Dr Yecid Ortega is currently working on a research project that involves mapping the languages and cultures of the city. Using sound walking methodologies, he has recorded sounds, taken videos and photos to capture and amplify the diversity of the spaces we inhabit. The main goals of his project are 1) to theorize how the concepts of languages and cultures intersect and synergically co-exist, and 2) to build a sense of awareness of the vibrant cultures and languages thus creating a welcoming feeling of belonging in our communities. More details about this project.

The number of linguistically and culturally diverse students has been increasing steadily across UK, Ireland and EU. The shifting demographics mandate a closer look at the teaching  and teacher education practices across grade levels. Dr. Sultan Turkan is currently involved in three projects that ultimately aim to enhance understandings and practices in linguistically and culturally responsive teaching.

Dr. Turkan leads a project funded by the Standing Conference on Teacher Education, North and South (SCoTENS). The project aims to provide the preservice teachers the opportunity to engage English as an additional Language learners (EALs) in scientific classroom discussions by utilizing a virtual simulated teacher learning environment. In collaboration with colleagues from Queen’s SSESW and University College Dublin, we are examining the extent to which the simulated environment is useful and practical for teacher educators to adopt in their science teaching modules when teaching teacher candidates how to lead scientific classroom discussions with EALs. On a parallel line of inquiry into science classrooms, Turkan is simultaneously collaborating on a project that examines middle school EALs’ translanguaging practices in scientific modelling.

Dr Aisling O'Boyle is part of an innovative research project titled "Gender-ing in ELT: International perspectives, practices, policies" which is examining the contribution of English language education to United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 5 on gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls. The project takes place in 10 ODA countries (Bangladesh, Botswana, Brazil, China, Colombia, Indonesia, Morocco, Philippines, Ukraine and Vietnam), representing different geographical continents, ODA levels, language policies, and gender inclusion levels. Through the participation of key school stakeholders (pupils and parents, school leaders and teachers, university students and lecturers), the research aims to examine their perspectives and practices, raise their awareness of gender matters and foster their context-sensitive reflections on gender equality in ELT in these ODA countries.

Founding members, Ian Collen and Centre Director, Aisling O’Boyle are part of a unique research project investigating the trends in languages provision in the FE sector over the past 20 years in the UK. Funded by the British Academy, the project takes a partnership approach to the collation and assessment of evidence on languages provision (other than English) in Further Education (FE) in the UK. 

Indigenous languages are critically important to the health and wealth of human relations with the social and natural world. The vitality of Indigenous languages has been linked to phenomena such as academic achievement, public health outcomes, and ecological diversity. Dr Mel Engman has been involved in an ongoing Indigenous language maintenance and reclamation for many years. Since 2016, Dr Engman has been part of a research team of multilingual Indigenous scholars from North America to examine what happens when an Indigenous language that has been reclaimed in schools (i.e., Ojibwemowin) returns to the land for intergenerational use.

Dr Ian Collen is currently Principal Investigator on Language Trends England, Northern Ireland, and Wales. Language Trends England is a large-scale three year longitudinal study of the health of languages teaching in primary and secondary schools, funded by the British Council. Ian’s research assesses the impact of policy measures in relation to languages, as well as analysing strengths and weaknesses based both on quantitative evidence and on views expressed by teachers.

Building on previous work Academics Writing, Dr Ibrar Bhatt has completed a project examining the writing and knowledge creation practices of academics at Indonesian universities. 

The findings of this research form the basis of a new writing mentoring scheme for academics at Universitas Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa in Indonesia. Both the research and the new scheme, which commences in April 2021, focus on how knowledge is produced and disseminated through writing practices and how Indonesian academics, as multilingual academics in the global south, can respond to new requirements on their research productivity.

Dr Aisling O’Boyle (PI) has undertaken a review and case studies of the use of corpus linguistics in ELT. In the review she points out how the use of CL in ELT has the potential to contribute to a decentring agenda for ELT. The project team conducted practitioner interviews in Asia, Europe and South America, and developed a series of guides for learners, teachers, and teacher educators.

Supporting learners, teachers and teacher educators to improve their awareness of how language works is a key goal in the field of English Language Teaching (ELT) worldwide. From everyday conversations, to business meetings and academic lectures, access to all kinds of digital language data is now possible using a corpus. A corpus is a digital collection of textual examples created for the purposes of exploring how language is used (Sinclair, 2004). The millions of words and phrases in a corpus can be searched and retrieved instantly, using similar technical skills as those required by standard search engines. 

Working in collaboration with a partner organization, Dr Aisling O’Boyle is investigating the support for social integration and language education of refugee and asylum-seekers in Northern Ireland using interview data from hard-to-reach groups/persons in positions of vulnerability. The community sector in NI has long provided free and non-formal language classes to meet the socially embedded communicative needs of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers (DfC, 2019; McNulty, 2019; Parizzia and McKeown, 2020). Having worked for decades to create ‘safe spaces’ where people in situations of vulnerability can have their social and educational needs met, community groups and volunteers have had to close and/or restrict access to such spaces due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This has broken the vital links to social and educational programmes and access to informal social interaction which these spaces had been providing for people in situations of vulnerability and their families. Whilst formal learning may adapt somewhat readily to digital alternatives, non-formal online substitutions are not necessarily easy. 

Dr Ibrar Bhatt is Principal Investigator on a Research Fellowship funded by the Leverhulme Trust. This Research Fellowship examines how Sino-Muslim religious, cultural and historical knowledge is produced and maintained through everyday and community literacy practices. The study is situated within the field of Literacy Studies and utilises interpretive approaches in linguistic ethnography to examine writing and reading as primarily a social and cultural practice. The study’s focus is on the everyday and ‘local’ literacies of modern Sino-Muslims and, therefore, brings together two areas of research for the first time: Literacy Studies and Hui Studies. Read more here: https://sinomuslimliteracies.wordpress.com [and in Chinese here: https://sinomuslimliteracies.wordpress.com/category/中文/]

Funded by the A S Hornby Trust this project investigates the use of bilingual dictionaries and associated digital lexicographic resources by refugee families in NI. Collecting survey and family interview data, Dr Aisling O’Boyle investigates how, as families move into local communities, they use bilingual dictionaries and associated digital lexicographic resources. Understanding their preferences, practices and problems of dictionary use will inform approaches to learner and teacher training in the use of a bilingual dictionary. 

Dr Sin Wang Chong and the research team of Phillip Dawson, Talia Isaacs, Hayo Reinders, Cecilia Chan, Kelvin Tan, Edd Pitt, Wei Wei, Jessica To, James Wood and Amy Wong are carrying out this rapid review of Digital Literacies in Higher Education.

Building on the notions of student and teacher feedback literacy (Carless & Boud, 2019; Carless & Winstone, 2020), technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) (Mishra & Keohler, 2006), and digital literacies (Martin & Grudziecki, 2006), digital feedback literacy refers to students’ capacities to engage with assessment feedback delivered via the medium of digital technologies and teachers’ capacities to design technology-mediated assessment feedback which facilitates students’ engagement. Three domains of digital feedback literacy will be examined: the practice domain, the theory domain, and the philosophy domain (DeLuca & Klinger, 2010).

The impetus for this review by Dr Sin Wang Chong and colleagues Yulu Chen, Tin Jun Lin, is to consider whether research synthesis guidelines from other fields are suitable for higher education and to initiate a methodological dialogue on doing research synthesis by providing higher education researchers with an evidence-based, field-specific methodological framework. Adhering to the exploratory nature of this study, this paper reports on a scoping review which analyses two types of research synthesis (systematic reviews and scoping reviews) published in 16 top-tiered international journals in higher education (n=160). Through qualitative research synthesis using thematic analysis, a bottom-up methodological framework comprising six stages and 20 steps is developed. A handy checklist for conducting and evaluating systematic and scoping reviews in higher education is created.

Recently, there has been a growing number of Language MOOCs being developed around the world. Nevertheless, there is a dearth of research on learners’ perceptions of Language MOOCs and their efficacy, and an absence of a research-informed design framework to guide the development of such MOOCs. The shift in language learning and teaching online and the increasing reliance on online self-study language learning resources during the pandemic has provided the impetus for analysing features of existing Language MOOCs. Employing the model of web-based design for learning by Hall, Watkins, and Eller (2013), features of 100 Language MOOCs on two most popular MOOC platforms, edX and Coursera, are analysed with reference to seven components: directionality, usability, consistency, interactivity, multimodality, adaptability, and accountability. Preliminary findings of this analysis will be presented and a framework which aims to guide the development of Language MOOCs will be proposed. An example of Language MOOC in progress which utilises the design framework will be shared by the research team which includes Dr Sin Wang Chong.

Research on written corrective feedback (WCF) has received sustained interest in the field of second language acquisition and language education. This viewpoint article extends the theoretical discussion on WCF research by introducing the notions of “feedback literacy” and “feedback ecology” informed by ecological systems theory, actor-network theory, and complexity theories. In this research, Dr Sin Wang Chong first reviews three strands of WCF research. Then, he argues for the need to shift our focus of investigation from feedback information (focusing on effect), to feedback process (focusing on perception), to feedback ecology (focusing on engagement and influences on engagement). Putting forward a “feedback ecology” conceptual framework, Dr Sin Wang Chong suggests three research tasks for future WCF studies, including examining “retold stories”, “reflective stories”, and “meta-stories” within feedback ecologies.

Dr Sin Wang Chong is Principal Investigator on the project “Primer on Qualitative Research Synthesis in TESOL” with Co-I: Dr Luke Plonsky. Secondary research in the form of literature reviews facilitates consolidation and transfer of knowledge. In the field of TESOL, the majority of secondary research is conducted in the form of narrative reviews, which rely on the author’s selection and interpretation of primary studies and findings. Systematic reviews, which can be broadly categorized into meta-analysis (focusing on quantitative data) and qualitative research synthesis (focusing on qualitative data), are gaining popularity (see Plonsky, 2017) but are still less common. In particular, qualitative data collected from language classrooms, which are often criticized because of their lack of generalizability, are seldom synthesized in a systematic fashion. Against this backdrop, the research team attempt to make a case for conducting qualitative research synthesis in the field of TESOL. Second, we will provide a methodological framework and an example of how qualitative research synthesis can be conducted. We close with recommendations to promote qualitative research synthesis in the field of TESOL.  

Dr Caroline Linse is leading on an entrepreneurial business venture supported by QUB and consists of fun activities and other web-based resources called Handy-Crafts.  Handy-Crafts is an entrepreneurial business venture supported by QUB and will consists of PDF activities to foster plurilingualism and making building activities experiences away from the computer screen. The overall experience being conducted in a ‘handy language’.