The learner-centred and experiential pedagogical approach encouraged by the revised "New Zealand Curriculum" can be problematic for teachers who are used to delivering courses in teacher-fronted ways. Using the Learning Languages learning area as the context, this article presents the case of one New Zealand teacher who completed an…

Both Sweden and Finland have education systems promoting equity and equality. However, recent societal and political changes linked to increased immigration have created new challenges in efforts to support linguistic diversity. This paper aims to explore how multilingualism is represented in the national compulsory school curricula in the two…

Sami are Indigenous languages spoken by the Sami people in the northern parts of Scandinavia and Russia. All Sami languages are endangered because of historically aggressive assimilation policies. Currently Sami communities are working actively with language revitalisation processes. This article examines pupils' access to knowledge in and about…

This article considers the provision of modern foreign languages (MFL) in England since the 1970s in the context of wider curricular change and also taking into account Europe-wide developments in MFL. It charts the changes implemented over almost three decades to England's National Curriculum for MFL at secondary level (from ages 11 to 16) and…

In this paper, I offer a critical reflection on the thesis of the general educational value of foreign languages developed by Russian linguist Lev Vladimirovich Shcherba. I do so against the background of current debates on the positioning of foreign languages in the school curriculum in the United Kingdom (UK). I argue that Shcherba's thesis,…

Given the important status of students as major stakeholders of the National English Curriculum, this study investigated specific needs of curriculum-takers for an English curriculum and compared the results with analyses of curriculum evaluation from curriculum-completers. We implemented a needs assessment survey targeting 68 elementary school…

In the high-stakes accountability English educational system, decisions made by government and agencies about curriculum, pedagogy and assessment drive school planning and actions. This paper analyses the drivers for the recent change to French German and Spanish GCSEs and highlights particular areas of the new specification which may damage the…

The paper reports on an innovative approach to evaluate the level of harmonisation of Ukrainian border guards training with the common standards for border guarding in the European Union (EU) member-states. There are different types of borders and different organisational structures in border guard agencies in the EU. The authors present the…

Since Ure (1971) and Halliday (1985), different measures have been proposed in the research literature as a proxy for investigating lexicon advances. They are called lexical richness measures and are an important tool in assessing advance of the lexicon (Johansson, 2009). This article evaluates three lexical richness measures of progress in the…

Reflection as a tool for the development of an intercultural dimension in language learning is mentioned to varying degrees in curriculum documents, guidelines and the literature. While there is a call for teachers to encourage language learners to engage in reflection for the development of intercultural competence (IC), studies show it can be…

In this paper we take on Green's (2017) orientation of the Australian Curriculum: English and consider what might it hold for the students of Australia. We set about analysing eighteen minutes of storytelling by a group of young 9-12 year old Kunibídji males from Maningrida in the far North of the Northern Territory in Australia, making this…

This article presents original insights into the English learning experiences of Polish children and contributes a longitudinal perspective on teachers' relationships with them. Data from interviews conducted in 2016 with primary school teachers, Polish children and their parents are compared with outcomes from an earlier study ending in 2009, in…

The article describes the usefulness of a realist methodology in linking sociological theory to empirically obtained data through the development of a methodological device. Three layers of analysis were integrated: 1. the findings from a case study about Maori language education in New Zealand; 2. the identification and analysis of contradictions…

This paper presents my experience in bilingual teaching, an integrated programme for geography and English language learning for upper secondary students. General geographical aspects are connected to the geography of Great Britain and that of the USA, with an attitude of raising students' awareness on environmental issues. The topics are a…

The goal of this study is to analyze two English textbooks used in Sweden from a sociolinguistic perspective. This is a qualitative study, and the Sociolinguistic Textbook Evaluation Rubric (Atar & Erdem, 2020) consisting of six items was used to analyze the textbooks. The items of the rubric were applied to the textbooks, and the results were…