Nafisah Graham-Brown
Nafisah is Head of Fundraising and Business Development at ELATT, an education not-for-profit delivering ESOL and refugee and migrant settlement programmes across London. She is also a board member for the National Association for Teaching English and Community Languages to Adults (NATECLA, UK) and was Co-Chair from 2018-2022. She is a founding board member for ALT, the Adult Literacy Trust, UK. She gained her Doctor in Education from UCL Institute of Education in 2020 and her research was on the experiences of migrant women who are settling into UK society, with a focus on the value of social interactions for ESOL students.
She has managed ESOL and community projects since 2010, growing the provision from its Hackney base into eight London boroughs and developing partnerships with other third sector partners, colleges, ACL, local authorities and government. She is an experienced adult education teacher, specialising in ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages), English Literacy and Basic Skills, and Business Studies.
Nafisah is passionate about encouraging and fostering independence and autonomy in learners, to progress and flourish in their lives. She believes that to achieve equality we need to holistically examine equality of opportunity, diversity and inclusion in all our contexts, and make clear commitments to social justice for all.
Nafisah is a cat-lover, a cyclist, and is continuously trying to live a more environmentally-responsible life.
Supervisors: David Mallows, UCL IoE
She has managed ESOL and community projects since 2010, growing the provision from its Hackney base into eight London boroughs and developing partnerships with other third sector partners, colleges, ACL, local authorities and government. She is an experienced adult education teacher, specialising in ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages), English Literacy and Basic Skills, and Business Studies.
Nafisah is passionate about encouraging and fostering independence and autonomy in learners, to progress and flourish in their lives. She believes that to achieve equality we need to holistically examine equality of opportunity, diversity and inclusion in all our contexts, and make clear commitments to social justice for all.
Nafisah is a cat-lover, a cyclist, and is continuously trying to live a more environmentally-responsible life.
Supervisors: David Mallows, UCL IoE
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Drafts by Nafisah Graham-Brown
Thesis Chapters by Nafisah Graham-Brown
Thesis and Dissertations by Nafisah Graham-Brown
Migrant women settling in the UK face multiple barriers to integration. This qualitative study explored the experiences of six newly arrived migrant women who attended community ESOL classes (English for Speakers of Other Languages), focusing on the women’s social interactions in English, the places in which social interactions took place and their sense of belonging. Belonging is defined as feeling at ease with oneself and one’s surroundings (Miller, 2003). Data was gathered over one and a half years, using narrative interviews and oral diaries, and analysed using thematic and classic content analysis methods. The study concluded that women’s social interactions took place in four main spheres: local community, public services, work and home. Data demonstrated that social interactions in English affected women’s feelings of belonging from four aspects: material, relational, cultural and temporal. Findings indicated that social interactions supported women to build trust in people who were different to them and to learn cultural knowledge, practices and acceptable behaviours not formally taught in their ESOL sessions, which supported participants to gain access and to feel at ease in unfamiliar spheres.
This study will help teachers to recognise the contribution of social interactions to their students’ language development and integration; policy-makers to plan for future ESOL and integration programme development and funding; and assist organisations in designing more effective community ESOL programmes. Recommendations include for practitioners to plan for activities to support social interactions outside the classroom, to consider the importance of digital skills in enabling ESOL learners to participate in online social interactions, and a more joined-up approach with public service organisations to support staff in those roles to understand how to best support migrant clients who are learning English.
Papers by Nafisah Graham-Brown
I recently presented my research to IATEFL ESOL SIG members, who had questions about applicability of belonging in our classrooms. Through this article I would like to start a conversation about how ESOL practitioners and providers can foster a sense of belonging in our classrooms, and possible implications for future research and practice.
while designing a training session for ESOL teachers. Graham-Brown imparts her planning strategies for the training session, which is rooted in a UK ESOL context and was developed against the backdrop of the
Black Lives Matter movement. She reveals how she adapted a framework to support ESOL teachers to develop inclusive materials, and help learners to identify intersectional exclusion. The helpful scripts she
includes not only identify challenging themes for ESOL teachers, but also offer much-needed guidance and support.
In September 2020 I was asked to deliver a session called 'Decolonising the Curriculum' to trainee teachers preparing to teach adults in colleges, as part of their postgraduate teacher training programme. At that time, discussions of 'decolonising the curriculum' had become more prominent in the UK, responding to both the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement against racial injustice in America after the murder of George Floyd, and the UK national context of the experiences of people from Black and minoritized backgrounds. Conferences featured sessions discussing the lack of representation of diverse people in education curricula and the issue with accounts of historical events. This included questioning the use of language in presentations of national and world events 1. UK-based calls to 'decolonise the curriculum' had originated in student bodies of national universities, where students and academics had identified problematic representations of historical figures and events, and use of reference books and materials created by authors of white male backgrounds (Charles, 2019). A definition from Keele University is that decolonising is about rethinking, reframing and reconstructing the current curriculum in order to make it better, and more inclusive. It is about expanding our notions of good literature so it doesn't always elevate one voice, one experience, and one way of being in the world. It is about considering how different frameworks, traditions and knowledge projects can inform each other, how multiple voices can be heard, and how new perspectives emerge from mutual learning. (Keele University, n.d.).
Migrant women settling in the UK face multiple barriers to integration. This qualitative study explored the experiences of six newly arrived migrant women who attended community ESOL classes (English for Speakers of Other Languages), focusing on the women’s social interactions in English, the places in which social interactions took place and their sense of belonging. Belonging is defined as feeling at ease with oneself and one’s surroundings (Miller, 2003). Data was gathered over one and a half years, using narrative interviews and oral diaries, and analysed using thematic and classic content analysis methods. The study concluded that women’s social interactions took place in four main spheres: local community, public services, work and home. Data demonstrated that social interactions in English affected women’s feelings of belonging from four aspects: material, relational, cultural and temporal. Findings indicated that social interactions supported women to build trust in people who were different to them and to learn cultural knowledge, practices and acceptable behaviours not formally taught in their ESOL sessions, which supported participants to gain access and to feel at ease in unfamiliar spheres.
This study will help teachers to recognise the contribution of social interactions to their students’ language development and integration; policy-makers to plan for future ESOL and integration programme development and funding; and assist organisations in designing more effective community ESOL programmes. Recommendations include for practitioners to plan for activities to support social interactions outside the classroom, to consider the importance of digital skills in enabling ESOL learners to participate in online social interactions, and a more joined-up approach with public service organisations to support staff in those roles to understand how to best support migrant clients who are learning English.
I recently presented my research to IATEFL ESOL SIG members, who had questions about applicability of belonging in our classrooms. Through this article I would like to start a conversation about how ESOL practitioners and providers can foster a sense of belonging in our classrooms, and possible implications for future research and practice.
while designing a training session for ESOL teachers. Graham-Brown imparts her planning strategies for the training session, which is rooted in a UK ESOL context and was developed against the backdrop of the
Black Lives Matter movement. She reveals how she adapted a framework to support ESOL teachers to develop inclusive materials, and help learners to identify intersectional exclusion. The helpful scripts she
includes not only identify challenging themes for ESOL teachers, but also offer much-needed guidance and support.
In September 2020 I was asked to deliver a session called 'Decolonising the Curriculum' to trainee teachers preparing to teach adults in colleges, as part of their postgraduate teacher training programme. At that time, discussions of 'decolonising the curriculum' had become more prominent in the UK, responding to both the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement against racial injustice in America after the murder of George Floyd, and the UK national context of the experiences of people from Black and minoritized backgrounds. Conferences featured sessions discussing the lack of representation of diverse people in education curricula and the issue with accounts of historical events. This included questioning the use of language in presentations of national and world events 1. UK-based calls to 'decolonise the curriculum' had originated in student bodies of national universities, where students and academics had identified problematic representations of historical figures and events, and use of reference books and materials created by authors of white male backgrounds (Charles, 2019). A definition from Keele University is that decolonising is about rethinking, reframing and reconstructing the current curriculum in order to make it better, and more inclusive. It is about expanding our notions of good literature so it doesn't always elevate one voice, one experience, and one way of being in the world. It is about considering how different frameworks, traditions and knowledge projects can inform each other, how multiple voices can be heard, and how new perspectives emerge from mutual learning. (Keele University, n.d.).