The Politics of Language Teaching and Learning: Perspectives from Higher Education in the UK and Global Consequences

This volume examines the politics of language teaching and learning, providing a critical appraisal of the institutional, political and professional issues around language teaching and learning. It specifically focuses on how these issues have shaped recent provision at universities, using the UK as a case study, revealing consequences relevant for language departments around the world. By exploring the interface between language policies and strategies and the ways in which these impact the experiences of learning and teaching, this book highlights the complexities at play in language education at tertiary level.

Like all the volumes in the Language Acts and Worldmaking series, the overall aim is two-fold: to challenge widely-held views about language learning as a neutral instrument of globalization and to innovate and transform language research, teaching and learning, together with Modern Languages as an academic discipline, by foregrounding its unique form of cognition and critical engagement.

Specific aims are to:
- propose new ways of bridging the gaps between those who teach and research languages and those who learn and use them in everyday contexts from the professional to the personal
- put research into the hands of wider audiences
- share a philosophy, policy and practice of language teaching and learning which turns research into action
- provide the research, experience and data to enable informed debates on current issues and attitudes in language learning, teaching and research
- share knowledge across and within all levels and experiences of language learning and teaching
- showcase exciting new work that derives from different types of community activity and is of practical relevance to its audiences
- disseminate new research in languages that engages with diverse communities of language practitioners.

Collectively authored as Language Acts and Worldmaking project team, this volume was co-edited by Mara Fuertes Gutiérrez and Inma Álvarez.

Catherine Boyle is Professor of Latin American Cultural Studies at King’s College London where she is also the Director of the Centre for Language Acts and Worldmaking in King’s Arts and Humanities Research Institute. Her re­search and practice is based in connections between cultural history and translation and on methodologies for theatre translation in research and performance, and she was Principal Investigator for the Language Acts and Worldmaking research project.

Debra Kelly is Professor Emerita in Modern Languages, School of Humanities, University of Westminster, London. In 2005 she received the award of Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques from the French Government in recognition of her services to French language, literature and culture. She has published widely in French and Francophone literary and cultural studies. Her research now focuses on the historical and contemporary French and Francophone communities in London, and she recently authored Fishes with Funny French Names: The French Restaurant in London from the 19th to the 21stCentury (2021). Since 2008, she has been Co-Director of Routes into Languages London, a program which supports and encourages language learning from primary through to higher education with a focus on access and widening participation. She is also Visiting Senior Research Fellow at King’s College London working with the Centre for Language Acts and Worldmaking in King’s Art and Humanities Research Institute and co-leads the research strand ’Language Transitions’ with Ana de Medeiros.

Ana de Medeiros is Director of the Modern Language Centre at King’s College London. In 2017 she was elected Vice-Chair of the UK Association of University Language Communities (AULC). Ana co-leads the research strand ’Language Transitions’ with Debra Kelly as a member of the Centre for Language Acts and Worldmaking at King’s College London. In 2020 she was invited to join the scientific board of the Language Learning in Higher Education Journal. Throughout her academic career she has studied the life writing of women writers. She has published in English, French and Portuguese on, Francophone and Lusophone literary and cultural studies, focusing primarily on questions of identity in the work of a number of authors including Marguerite Yourcenar, Assia Djebar Amélie Nothomb and Marie Nimier.