On this module we consider a whole host of linguistic attitudes and language ideologies, and although we look at language attitudes across the whole of society, we spend some time focusing on language attitudes in schools. I enjoy sharing my research work on teachers’ discourses about multilingualism as part of this. My doctoral thesis, now published in four peer-reviewed journal papers to date, reported on a qualitative study of interviews with teachers and I discovered how embedded a monolingual mindset was in the schools I visited, even when classroom practices seemed to be really tolerant to languages beyond English. Teachers still seemed to want to have control over pupils’ languages and thought that responsibility for keeping children’s home languages going fell only on parents (or the children themselves). On this module, we find discussing the issues that come out of this research in class every year a really thought-provoking experience!
Clare Cunningham
You can find my official university webpage here.
