"You just sat there." A collaborative research project exploring the identities and agency of bilingual learners within an English speaking secondary school.

This study set out to ensure that the experiences of secondary school students who speak more than one language were listened to and valued. As a monolingual teacher, I felt that my own analysis of such students’ lived lives would be lacking. Therefore this study was undertaken in collaboration with eleven secondary school students. The students all speak more than one language fluently.
Over the years there has been a paradigm shift in qualitative research methods. Education researchers have moved away from the positivist archetype to more pragmatic, participatory models. Such methods view the researched not as subject but as participant. In this study, eleven teenage researchers were trained in participatory data collection methods, ethics and data analysis. The research team developed their own questions, collected the data themselves and analysed that data collaboratively thus going some way to ensuring the integrity of the findings.
The project therefore was twofold. The student researchers considered the identities of bilingual learners within school and the learners’ understandings of and approaches to being bilingual. The second part of the project deals with collaboration. I consider whether or not such collaborations are able to deconstruct entrenched power inequalities and empower bilingual learners.