Tuesday, 3rd March (Cambridge)

Posted on March 3, 2026 by roycross

1. Green Action ELT’s next event, Backwards into the future? How sustainable is AI in ELT?, is at 14:00 UK time this coming Friday,  6th March: more info and registration here https://green-action-elt.uk/events/

The rise of Large Language Models is transforming education at an unprecedented pace – but are we ready? Is using AI with our learners always ethical? Is it always pedagogically sound? Should we feel compelled to integrate it into our classrooms – or pause to question its role? And if we do choose to use it, what critical questions must guide our decisions? This webinar invites educators to step back and examine the bigger picture. Beyond immediate classroom applications, how do we future-proof ourselves professionally and support our learners not only academically, but developmentally, in an age of generative AI? The genie is out of the bottle – but have we opened Pandora’s box?

2. Ian McKellen played the part of L S Lowry in a recent BBC documentary, L S Lowry: The Unheard Tapes, based on the tape recordings of a very long interview, never written up, conducted with Lowry over many years by Angela Barratt. I’m not sure the film can be watched outside the UK, for rights reasons, but a skilled user of a VPN might manage to watch? https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002rxvm

The short BBC film from the time, included in this piece for the ‘Culture’ section of the BBC website  by Greg McKevitt, is also good (and definitely available) https://www.bbc.co.uk/culture/article/20260220-the-darkness-behind-british-artist-ls-lowrys-famous-city-scenes

3. And while I was checking that Lowry URL, I came across this piece by McKevitt, ‘Catastrophe may overwhelm us all’: How Winston Churchill’s ‘Iron Curtain’ speech launched the Cold War 80 years ago https://www.bbc.co.uk/culture/article/20260226-the-churchill-speech-that-launched-the-cold-war

In 1946, less than a year after the end of World War Two, Britain’s wartime leader sounded an urgent warning about the Soviet threat to the West. “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” In a single sentence, Winston Churchill defined the division between two opposing ways of life: on one side, the capitalist West, on the other side, the communist East. In his speech on 5 March 1946, urging the US to look outwards and resist returning to isolationism, Churchill drew a metaphorical dividing line through Europe, from Germany’s border with northwest Poland to Italy’s border with the part of Yugoslavia that is now Slovenia. It captured a moment suspended between post-war euphoria and the unsettling sense that fresh dangers could lie ahead.

Churchill developed a plan, never implemented, to attack the Soviet Union called Operation Unthinkable; Donald Trump’s ‘plan’ to attack Iran is called Epic Fury.

4. And that last item on Churchill provides the segue to this wonderful radio play, which I’m confident can be listened to outside the UK, Churchill’s Bust, which makes reference to that ‘Iron Curtain’ speech https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002d8v5

When Donald Trump puts the bust of Churchill back in The Oval Office, after several years absence, Winston becomes increasingly disturbed at what he is witnessing. Jon Culshaw and Daniel Weyman star in David Morley’s satirical take on recent events.

5. And, finally and apocalyptically, The Alister Heath Headline Generator from the surprisingly, disarmingly self-aware Daily Telegraph https://stirring-fox-7e1fab.netlify.app/ I prompted the generator with ‘English language teaching’ and it produced the following headline, How English language teaching became the ultimate symbol of Britain’s humiliating global irrelevance.

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Thursday, 26th February (Cambridge)

Posted on February 26, 2026 by roycross

1. The International Booker Prize is perhaps a little more genuinely international nowadays, but it still has some way to go, with nine of the thirteen books on this year’s longlist from Europe: https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/features/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-international-booker-prize-2026-longlist

Cross quibbles apart, it’s an interesting list!

2. Here’s a gift article from The New York Times by Alex Marshall, How a New Yorker Put Poetry on the London Underground https://tinyurl.com/bpavm5k

One evening about 40 years ago, Judith Chernaik was taking part in a reading of “As You Like It” when she had a flash of inspiration that would go on to improve the lives of millions of harried commuters. In Shakespeare’s comedy, the lovesick Orlando hangs odes to a woman called Rosalind onto trees in the forest of Arden. Orlando’s verse is deliberately bad. “From the east to western Ind / No jewel is like Rosalind,” starts one. Still, that scene gave Chernaik a thought: Why not put poems in the Underground, London’s busy subway system? Chernaik, an expatriate New Yorker, said in a recent interview that she couldn’t quite explain the thought. The London subway, after all, “is so different from a pastoral scene.”

3. I do so hope the science that underpins this Guardian article by Andrew Gregory, Reading and writing can lower dementia risk by almost 40%, study suggests, is sound! https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/feb/11/reading-writing-lower-dementia-risk-study-finds

Sounder, possibly, than The Guardian’s choice of illustration?

4. Another thoughtful piece on teaching and learning from Substack, this one by Joel Kenyon: Stand Still, Narrate and Stop: Small Classroom Changes with Big Impacts https://joel120193.substack.com/p/stand-still-narrate-and-stop-small

I find myself returning to my PGCE years often. They were a trial by fire. A mix of the inspiring and the outright absurd. For example, I was once given a stopwatch in a lesson and was told that I was not allowed to talk for more than 2 minutes. The less time I spoke for, the better. I was told to make lessons interactive, so I purchased (with my own money), lentils, dried peas, and rice. I gave students masks of different bird masks along with tweezers, forceps, or nothing at all. Once, during feedback, I was told the pupils were asking too many questions. The advice was then to give the pupils a plastic coin, and this was the only question they were allowed to ask. All of this was terrible advice.

5. And, finally and magnificently, The Abbey Library of St Gallen https://www.bbc.co.uk/travel/article/20260202-inside-switzerlands-extraordinary-medieval-library

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Tuesday, 24th February (Cambridge)

Posted on February 24, 2026 by roycross

1. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine entered its fifth year today. It seems that very few people believed that Putin was going to invade Ukraine, not even Volodymyr Zelenskyy https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2026/feb/20/a-war-foretold-cia-mi6-putin-ukraine-plans-russia

(This) is the story of a spectacular intelligence success, but also one of several intelligence failures. First, for the CIA and MI6, who got the invasion scenario right but failed to accurately predict the outcome, assuming a swift Russian takeover was a foregone conclusion. More profoundly, for European services, who refused to believe a full-scale war in Europe was possible in the 21st century. They remembered the dubious intelligence case presented to justify the invasion of Iraq two decades previously and were wary of trusting the Americans on what seemed like a fantastical prediction.

2. The first of two thoughtful pieces on teaching and learning gleaned from Substack, this first one by Michael McCreary on the Engaged Learning Collective blog, A practical guide to modern teaching evaluation https://engagedlearningcollective.substack.com/p/a-practical-guide-to-modern-teaching-evaluation

A new consensus is beginning to emerge on how to evaluate college teaching. Research has consistently shown that traditional methods, which rely heavily on student evaluations of teaching, do not accurately measure teaching effectiveness. An AAUP survey of 9,314 faculty found that less than half believed in the validity of student evaluations, and an influential 2020 paper found that even validated survey instruments can lead to unfair outcomes. And yet, the lack of a widely accepted alternative has left many higher ed institutions assessing instruction in ways that are both deeply unpopular and methodologically unsound.

3. The second Substack piece comes from Barbara Oakley, The Teaching Method That Can’t Fail https://barbaraoakley.substack.com/p/the-teaching-method-that-cant-fail

There’s something strange going on in education. We have more research than ever on how the brain actually learns. And yet, in country after country, the teaching methods being promoted are the ones that research says work least well for beginners. How is that possible?

4. A good twenty-minute listen from Engelsberg Ideas, When Edo became Tokyo by Christopher Harding https://audioboom.com/posts/8862642-when-edo-became-tokyo You can read the piece if you’d prefer here https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/when-edo-became-tokyo/

A first wave of excitable western tourists began pouring into Japan 150 years ago. Among them was the English explorer Isabella Bird, who, in the late 1870s, journeyed through a country going through a profound and fascinating period of change. Nowhere was it more pronounced than in a city torn between a glorious past and an uncertain future. It even had two names, depending on whether a person preferred to look backwards or forwards. The old name was Edo; the new one, ‘Tokyo’: ‘Eastern Capital’. Following a brief and chaotic civil war in 1868-9, a new generation of modernising leaders had thrown open Japan’s doors to the world, and the country had embarked upon one of history’s most ambitious processes of national renewal.

5. And, finally, a little more Thai cooking, 6 Salty Sauces in Thai Cooking  https://hot-thai-kitchen.com/salty-sauces/

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Thursday, 19th February (Cambridge)

Posted on February 19, 2026 by roycross

1. To start us off today, a recent post by Daisy Christodoulou on her blog, No More Marking, Does a university education help you earn more? Maybe, but not in the way that you think https://substack.nomoremarking.com/p/does-a-university-education-help

Over the last couple of weeks in the UK, there’s been a lot of controversy about student loans. Graduates have been posting their student loan balance statements on social media showing some punitive interest rates. That has spilled over into a wider debate about the economic value of university itself. If it is so expensive, is it worth it economically?

2. Here’s the latest Corruption Perceptions Index from Transparency International https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2025 PDF below.

The CPI ranks 182 countries and territories worldwide by their perceived levels of public sector corruption. The results are given on a scale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean). While 31 countries have significantly reduced their corruption levels since 2012, the rest are failing to tackle the problem – they have stayed stagnant or got worse during the same period. The global average has fallen to a new low of 42, while more than two-thirds of countries score below 50. And people are paying the price, as corruption leads to under-funded hospitals, unbuilt flood defences and blights the hopes and dreams of young people.

Corruption Perceptions Index 2025Download

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3. This NATESOL webinar with Michelle Worgan at 16:00 UK time next Thursday, 26th February, is worth attending for the title alone, Teaching the Quiet Ones. More info and registration here https://www.natesol.org/event-details/teaching-the-quiet-ones-michelle-worgan

Introverted and shy learners often struggle in communicative classrooms, where extroverted norms dominate. Without intentional support, these students may disengage, losing confidence in their language-learning abilities. This session explores how educators can redefine connections with quieter learners by adapting classroom dynamics to be more inclusive. After identifying the barriers our quieter students may face, we’ll explore practical strategies for ensuring they are not just included but are able to thrive in the young (and not so young) learner classroom.

Are you listening, Tony Picot? You still haven’t let me have your postal address so I can send you your Iqbal Ahmed book raffle prize!

4. Two pieces for Persuasion by Quico Toro:

The Japanese Love Their Prime Minister: This Is Huge https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-japanese-love-their-prime-minister

‘An apolitical nation is genuinely excited about its new leader.’ So were we, weren’t we, many of us?

10 Observations About Tokyo: notes on the world’s most successful failing society https://www.persuasion.community/p/10-observations-about-tokyo

5. And, finally and mouth-wateringly, How to make the perfect chicken massaman from Felicity Cloake https://www.theguardian.com/food/2026/feb/15/perfect-massaman-recipe-felicity-cloake Lots of good links to videos of Thai cooks cooking!

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Tuesday, 17th February (Cambridge)

Posted on February 17, 2026 by roycross

An AI focus for the first three of today’s offerings, possibly a bit doomy and gloomy …

1. You can read or listen to this alarmist (realist?) piece for Fortune by Jake Angelo, Microsoft AI chief gives it 18 months for all white-collar work to be automated by AI

https://fortune.com/2026/02/13/when-will-ai-kill-white-collar-office-jobs-18-months-microsoft-mustafa-suleyman/

For the back half of the 20th century (what Fortune founder Henry Luce called “The American Century”), MBA and law degree programs were a ticket to a great office job and a path to the American Dream. The 21st century is asking the question: What happens when all those office jobs get automated?

2. Here’s the executive summary of a report from the UK Government’s AI Security Institute (AISI) on Frontier AI Trends (‘Frontier’ here has nothing to do with passports and immigration!) https://www.aisi.gov.uk/frontier-ai-trends-report PDF of full report below.

The UK Al Security Institute (AISI) has conducted evaluations of frontier Al systems since November 2023 across domains critical to national security and public safety. This report presents our first public analysis of the trends we’ve observed. It seeks to provide accessible, data-driven insights into the frontier of Al capabilities and promote a shared understanding among governments, industry, and the public. Al capabilities are improving rapidly across all tested domains. Performance in some areas is doubling every eight months, and expert baselines are being surpassed rapidly. In the cyber domain, Al models can now complete apprentice-level tasks 50% of the time on average, compared to just over 10% of the time in early 2024. In 2025, we tested the first model that could successfully complete expert-level tasks typically requiring over 10 years of experience for a human practitioner.

And here’s a post from the AISI blog on AI and the future of work: Measuring AI-driven productivity gains for workplace tasks https://www.aisi.gov.uk/blog/ai-and-the-future-of-work-measuring-ai-driven-productivity-gains-for-workplace-tasks

Frontier AI Trends Report – UK AISI 2025 – compressedDownload

3. Courtesy of Rishi Sunak (who looks an ever better prime minister as time passes) on LinkedIn, The 2026 Stanford Emerging Technology Review from Stanford University, ‘reporting on key technology areas and their policy implications’ https://setr.stanford.edu/ PDFs of a) introduction and summary only; b) the whole (big) thing below; c) Claude’s review of what the report has to say about language learning & teaching and translation. I asked Claude because I couldn’t see very much from a quick skim myself and wanted to be fair.

The Stanford Emerging Technology Review helps America’s public and private sectors better understand transformational technologies so that the United States can seize opportunities, mitigate risks, and ensure its innovation ecosystem continues to thrive. The product of a major new Stanford education initiative, its clear explanation of pivotal tech domains, recent developments within them, and what to look out for in the future makes it an indispensable guide to tomorrow’s world. Indispensable for as long as tomorrow lasts, I guess!

The Stanford Emerging Technology Review 2026 SUMMARYDownload
Stanford Emerging Technology Review 2026Download
Claude’s review of The Stanford Emerging Technology Review 2026Download

4. Three webinars from TeachingEnglish starting at 12:00 UK time this Friday, 20th February, on Teaching for equality: more info and registration here https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/news-and-events/webinars/webinars-teachers/teaching-equality-webinars

Join us on 20 February for three interactive sessions designed to help you promote equality through your English language teaching. Explore practical strategies to bridge the divide in tech-challenged classrooms, overcome barriers in under-resourced settings and equip your learners to succeed, whatever their circumstances.

5. And, finally, some untranslatable Japanese https://www.word-connection.com/blogs/translating-the-untranslatable My favourite? Tsundoku!

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Thursday, 12th February (Cambridge)

Posted on February 12, 2026 by roycross

1. The Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service has a very good reputation for its analysis, especially (and not surprisingly) regarding Russia. Here’s their 2026 report, International Security and Estonia https://raport.valisluureamet.ee/2026/en/ PDFs of both the whole report and the summary only below.

There is, however, no cause for panic. In the Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service’s assessment, Russia has no intention of militarily attacking Estonia or any other NATO member state in the coming year. We are likely to reach a similar assessment next year because Estonia and Europe have taken steps that compel the Kremlin to calculate very carefully what, if anything, it can risk attempting. Even if no such intention exists today, our task is to ensure that this remains the case tomorrow and in the future. Russia’s military reform will enhance the capabilities of its armed forces in the years ahead. To counter this, Estonia and NATO must continue investing in defence. Russia’s calculations of the balance of power must always work to our advantage. It is firm and steady preparedness that truly deters Russia. By maintaining it, we demonstrate to Russia the qualities it fears most – that we are free, resolute and resilient, and that we make our own choices without coercion or pressure from anyone.

International Security & Estonia 2026 foreword and summaryDownload
International Security & Estonia 2026Download

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2. From the BBC via the Free Resources Rijeka correspondent, ‘Hullo, hillo, holla’: The 600-year-old origins of the word ‘hello’ https://www.bbc.co.uk/culture/article/20260113-hello-hiya-aloha-what-our-greetings-reveal

In print, this ubiquitous, friendly greeting has a surprisingly short history. Two centuries ago, on 18 January 1826, “hello” made what is thought to be its earliest recorded appearance on the page, in a Connecticut newspaper called The Norwich Courier. Hidden among the column inches, it was a modest in-ink debut for a word that would go on to greet much of the modern world.

3. Here’s an updated version of the very accessible LinkedIn course, AI Trends, that I first mentioned two months ago; you’ll not be surprised to discover that it’s changed quite a lot in the meantime! https://www.linkedin.com/learning/ai-trends/gemini-in-chrome-ai-assisted-browsing-changes-how-you-work

AI has shifted swiftly from the realm of science fiction to everyday use. But of the multitude of tools and technologies now available, which ones are best suited to your workflows and organization? In this ongoing series, industry experts guide you through the AI products and concepts that are out there – and how to identify what is most likely to benefit your organization.

4. Alexandra Mihai’s latest post on her blog, The Educationalist, addresses Slow learning and has the usual useful list of resources at the end of the piece https://educationalist.substack.com/p/slow-learning

Our lives are so fast paced, flooded with stimuli and requests for immediate input. Should our classrooms also look and feel like that? Is this helping the learning? If we’re honest, we have to agree it’s not. But we’re also often running on autopilot, joining our students (or drawing them?) in a hamster wheel that just keeps turning. So today I want us to contemplate the idea of slow learning. How would this look like? What do we need to put it in practice? How would it benefit our students, and how do we get them in the mindset for it?

5. And, finally, a story from The New York Times about the fruit you either love or hate (and should never mix with whisky, as I once did in Chiang Mai, with dire consequences), the durian, Farmers Made a Fortune on This Fruit. Now It Is Piling Up. https://tinyurl.com/2j8dmeks

Malaysian durian farmers saw immense profits over the last decade as China snapped up their produce. But tastes have shifted.

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Tuesday, 10th February (Cambridge)

Posted on February 10, 2026 by roycross

1. First up today, one of those blog posts that I get the gist of, if not the detail: a persuasive but slightly strange blog post throughout which the author, Nik Bear Brown (is that a real name or a pseudonym?), talks about himself in the third person, The Cognitive Commons: How a Paper Quilling Frog Video Reveals the Future of Personalized Learning https://nikbearbrown.substack.com/p/the-cognitive-commons

Since he posted, Nik has been told that his estimate of traditional professional production costs to make his frog video of between $10,000 and $50,000 was a significant underestimate and a more likely costing would be somewhere between $75,000 and $150,000. Nik estimated his own production costs for the video, made by a team of one (Nik) in a matter of hours, at $200!

On December 10, 2025, a YouTube Short appeared that would have been impossible to create five years earlier. Not because the technology didn’t exist, but because the cost would have been prohibitive. The video features five intricately detailed frogs, rendered in a paper quilling aesthetic—each speckled amphibian built from thousands of curled paper strips, sitting on a log surrounded by fantastical mushrooms and flowers. They eat bugs (”Yum yum!”), jump into a pool (”Glug glug!”), and eventually thrive together in an extended narrative resolution that transforms a simple counting song into a story about belonging. The video has garnered over 248,000 views. It’s visually stunning. It’s pedagogically sound, built on neuroscience research showing how such songs activate multiple brain regions simultaneously – the parietal lobe’s numerical circuits, the prefrontal cortex’s executive functions, the motor cortex’s embodied cognition pathways. It teaches backward counting, phonemic awareness, rhythm entrainment, and emotional intelligence through narrative structure.

2. Two recent pieces from the LRB blog for you to compare and contrast:

a) In Tehran by Raha Nik-Andish https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/january/in-tehran

b) In South Minneapolis by Amna A. Akbar https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/february/in-south-minneapolis

Which of the two pieces does this extract come from?

Across from us stood riot police in full gear, twenty or thirty of them, along with armed plainclothes agents. I looked at the protesters around me. Most of them were very young, perhaps twenty years old: girls and boys dressed in dark clothes, their faces covered by masks. ‘Don’t go into side alleys,’ people warned. ‘You’ll get trapped.’ The police fired tear gas. The chants continued. ‘They’re shooting!’ someone shouted. We all ran. A young woman asked me to look at the back of her neck. She had been hit by pellets. The sound of gunfire intensified. I could see flashes in the darkness and didn’t understand what they were.

3. Here’s a recording of a recent Cambridge University webinar, Why is Greenland so important? https://youtu.be/OvGmdZHXC2o

Greenland sits at the frontline of global change. Its vast ice sheet is melting at an unprecedented rate, with profound consequences for global sea level and for the communities who live alongside it. Beneath the ice, Greenland’s rocky landscape preserves a rich record of Earth’s geological history and contains critical mineral resources essential to the global energy transition. At the same time, the peoples of Greenland and the wider Arctic are among the first to experience these rapid environmental changes.

And here’s an earlier webinar from the same Cambridge team, Melting Ice and Rising Seas https://youtu.be/l3eLsUt5aUk

4. The February issue of Humanising Language Teaching (HLT) has just come out with its usual rich selection from all round the world, including Oman, Vietnam, Zimbabwe, Canada & Serbia – even the UK! https://www.hltmag.co.uk/feb26/

If you’ve got good eyesight, you’ll notice here https://www.hltmag.co.uk/feb26/using-ai that if you’d like to attend what looks like a very interesting event at 14:00 UK time on Saturday 21st February, Using AI in the Humanistic Language Classroom, you need to send an e-mail to info@pilgrims.co.uk.

5. And, finally and (for me at least) very depressingly, from Der Spiegel, The New Religion of Beauty by Carola Padtberg https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/injections-makeup-stress-the-new-religion-of-beauty-a-37cdcea5-d847-44f2-aa49-847e10c2c1d0

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Thursday, 5th February (Cambridge)

Posted on February 5, 2026 by roycross

I missed a post on Tuesday, as I was clearing out my parents’ house up in Yorkshire. Amongst (many!) other things, I found my father’s medal for the Under 12 100 yards from 1939 in the drawer of his desk and my mother’s copy of the ‘Champion Book for Girls’ from 1944 – photos of both attached.

100 yards medalDownload
Champion Book for GirlsDownload

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Congratulations to Tony Picot, who won the raffle for a copy of Iqbal Ahmed’s latest book, The Snows of Kashmir, which I’m collecting from Iqbal next week. Let me know your address, Tony!

1. The Macmillan Global Teachers’ Festival starts next Monday, 9th February https://www.macmillanenglish.com/global-teachers-festival-2026

From 9th to 20th February 2026, join us for two weeks of inspiration and innovation designed to transform your teaching. This year’s programme brings 20 talks from 24 leading voices from around the world to explore the most relevant topics in education today: AI in the classroom, inclusive learning, creative project-based approaches, and strategies to boost learner confidence and engagement. Discover fresh ideas, practical tools, and a vibrant community of educators at the ultimate online event for English language teachers. Don’t miss your chance to learn, connect, and get inspired!

2. Language teacher associations as innovative and collectively autonomous spaces in changing times: a global study by Terry Lamb & Sylvia Velikova https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/17501229.2025.2571847 (PDF below as well.)

The findings (of the article) demonstrate an enduring pattern of the professional identity of LTAs as dynamic, multidimensional, interlingual spaces for their members’ collaborative learning, fostering critical collective autonomy and innovation with the strong potential to find the spaces for manoeuvre to develop value-based practices locally and globally. These dimensions also imply that, whatever their internal and external challenges, LTAs will continue to play a central role in advocating for languages and sustaining language teacher agency amidst wider global changes.

Language teacher associations as innovative and collectively autonomous spaces in changing times a global studyDownload

3. The International House London Teacher Portal is now completely free https://teacherportal.ihlondon.com/

Build your career and be part of a global community of like-minded teachers. The Teacher Portal is a free platform for English language teachers worldwide. We provide classroom-ready lesson plans, webinars, one-to-one teacher support, videos of real teaching and self-study CPD courses, all designed by expert teachers at International House London.

4. Nayr Ibrahim’s talk at TEDxBodø, How I embraced my imperfect multilingual life https://youtu.be/ZnaKcA345ug

“Chá de Cidreira” – one phrase that evokes childhood hugs, mom’s worry, and home, but vanishes into sterile translations abroad. Nayr celebrates imperfect multilingualism as a rich, promiscuous tapestry of languages, identities, and domains that shape belonging (and exclusion), urging us to build bridges for those mixing tongues to thrive in new worlds.

5. And, finally, draw a horse and see it race against other people’s horses https://gradient.horse/ Even I managed!

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Thursday, 29th January (Cambridge)

Posted on January 29, 2026 by roycross

1. The recording of a good lecture by Lea Ypi that I went to on Monday evening, Are Revolutions Justified? https://www.youtube.com/live/wuMJTLOaCb4?si=BWvZeV-5l34RtMg- Guest appearance by David Miliband at the beginning, whose father, Ralph, Lea Ypi’s professorial chair at LSE commemorates. Listen out for Miliband’s Cambridge anecdote!

Moralists think that if the ends of revolution are right, revolution cannot be wrong. Legalists think that since the means of revolution are wrong, revolution cannot be right. In this lecture Lea Ypi revisits their arguments and offers an alternative that cuts across the divide. She examines revolution not in relation to the justice demanded by specific agents but grounded on a philosophical theory of history that focuses on collective progress.

2. Analysis by Terry Moran of “a worldview of domination without leadership, power without trust, and America diminished by its own president”, Donald Trump and the End of American Power https://terrymoran.substack.com/p/donald-trump-and-the-end-of-american

And here’s the Mark Carney speech Moran refers to, in case you’ve not yet had chance to watch https://youtu.be/btqHDhO4h10

3. An open-access article from Language Teaching Research, Language teacher stress and growth during trauma throughout the COVID-19 pandemic: the mediating roles of resilience and well-being by Andrew Hay, Peter D. MacIntyre, Tammy Gregersen & Sarah Mercer https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13621688251400725 (PDF below as well.)

The teaching profession has undergone a dramatic shift in pedagogical practices due to COVID-19. Already facing numerous challenges prepandemic, language teaching in particular has become significantly more difficult, and the effect on language teacher stress and well-being is still being explored.

hay-et-al-2026-language-teacher-stress-and-growth-during-trauma-throughout-the-covid-19-pandemic-the-mediating-roles-ofDownload

4. Exploratory Action Research (EAR) in Thailand is an account by Rachanee Dersingh & Sonthida Keyuravong of a thriving, multi-partner EAR project in Thailand that has now been running for over four years https://mentrnet.net/ear-thailand/

There’s also a recording of a talk about the project given last year by Sonthida & Rachanee, together with a number of other project participants, here https://youtu.be/1J_pnBnF90Q

and more general information about the project here https://www.britishcouncil.or.th/en/teach/our-work/exploratory-action-research-thailand

5. And, finally, a song by Bruce Springsteen about the Streets Of Minneapolis https://brucespringsteen.net/news/2026/streets-of-minneapolis/

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Tuesday, 27th January (Cambridge)

Posted on January 27, 2026 by roycross

1. The first of two I’ve pilfered from LinkedIn, this one from World Englishes, courtesy of Richard Smith (thank you, Richard!), WE, ELF and ELT: Perspectives on English and applied linguistics by Henry Widdowson https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/weng.70010 (PDF below as well.)

Here’s Henry’s abstract, so you can work out if it’s your kind of read. (WE = World Englishes; ELF = English as a Lingua Franca; ELT = English Language Teaching.)

In a paper which originally set the scene for WE study, Braj Kachru argued that the ‘global diffusion of English’ called fora new paradigm of enquiry which recognized the independent status of varieties of English used by communities other than those of Inner Circle native speakers. Since extensively studied varieties of English in Inner Circle communities already exist, this prompts the question of what warrants the assigning of distinctive WE status to Outer Circle varieties. Furthermore, although WE varieties are one manifestation of the diffusion of English, much more globally diffuse is the expedient use of English as a lingua franca, where users need to negotiate their meanings without reliance on the shared knowledge of language variety conventions. This paper then goes on to argue that ELF, therefore, has a direct relevance, as WE does not, to both applied linguistics in general and English language teaching in particular.

World Englishes – 2026 – Widdowson – WE ELF and ELT Perspectives on English and applied linguisticsDownload

2. The second from LinkedIn, this one from Language and Education, the winner of this year’s AAAL (American Association for Applied Linguistics) Research Article Award, Umuzigo w’inyongera: girls’ differential experiences of the double-burden of language and gender in Rwandan English medium secondary education https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/09500782.2023.2288635 by Lizzi O. Milligan, Aline Dorimana, Aloysie Uwizeyemariya, Alphonse Uworwabayeho, Terra Sprague, Laela Adamson & Harry Kuchah Kuchah. (PDF below as well.)

Here’s the abstract: This paper argues that learning in an unfamiliar language of learning and teaching (LoLT) negatively impacts Rwandan girls in the early years of lower secondary education. Based on classroom observation and interviews with case-study girls in four Rwandan secondary schools, we show that where girls’ life circumstances differ, so too does the way in which the use of an unfamiliar LoLT affects them. Through the development of five typologies, we explore the ways that when girls face inequalities at the levels of time, space, material and emotional support they have for learning, the requirement that education be conducted and assessed in an unfamiliar language works to compound these inequalities. Our conclusions advocate for greater attention to be paid to the language of learning and teaching in global and national girls’ education policies to alleviate the ‘double burden’ that many girls carry.

Umuzigo w inyongera girls differential experiences of the double-burden of language and gender in Rwandan English medium secondary education (1)Download

3. A clear-eyed piece for WONKHE by Anton Muscatelli, Responding to the International Education Strategy requires an appreciation of how fast the world is changing https://wonkhe.com/blogs/responding-to-the-international-education-strategy-requires-an-appreciation-of-how-fast-the-world-is-changing/

The long-awaited new UK international education strategy looks and feels very different from the last one. Gone is the target for international recruitment from the previous strategy, which had, in any case, been exceeded substantially. It has been replaced by a “bold ambition” to grow overall education exports to £40bn per year by 2030 (the figure for 2022 was calculated at £32.3bn). The emphasis is on growing transnational education (TNE) and partnerships in education and research, as well as outward student mobility, and the UK’s global reputation in education. There is much to welcome in this strategy. Not least the cross-government (FCDO, DfE and DBT) ownership of the agenda, and the recognition that the rapidly changing geopolitical landscape requires support from the UK government and its institutions to support the sector. But …

 4. Here’s Charlie Hills’ account of the end of his relationship with Chat GPT https://charliehills.substack.com/p/i-broke-up-with-chatgpt, as summarised in this graphic

Hands up if you know what Nano Banana Pro is!

5. And, finally, as a bit of light relief after all that serious stuff, what some people think is the best Monty Python sketch ever https://youtu.be/T70-HTlKRXo I still have my doubts about how well Monty Python humour travels, though!

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