Author Archives: roycross

1. Schools in the UK often exclude difficult pupils, usually for no better reason than they want to ensure their school’s performance stats are not damaged by poor exam results or frequent absence from school. Good piece here from The … Continue reading →

1. Great title for the next talk in the Reading University Applied Linguistics Research Circle series by Maria Sabaté-Dalmau from the University of Lleida, ‘I speak small’: Unequal Englishes and transnational identities among Ghanaian migrants in Catalonia Contact Rodney Jones … Continue reading →

1. I was worried this would be a monster file but it’s not too bad (5 Mb): the OECD report on How Learning Continued during the COVID-19 Pandemic with forty-five ‘education continuity stories’ from round the world https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/how-learning-continued-during-the-covid-19-pandemic_bbeca162-en  PDF below. … Continue reading →

This edition is sponsored by the World Economic Forum – if only! 1. Here’s Bill Gates and John Kerry in conversation about climate change at the World Economic Forum, both of them guardedly enthusiastic about what COP26 in Glasgow achieved … Continue reading →

Late home this evening from the inaugural meeting of the London TESOL Research Forum, ably spearheaded (his word) by Jim McKinley … 1. More research: TIRF is The International Research Foundation (for English Language Education) https://www.tirfonline.org/ The winner of their … Continue reading →

Some reading, watching and listening for the weekend … 1. A blog post by Barnaby Lenon from the University of Buckingham on the use of textbooks – or not – in the UK https://educationblog.buckingham.ac.uk/2021/05/16/why-are-english-schools-not-using-textbooks-by-professor-barnaby-lenon/ “In England 10% of 10-year olds … Continue reading →

1. Language Log is the blog of the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Research in Cognitive Science. Here’s a recent post on the story of Creation and the subsequent Great Flood from south-west China, as told in Naxi ‘pictographic writing’ … Continue reading →

1. First of two today from Lancaster University: next Friday, 4th February, at 13:00 UK time, Jennifer Rowsell from Bristol University will be giving the first of this term’s Lancaster Literacy Research Centre talks, on ‘Research creation during a pandemic’. … Continue reading →

1. Climate Questions is a weekly BBC podcast. Here’s all the full episodes https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xtvb6/episodes/player and here’s a page of short clips, two- to three-minutes long, that might work quite well in the classroom https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xtvb6/clips Here’s an audio clip from Behavioural … Continue reading →

1. ‘Embedding resilience’ is the title of the next British Council Education Exchange event, with speakers from Nigeria, Moldova, India, the USA and the UK. More info – worth following up the links embedded – and registration here https://www.britishcouncil.org/education/schools/education-exchange-digital-events/embedding-resilience See … Continue reading →