Language lives is a project initiated by Mike Byram, John Daniels and Alan Dobson¹. The project comprises videoed conversations with language education specialists with backgrounds in teaching and academia who have been active on the national and/or international scene in recent decades as campaigners/advocates of policy, shapers of policy, researchers or other commentators on changes in languages policy and provision and their implications.
Modern foreign languages in the UK have experienced changing fortunes over the last thirty or forty years with the uncertainty of recent decades contrasting with the optimism of the 1990s and the early years of the Millennium. It is important to understand what caused this shift and to see current and future developments in a historical perspective. The project seeks to capture through conversations lasting about an hour the views of people who were ‘there’. The first four interviewees are Lid King, Ros Mitchell, Terry Lamb and Steven Fawkes
The conversations will be of interest to teachers, teacher trainers, trainee teachers or researchers, academics, policy-makers, other stakeholders, as well as observers abroad of the UK languages education scene.
Four broad questions are put to each interviewee. They are invited to talk about how/why they became interested in languages and subsequently became a ‘languages professional’; what they consider to have been significant moments in language teaching during their professional life; their views about language teaching in the UK over recent decades; and their experience of language education abroad and what it means for them personally and for their views on language teaching. At the end of the conversation, they are asked whether there is anything else they ought to have been asked.
The demise of the National Strategy for Languages and CILT, not to mention LEAs, are seen by the people interviewed so far as retrograde steps whose impact has had far-reaching consequences, not least in terms of support for teachers, networking, sharing ideas and resources nationally and keeping our subject high on the national agenda.
You can read more about the project on the Cultnet website.
There are now five videoed conversations (with transcripts) available on YouTube:
Language lives
¹ Mike Byram is a Professor Emeritus of the School of Education, Durham University and worked on aspects of language education there and at the Council of Europe for several decades. John Daniels a retired Headteacher and teacher of French at a Middle School in Northumberland, and a researcher on the history of language teaching. Alan Dobson was formerly the senior inspector (HMI) for languages in Her Majesty’s Inspectorate (England) and the UK representative on Council of Europe and European Union language policy groups. In recent years he has been active as an independent evaluator of bilingual education projects in Spain and Latin America.