Qatar TESOL

Jean Brewster

With a degree in Linguistics Jean Brewster worked as a primary teacher in 2 multilingual schools in London, gaining an RSA Diploma in Teaching English Across the Curriculum in Multilingual Schools. She  subsequently moved into higher education at Ealing College, London, becoming the Course Leader for this course and  also Assessor and Chief Examiner for the national scheme. Other experience  included leading specialist projects for primary teachers / trainers from Colombia, Namibia, Poland and South Africa.  

From 1987 Jean Brewster has taught on five Masters level courses including the first Young Learners option on a UK MA in ELT (with John Clegg) and an MA course for EAL teachers in the UK. While working at Nottingham University,  she co-created two MAs: Professional Development in ELT for primary and secondary teachers and in 2003 the first UK MA on Teaching Subjects through a Foreign language.

Jean Brewster‘s  research interests include interactional strategies in task-based learning across the primary curriculum (M.Phil from Birmingham University) and the implications for teacher training of cross-curricular ELT at primary and secondary level (PhD from Nottingham University). This research has led to various publications including books and articles on task-based learning, cross-curricular ELT and the implications of these for teacher training. She is the  co-author of two editions of The Primary English Teachers’ Guide  and The Storytelling Handbook; the former has been translated into French and Japanese with a Chinese version underway, while the second book was the first cross-curricular approach to using stories in primary ELT.  

She has led several teams on the production of training materials for primary teachers, including a primary education development project in Central America, a professional development project for ELT teachers in Taiwan and most recently the SEC/British Council initiative for teaching Maths and Science through English in Qatar.

Following the increased interest in cross-curricular work  in Europe Jean Brewster worked on courses and consultancies in CLIL (content and language integrated learning) in Austria and Switzerland and led the Materials Development option on the Nottingham University CLIL MA .  In 2004, after transferring from Nottingham University to the Hong Kong Institute of Education, she created cross-curricular courses for primary and secondary ELT teachers  and was Team Leader for an in-service  course on teaching school subjects through English for secondary subject teachers. She is currently part of the team training maths and science teachers in Doha.

She has spoken at many conferences on ELT and CLIL, including Austria, Australia, China, France, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Myanmar, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Vietnam, the UK and the USA. Her consultancies for the British Council include Brunei, France, India, Vietnam and Taiwan.

Jacqueline Grennon Brooks is a professor of curriculum and teaching at Hofstra University in New York. Her current research involves a multilingual school district in which she has created a School-Within-a-School, a model in which teachers transform classrooms into problem-based learning environments and study the effect of their teaching on student achievement in language and math. Dr. Grennon Brooks also serves as president of the Children’s Maritime Museum in Port Jefferson, NY, a learning center in which families explore the needs and the beauty of their coastal environment through investigations of real-life science and engineering problems.

Jacqueline holds an Ed.D. from Teacher’s College, Columbia University, where she researched the development of constructivist teaching practices; an M.A. in Developmental Psychology from Teacher’s College, Columbia University, where she studied infant/parent relationships; an M.S. in Urban and Policy Sciences from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, through which she analyzed mathematical models at the Congressional Budget Office; and a B.A. in Education from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where she learned just how complex teaching really is!

Formerly, she has taught at the American Community School in Athens, Greece, and has presented at international conferences in the US, Japan and Brazil.

Click here to download a copy of Jacqueline Grennon Brooks' abstract.