Abstract: In this seminar, Drs Ian Collen and Jayne Duff discuss their research on Language Trends; an annual suite of surveys conducted across the UK designed to gather information on school and college based language teaching and learning. With a twenty year history to trace, they discuss the origins and purposes of Language Trends and its evolution from an England-only survey to the mixed methods research it is today, covering each jurisdiction in the UK. In addition to providing a summary of recent findings across four nations, Drs Collen and Duff discuss the challenges and opportunities of navigating the high-stakes nature of this work and the collaboration required with schools, advisory groups, policy-makers, and media.

 
Speaker bio: Dr Ian Collen is Reader (Education) in Modern Languages Education (PGCE) at Queen's University Belfast with research interests in all aspects of Modern Languages Education in instructed classroom settings. He is currently Principal Investigator on the Language Trends series, funded by British Council, which seeks to longitudinally chart the health of language teaching in schools in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. He has published in peer-reviewed journals and spoken at numerous international conferences.

Speaker bio: Dr Jayne Duff is a Research Fellow in the School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work. She is assisting with research on the British Council's Language Trends for England, Northern Ireland and Wales. Her research interests focus on language education at primary and post-primary level and young peoples' attitudes to languages. Previously, Jayne's research focused on representations of women in nineteenth-century French literature. Jayne is a committee member of the ECA Special Interest Group within UCML and she advocates on behalf of PhD students and ECRs in the broad field of languages, linguistics and languages education as the NI representative.