilingual cities or neighbourhoods might have welldeveloped ESOL provision, their literacy classes also show huge linguistic diversity At around Entry Level and Level on the NQF, bilingual students might end up studying in either ESOL-designated classes or literacy classes What are the institutional and personal practices at play when the decision is made about whether an ESOL or a literacy route is taken at Entry or Level 1? To answer these questions we studied the literacy and ESOL placement practices in two colleges of further education: Rushton College, a large college in inner-city London, and Cranshaw College, a smaller one in a Yorkshire town, reflecting the metropolitan/regional dimension of difference Through a combination of interviews, focus groups, and observation, the research sought to ascertain both what is said and what is done about placing learners in ESOL or literacy classes in the two centres Observation of enrolments, placement interviews, and tests for new ESOL and literacy learners took place across different sites of each centre, and detailed field notes and audio recordings were taken Placement documentation and artefacts from each centre (e.g., copies of placement tests) were collected, and front desk or first point of contact practices with new learners were also observed In the course of these observations, six classes, three at each centre, were identified as being at around Entry Level and Level 1, the focus of our interest The classes were ESOL and Childcare Entry 3, ESOL Entry Literacy, and Literacy Entry (at Rushton); and ESOL Level 1, Literacy Workshop, and ESOL Entry 2+ (at Cranshaw) The names of the classes themselves reflect something of the ambiguity and institutional uncertainty about the two areas of provision Although some classes are designated ESOL or Literacy, one at Rushton is called ESOL Entry Literacy This class, as we discuss later, is for bilingual students who fall into the ESOL category at placement, and who have been identified by teachers as requiring specific attention to literacy, rather than to oral communication skills The six classes were the basis of six case studies, informed by lesson observations and group and individual interviews with learners, teachers, managers, and support staff Syllabuses, teaching materials, and samples of learners’ work from their 424 TESOL QUARTERLY lessons were also collected The interview data were first analysed through a content analysis employing a constant comparative method This involved the main coding categories being agreed after an analysis of early interviews, then collapsed or expanded through analysis of the rest of the data set Observation data (field notes and recordings) and other artefacts such as emails, prospectuses, notices, and data from lessons, informed the descriptive aspect of the research, providing a holistic picture of placement practices at each research site A key underlying idea of the project was that there are two dimensions to placement: certainly that prospective students are placed in particular types of provision and particular types of classes, but also that students actively place themselves in particular types of provision (ESOL or Literacy) This links with ideas in identity work and positioning theory (Baynham, 2006; Davies & Harre´, 1990; Le Page & Tabouret Keller, 2006): People both position themselves and are positioned There is obviously also an implicit spatial metaphor in the notion of positioning So an issue which is apparently down to earth and practical, such as how students get placed in particular classes, can be understood productively in terms of space and place, positioning and identity How students place themselves, and how are they placed institutionally, as ESOL or Literacy students? What kinds of learner identities are implied by such choices? How does the actual material space of the class relate to more abstract understandings of space, placement, and progression? Such are the kinds of issues that are raised when we start to look below the surface of student placement LIMINAL SPACE IN A COMMUNITY CENTRE: A LESSON OBSERVED To orient first towards practices concerning material space in ESOL classes, we begin with a short vignette from an observation of an ESOL lesson Classroom-based research, as suggested earlier, has tended to insulate the classroom itself from its surrounding context, defining its object by looking inwards at the routines, activities, and interactions which constitute the classroom Here we propose the need to situate the classroom itself in social and in multilingual sociolinguistic space, in the complex and iterative networks of encounters and interactions, in the sites and domains that make up daily life (cf Blommaert, Collins, & Slembrouck, 2005) We try to contextualize the lesson observed, both in relation to its immediate setting, then in relation to its status as an offsite class in a multisite college In terms of the NQF, the class is classified as Entry 2+; that is to say, it is a nominally lower-intermediate, mixedability class The class has been provided by Cranshaw College at the ONWARDS AND UPWARDS 425 centre for the past three years, as part of its off-site or community provision; the class teacher, Sue, is employed by the college The Entry 2+ lessons are held in the Borderlands Community Centre, and specifically in the main entrance hall of the centre Although it is not typical for off-site ESOL classes to take place in such seemingly ad hoc conditions, it is by no means unusual (see Baynham, Roberts, Cooke, Simpson, & Ananiadou, 2007) A classroom, the office, and the cre`che all lead off from the room in which lessons take place The following vignette draws on field notes made during one particular lesson observation in November 2006 This ESOL Entry 2+ class meets two mornings a week from 9.30–12.30 in the Borderlands Community Centre Their classes are held in a large open room, the first which a visitor enters coming into the building Its grilled windows look out onto a pedestrian precinct with a newsagent, chemist, post office and medical practice It is also the room through which parents and children must pass to access the cre`che, the toilets, other teaching rooms On the other side of a closed door is the lively hubbub of the cre`che Occasionally children are brought through to the toilets and a more enterprising child might break out and run once or twice around the teaching room, before being intercepted and shepherded back into the cre`che room There are 12 students in the group, all women, except for one young male student, a migrant worker from one of the Eastern European EU accession states The majority of students are asylum seekers, living in the housing estate surrounding Borderlands, from Congo, Somalia, Eritrea, Algeria, Palestine and Turkey One student is from the local settled Pakistani community The majority of students are recruited by word of mouth, the asylum seekers also coming to Borderlands for a drop-in morning Some students have been referred to these classes from other sites, because the level is more suited to their needs and because of the cre`che The students arrive in a piecemeal way, sign the register then start in on individual work, talking quietly to their neighbours They seem to have grouped themselves by language (Somali, Arabic, Urdu) Sue circulates, talking to students individually and in small groups She has a special late note worksheet on the table nearest to the door Sorry I’m late Because…… One of the issues in this class seems to be that of setting boundaries and creating a pedagogical frame in this very fluid and open ended space Sue does this very effectively through framing activities, and this excuse sheet is part of the process 426 TESOL QUARTERLY Sue then brings this stage of the lesson to a close by collecting the folders in and transitions to a spelling test (all the while people moving quietly across the room to other offices or classrooms) A father arrives with the child of one of the students, she leaves to settle him in the cre`che Sue transitions into the main body of the lesson, linking it back to the lesson last week and introducing some Skills for Life materials and realistic examples of different kinds of notes and messages She asks the question: What are they? Why have they been used? (While this is going on F arrives late and rather distressed Sue settles her down, talking sympathetically in a low voice and not insisting she completes the late excuse worksheet.) Sue goes on to contrast the different notes and messages in terms of formality/informality of register The next phase of activity is a Skills for Life exercise on openings and closings in letters and messages Sue groups the students carefully for the activity, in pairs or individually The next activity is a story sequencing one, followed by a break After the break, Sue introduces a roleplay which the students engage in with animation, involving a mother taking a child to the doctor V throws himself with some gusto into the part of the badly behaved boy! REFLECTIONS ON THE OBSERVED LESSON A striking aspect of the lesson is the way that Sue and the students have created a busy and focussed pedagogic space out of the anteroom in which the class is situated It is impressive how they manage to maintain concentration The whole situation evokes the concept of liminality (Latin limen threshold) Liminality as a theoretical construct was developed by the sociologist Turner (1969) in his work on ritual to characterize circumstances of in-between-ness,neither one thing nor the other The class described in the vignette is literally situated in an in-between space, in a kind of anteroom which everyone in the building, adults and children, must be able to pass through freely We suggest later that there is also a kind of liminality in the Pre-entry and Entry qualification levels of the NQF, a sense that students at these levels are not yet fully equipped to participate The liminality of the physical space is additionally echoed in the in-between-ness of the life situation of the students, most of whom are asylum-seekers, in a kind of in-between space before the decision to grant refugee status is decided In this case the liminality can become a way of life; decisions about asylum claims can be prolonged over as much as five years The class is shaped by this provisionality but also seems to be characterized by an attitude of carry on as if—as if in this case a student’s life in the United Kingdom could not be abruptly terminated by a decision not to allow asylum ONWARDS AND UPWARDS 427 APPROPRIATING SPACE Spatial practices, as defined earlier, involve the production, deployment, and appropriation of spaces and their investment with activities and meanings They also involve relationships of power and inequality: Space is unequally distributed and valued The sociologist de Certeau (1988) suggested that people occupy and make over places, through their practical activity appropriating spaces: For de Certeau ‘‘space is a practiced place Thus the street geometrically defined by urban planning is transformed into a space by walkers’’ (p 117) The Borderlands ESOL teacher, for example, is teaching an off-site class which in itself creates a centre–periphery spatial relationship with main site, which we discuss later It is located in an open-plan room close to the entrance to the community centre The teacher and the students appropriate and transform that space, to turn it into somewhere where learning can happen Through all the accompanying activity, Sue and the students maintain focus, despite the comings and goings around them It is striking here how effectively a learning space is created out of quite unpromising conditions The lateness excuse worksheet is one device for creating this pedagogical space, though of course it brings in a temporal dimension: The classroom space is defined in time, the starting and finishing time of the class, for which participants can be early, on time, or late, reminding us that spatial practices cannot be separated from practices involving time Both de Certeau and Harvey distinguish between the spatial practices of powerful agents who control and manipulate space and those of users who are, however, not simply subjected to the control and manipulation of powerful agents but also appropriate and make over such spaces for their own purposes In the work of de Certeau the distinction is made between strategies understood as the domain of the powerful (which produce, tabulate, and impose spaces) and tactics (which use, manipulate, and divert these spaces; de Certeau, 1988, p 30), whereas Harvey makes a similar distinction between ‘‘the appropriation and use of space’’ and ‘‘the domination and control of space’’ (Harvey, 1989, p 220) Sue and her students thus use tactics to appropriate and use the space available On the other hand, the NQF is put in place as part of a policy-driven strategy which, as we see in the following section, produces, tabulates, and imposes a kind of abstract progression space into which students and teachers can insert themselves This progression space is at once enabling, in that it creates possibilities for students and teachers to imagine progression on to future goals in education, training, and work, yet also constraining, as we would argue it makes it more difficult to imagine and recognize the value of other types of outcomes The strategic purpose of the NQF is at once to provide a framework for 428 TESOL QUARTERLY student progression, but at the same time it is a means of measuring and quantifying progress and reporting on the achievement of government policy objectives MOVING ON AND UP: ABSTRACT SPACES, LEARNING PATHWAYS, AND QUALIFICATIONS LADDERS In talking about spatial practices and the production of space, Harvey, drawing on the work of Lefebvre, makes a three-way but interrelated distinction between material spatial practices, representations of space, and spaces of representation (Harvey, 1989, pp 218–219) So far we have discussed material spatial practices: The ways that everyday real-time spaces are created and inhabited by teacher and students and the consequences thereof Representations of space refer to the linguistic and semiotic resources available to talk about and understand space, whereas spaces of representation are ‘‘mental inventions that imagine new meanings or possibilities for spatial practices’’ (Harvey, 1989, pp 218–219) There is, however, another more abstract dimension to the spatial practices of placement, involving both representations of space and a space of representation: the NQF In Lefebvre and Harvey’s terms, the NQF is a space of representation, in that it is initially a thing created or imagined, brought into existence by a policy intervention As such it indexes and draws on broader teleological notions of individual progress and achievement, movement upwards towards a goal, be it work, citizenship, or the other social benefits that can arguably result from educational achievement Once in existence, strategically deployed as a government policy, it becomes part of the language that students and teachers use to represent themselves as progressing (or not) within the NQF space As outlined earlier, students are assessed and placed according to national qualification levels (Pre-entry to Level 2), which creates in effect an abstract space that they move through as they progress, via achieving qualifications, towards ever higher levels The strong spatial metaphors at work here (moving up a level) suggest the value of examining how progression is constructed as a space of representation in Lefebvre and Harvey’s terms, creating new meanings and possibilities onto which ESOL students and teachers are encouraged to map themselves:1 So the (.) the idea the course is to move up (.) move on into Entry ESOL but to (.) to contextualise it so that instead of doing say the Skills for Life materials which are about somebody (.) other (.) well I can’t think of what (.) Transcription conventions: (.) short pause; , comments on aspects of the talk in angle brackets; [ ] overlapping talk in square brackets; […] omitted talk or turns ONWARDS AND UPWARDS 429 you know everything they learn will be about (.) the language will be around child care, but it’s still at level (.) entry sorry (ESOL and Childcare teacher, Rushton) The discourse of levels and progression (moving up and on), a representation of space in Lefebvre and Harvey’s terms, saturates the talk of both teachers and students For example, students are referred to metonymically in terms of the levels themselves The metonym Entry 2, and so on, is used as a substitute for student in an Entry class or an Entry level student, for example, and can be seen as a shorthand and simple way of describing students, who can be, it goes without saying, complex, complicated, and not easy to describe yeah I’ve got entry 2s entry 3s level 1s in the same class (ESOL teacher, Cranshaw) she often has entry entry and the odd level all in a group of perhaps students (ESOL teacher, Cranshaw) whether they’re pre-entry we can ask three of the pre-entries and we can ask five of the entry (.) entry 1s and above the entry 3s and entry 2s have extensions on the (.) on the exams (ESOL teacher, Cranshaw) The terms pre-entry and entry themselves, as suggested earlier, introduce an aspect of liminality into the classification: Only at Entry and beyond does the framework proper begin; the earlier levels in both the ESOL and the Literacy strands of provision are simply considered as preparatory Thus a student prevented by reading and writing difficulties from progressing up the framework will be indefinitely categorized in this liminal space that is by definition prior to the levels that matter The discourse of the NQF that we have identified and the representation of space that it affords are so pervasive that students also define themselves by their level on the framework: S: Int: S: erm I am entry Ok me entry (ESOL students at Borderlands Centre, Cranshaw) 430 TESOL QUARTERLY Students talk about progression in terms of the NQF: Int: S: S: You’re returning students (.) can you tell me what you were doing before entry level (.) this is all but entry level we all passed the three of us we passed entry level this year and I passed also entry the year before (ESOL students, Cranshaw) Students are aware of the purpose of the enrolment test, the exam, and the NQF levels, using the levels as a way of talking about their initial assessment and progression: S1: Int: S1: S2: Int: S1: Int: S2: S1: S2: they (.) they gave us test to and (.) we passed the test good so all of (.) all of the [enrolment is (.) is here ,rising intonation.] [and learning different level] (.) yeah find different levels oh right find different level right (.) and what (.) what (.) what level are you preparing for (.) are you preparing for (.) for (.) for an exam or yeah for exam which (.) which (.) which one are you going for I’m going for entry (ESOL students, Rushton) Many ESOL students (and language students generally) have variable competence in oral and written communication skills They may, for example, have a more developed competence in speaking than in writing, or (less often in ESOL contexts) vice versa This variation is routinely discussed by teachers in terms of where these particular skill levels might line up along points on the NQF So, even in instances where students not fall into predetermined categories very tidily, the variability is still described with close reference to the NQF: because I think people automatically although they focus on the writing needs they tend to be more generous about the um where they put students and they put them in E3A when they are not fully necessarily E3A speakers (.) but […] there is a discrepancy between their writing and their speaking um so I have got mainly E3A E2B speakers in my class but I think I’ve got some E1B um E2A writers so that’s about the (.) the range (ESOL teacher, Cranshaw) ONWARDS AND UPWARDS 431 We see here how the qualifications framework allows for more finegrained distinctions, between E2 writers who are also E3 speakers (The classifications E3A/E3B refer to local classification for more finely grading classes, not to levels in the NQF.) THE LANGUAGE OF LEVELS: A VERTICAL TRAJECTORY So if the NQF framework can be understood as a space of representation in the sense of Harvey and Lefebvre, giving rise to the spatial talk we have identified in both ESOL students and teachers, what are the parameters and dimensions of its invented space? The language of levels and of the qualifications framework which constructs learning, progress, and achievement can be understood, as we have seen, in terms of a vertical trajectory (on and up), which can be usefully linked to Bernstein’s idea of vertical discourse (cf Bernstein, 1999; Moss, 2000) For Bernstein ‘‘a vertical discourse takes the form of a coherent, explicit and systematically principled structure, hierarchically organized’’ (1999, p 159) The theoretical terms that Bernstein introduces, as many theoretical constructs, draw strongly on spatial metaphors, invoking ‘‘spaces of representation’’ for student progression Interpreted in the context of an assessment framework such as Skills for Life, students move up and on through a vertical trajectory of ever higher levels which can eventually be aligned with other kinds of achievement and qualifications on the NQF (e.g., a pass at Grade C and beyond in GCSE English) Skills for Life is currently evaluated and indeed funded precisely through its performance in moving students through this vertical trajectory, as measured by performance in exams A horizontal trajectory, in contrast, can again be linked with Bernstein’s horizontal discourse (Bernstein, 1999; Moss, 2000), which is defined as ‘‘A set of strategies which are locally, segmentally organized, context specific and dependent, for maximising encounters with persons or habitats’’ (Bernstein, 1999, p 159) This would map student achievement not just as the vertical movement through qualifications, but also through local communicative achievements that cannot be quantified in exam passes: ability to speak with and make friends with neighbours, for example, or increased informed participation in children’s schooling As Bernstein puts it, ‘‘in general the emphasis of the segmental pedagogy of horizontal discourse is oriented towards acquiring a common competence rather than a graded performance’’ (p 161) In the ESOL and Childcare class at Rushton, none of the students speak English outside the classroom, except in service encounters such as shopping, going to the doctor’s, and so on There 432 TESOL QUARTERLY is, however, a general agreement that by coming to ESOL classes they can now a lot of things they were previously unable to do: S: S: S: S: S: S: S: Int: S: especially English person I used to feel nervous nervous or something they speak very fast what if she ask me and I can’t anything especially doctor ,laughter I had to take someone with me just in case ,rising intonation yeah I don’t understand (.) now actually I can tell my problem to doctor or to my son’s school (ESOL and Childcare students, Rushton) This is an example of a horizontal trajectory: very real achievement and progress that cannot be measured in terms of qualifications Again there is a strong resemblance to Bernstein’s (1999) description of the realizations of horizontal discourse: Thus, in the case of horizontal discourse, its ‘‘knowledges,’’ competences and literacies are segmental They are contextually specific and ‘‘context dependent,’’ embedded in ongoing practices, usually with strong affective loading, and directed towards specific, immediate goals, highly relevant to the acquirer in the context of his/her life (p 161) There is plenty of evidence in the interviews with students of the strong affective impact of these horizontal achievements and their embedding in ongoing practices Amel, an ESOL student at the Borderlands Centre, Cranshaw, talks in her interview of visiting the doctor and reading Home Office communications She was not able to either previously, but having attended an ESOL class, is now able to both Visiting a doctor and reading crucial communications from the Home Office are just two of the many language practices engaged in by asylum seekers like Amel Being able to both unaided is a marker of real progress Amel is describing communication mediated by interpreters, formal and informal (cf Blommaert et al., 2005), and how improvement in speaking and reading English enables her to go it alone when communicating at the hospital and reading a letter from the Home Office There is no measure for such achievements in the NQF, which may, however, as we suggest later, be recontextualized pedagogically to simulate such interactions for teaching and testing purposes ONWARDS AND UPWARDS 433 Int: A: Int: A: Int: A: Int: A: A: Int: A: Int: A: so you are going to the doctors or the hospital or anything like that [with the children?] [yeah I go] (.) now I go for myself to the hospital, to the doctor right sometimes er he tell (.) they telling me if you don’t understand we can bring er interpreter right like in Home Office yeah when I went for interview they brought the interpreter but after when I spoke to him he said er I don’t know why I brought not necessary ,laughs […] er first I (.) I used to don’t understand but now if er letter coming from Home Office I understand really yeah that’s good before I used to ask my friend but now I’m alright (Amel, ESOL student, Borderlands Centre, Cranshaw) THE LANGUAGE OF LEVELS: APPROPRIATING ABSTRACT SPACE Earlier in this article, we saw how students and teacher tactically appropriated a material space (the anteroom of the community centre) that was not obviously designed or intended for pedagogical use, creating a pedagogical or learning space It is interesting to examine how the abstract space of representation created by the national framework of levels and qualifications is similarly made over and appropriated tactically by its users, both students and teachers, just as we noticed in the case of the physical and social spaces described earlier, with the values of certain levels shifting over time Of course exams themselves have to claim a space in the bumpy and competitive terrain of available qualifications, which brings in another kind of user/ consumer of qualifications, the job market For example, according to one literacy and ESOL teacher, Helen, the exam itself and the Level literacy qualification are not valued by employers She attributes this to the narrow range of literacy skills it tests: er because other things I’ve heard and read is employers don’t value the level exam because I did a little work at X College as well last (.) last year I did a bit last year and the year before last and again they were all doing level um level exams (.) in the literacy and again it was all multiple choice questions and I got to I could quite understand why employers weren’t valuing a level um qualification (Helen, ESOL and literacy teacher, Cranshaw) 434 TESOL QUARTERLY A qualification can be set at a particular point in a qualifications ladder with equivalences established between other qualifications However, if it is not taken up and valued, if it is not inhabited, as it were, by its users, it will not become established but remain an empty valueless shell The qualifications ladder creates a graded abstract vertical space which students move through, on and up; but, like other kinds of space, if this is not appropriated and valued it becomes meaningless The qualifications ladder itself has consequences which can again wash back to influence student placement, as this case study of the Rushton ESOL Entry Literacy class makes clear: Classes up to Entry have a parallel literacy course, called e.g., ESOL Entry Lit Students are placed on these courses because they have a ‘‘gap’’ between their speaking and reading/writing The concept of the ‘‘gap’’ is a key motif in discussions around literacy and how to place students correctly Jane [the teacher] also believes that the Cambridge exams now in place at Rushton in the ESOL department have forced the department to place students more according to their literacy rather than their speaking because many of them are struggling with the Cambridge reading and writing exams, and they are obliged to all ‘‘modes’’ to get through a level The way the exams are structured, in particular the requirement to pass all modes (i.e., speaking and writing), washes back to structure the placement practices, demonstrating the way that the abstract representational space of the qualifications ladder shapes and influences student deployment into classes (i.e., into material spaces) Both spaces are intimately interconnected Another kind of example of this differential valuing and its consequences can be found at Rushton It seems that, for the department at Rushton the vertical trajectory of levels is not equal between ESOL and Literacy The department has clear guidelines about how people get placed in a level if they are ESOL: An ESOL level is regarded as a level below literacy, that is, ESOL Entry Level (E3) is counted as the equivalent of Entry Level literacy Hence some students have already spent a year in the E3 ESOL class and achieved the level, but are now doing E3 literacy This equivalence of levels (or the lack of equivalence) is thus something that is, it seems, locally interpreted and valued The case study of Rushton’s E3 literacy class also suggests that this perception is shared by students There is a strong sense that ESOL is seen as a lower level, or something that you finish and then move on from ESOL is associated with slower progress and with low-level speaking, as shown in this extract: ONWARDS AND UPWARDS 435 Int: S: Int: S: S: Int: S: S: S: S: S: Int: S: Int: S: Int: S: Int: S: S: S: Int: S: Ss: yeah and (.) can you compare this class with the ESOL class yeah the ESOL class (.) the ESOL class is you know is like just basic English but here is you know more writing reading writing more writing more writing writing and spellings so when you say basic English what you mean basically just you know speaking and they give some you know some [grammar] [grammatic words] easier in ESOL they missing words like (.) easy words (.) missing words tense past tense Yeah present tense words which one is right and that Right then basically grammar specialist is better I think is ESOL class for grammar ,rising intonation basically it’s lower than this class I know it is hard to write letter how to er mistake your letter and improve with it and it’s better this (.) this is like quality of writing and the thing you know yeah I know what you mean more improving in here Yes [so that’s what I mean] [do you all agree with him] Yeah yeah (Literacy students, Rushton) So here it seems that, regardless of the qualifications framework itself which promotes equivalence across levels, the move from ESOL to Literacy is perceived as a move on and up the progression ladder In terms of de Certeau’s (1988) notion of the appropriation of space, users (students, teachers, and employers) shape and reshape in practice abstract notions such as progression, through rating one type of provision more highly than another, thus altering the prefabricated design of the Skills for Life levels, which does not in itself suggest that a given level in ESOL should be differently valued than the same level in Literacy To explain why that might be, we look at spatial practices in relation to another kind of spatial movement, from periphery to centre LEARNING SPACES: CENTRAL AND PERIPHERAL We suggested earlier that spatial practices involve relationships of power and inequality, that space is unequally distributed and valued We can illustrate this through the notion of central and peripheral learning spaces and the differences in the ways they are valued One instance of this is the relationship between off-site and on-site courses, and another the relationship between Literacy and ESOL as subareas of Skills for Life Progression, 436 TESOL QUARTERLY as we have seen, is constructed as movement on from ESOL to Literacy or onto vocational courses Lynne, a literacy teacher at Cranshaw, talks of one student ‘‘who clearly was an ESOL student,’’ who had been in the United Kingdom for a number of years and who wanted to join a Literacy class (‘‘He probably felt he was moving on from ESOL.’’) Progression is also constructed as movement, either actual or desired, from off-site to main site It seems that Rushton’s off-site ESOL and Childcare course, run in a community centre on a housing estate, is of a lower level than the equivalent course run on the main site As the case study states, There is very much the sense that this is a lower level ‘‘poor relation’’ to the next level childcare courses and that C [the teacher] is very unclear of the level required for her students to be able to get onto those courses These movements, we suggest, can be understood as movements from periphery towards the centre, from less to more valued space, which themselves have effects in terms of identity construction in both ESOL students and teachers, who might on some level understand themselves as marginal learners and marginal teachers SPATIAL PRACTICES AND IDENTITY POSITIONS In this article we examined the spatial practices that constitute the learning world of ESOL students and the working world of ESOL teachers We have seen, for example, in the Borderlands classroom case study how the liminal space of a community centre anteroom, routinely crossed by other users going to and from the cre`che, the toilets, or offices, is appropriated and made over as a pedagogical space We have suggested as well that the community-based class is positioned in relation to the mainstream college provision in a periphery–centre relationship, as is ESOL in relation to Literacy What is the impact of these positionings on the learner and professional identities of ESOL students and teachers? In the community centre setting, learner identities literally jostle with other identities, as a mother breaks away from her studies to sort out a problem with her child in the cre`che, or a father drops by to leave a child, again leading to a break in class participation Learner identities in the community setting are also bound up in the desire to progress on and up, from the periphery to the mainstream course in the main college site, onto vocational training or into work What about teacher identities? Pervasive in the interviews we conducted with teachers was a sense of professional marginalization of the ESOL teacher in college structures, yet combined with a strong sense of purpose, which is demonstrated in the class discussed earlier The tactical appropriation of space involved in creating the pedagogical ONWARDS AND UPWARDS 437 space is itself a kind of identity work, creating a distinctive learner and teacher identity, highly attached to learning in this particular place and at this particular time, despite the practical obstacles In addition to physical and social spaces, we also identified the abstract vertical spatial trajectory of the qualifications framework What identity effects might this have on ESOL learners and teachers? When we examine the saturation of reference to the levels in student and teacher discourse in the interviews, it is hard not to see a Foucauldian disciplining and regulation of the self at work, as learners are literally transformed in the words of their teachers and themselves into Entry 1s, 2s, and 3s, embarking implicitly on a vertical trajectory that can in theory lead them upwards and onwards into the kind of knowledge worlds that Bernstein has characterized for us so well Seen from this perspective, the NQF is strangely effective as a strategy for producing different learner and teacher identities, embarking on particular learning trajectories, linked to particular real world outcomes: a job, a course, citizenship It is of course a kind of irony, beyond the scope of this article to explore, that the content of the vertical exams which structure this progression are overwhelmingly based on everyday communication tasks, hardly dissimilar to those everyday, horizontal, local communication events the achievements of which are identified earlier The crucial difference is of course that they are recontextualized and pedagogized in subtle ways that are differentially picked up on by different students, particularly those schooled or unschooled In a footnote to his 1999 article, Bernstein comments on the use of horizontal discourse in the framing of test items, identifying class differences between those students who are able to interpret these questions as calling for vertical discourse and those who not The learner identities that we examined are, however, future oriented, very much bound up with prospective lives and roles, with achieving asylum status, as citizens, as students, as members of the workforce, with more effective participation in day-to-day interactions We can point to the classroom as being both a liminal space and a ‘‘space of becoming.’’ The liminality of the classroom space was iconically highlighted in the Borderlands community class setting described earlier, but is of course routinely characteristic of other classroom spaces which students and teachers appropriate and make over for their own purposes CONCLUSION In this article we tried to focus on issues which are directly relevant to the notion of student placement, using ideas from the work of Lefebvre, de Certeau, and Harvey on spatial practices and the production of space 438 TESOL QUARTERLY We tried, for example, to show how spaces are tactically appropriated, made over, and used and how levels and qualifications ladders and ESOL student and teacher talk about them are saturated with spatial metaphors, well characterized by Bernstein’s (1999) ‘‘vertical discourse’’ (p 159) We have shown how there is an obvious washback from the qualifications ladder into the placement process, leading to students being placed in terms of literacy level rather than spoken language, and have suggested that some of these processes can be explained in terms of notions of differentially valued central and peripheral space Students, teachers, and curriculum managers, as well as other key players such as employers, inhabit and shape curriculum and qualifications spaces, valuing some, disvaluing others, influenced by shifts in the directions of policy It remains to be repeated, finally, that the intention of this article is not to cut off or turn attention away from the vertical trajectories of specifically educational achievement which are valuably opened up by a qualifications framework and curriculum pathway, though there are, of course, many gaps between rhetoric and actuality (as the discussion of the valuing of qualifications earlier suggested) It is rather that there seems to have been a policy-initiated turning away in the interests of the measurable achievements of the NQF from the achievements of horizontal discourse, which, contingent and local as they may be, have everyday life effects that can only be described as profound ACKNOWLEDGMENT This research was supported by the National Research and Development Centre for Adult Literacy and Numeracy/Department for Education and Skills Grant PG 4.33 THE AUTHORS Mike Baynham is Professor of TESOL at the University of Leeds, Leeds, England His research interests include work on narrative, language and migration, literacy, and adult English to speakers of other languages A former chair of the British Association for Applied Linguistics, he is currently co-convenor of the International Applied Linguistics Association (AILA) Research Network on Language and Migration James Simpson is a lecturer in the School of Education, University of Leeds, Leeds, England, where he coordinates the Master of Arts TESOL program His research interests include the teaching of English to speakers of other languages, discourse analysis, and literacy studies REFERENCES Baynham, M (2006) Performing self, family and community in Moroccan narratives of migration and settlement In A de Fina, D Schiffrin, & M 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