new article in British Educational Research Journal: bera-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/.... we ran focus groups with 42 teacher educators in England, showing how recent teacher education policy reforms are a system of administrative compliance which governs through fear and control.

I've done a blog on some work we've been doing with year 11s in the Black Country about the poem 'Homing' and the dialect of the area. englishandmedia.co.uk/blog/teachin...

lectureship in applied linguistics in my department. lovely city, lovely department, lovely colleagues 🌸 manmetjobs.mmu.ac.uk/jobs/vacancy...

And many congratulations to all, with a special shout out to @iancushing.bsky.social @callanjd.bsky.social and @noreenmasud.bsky.social #LanguagesandLiteratures 💫🎉👏🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

it is a basic fact that all children have remarkable linguistic heterogeneity, but not all children are granted the space to use this heterogeneity in schools. so the problem is clearly not in how children use language, but in how schools are often set up to deny children those opportunities.

Staggering harm is being done to #language learning in Higher Ed. No oversight or strategic thinking, with cold spots now present. Petitions alone this week in response to closures: Nottingham · Change.org Leicester · Change.org #edusky #langsky @britishacademy.bsky.social @hetanshah.bsky.social

it was such a privilege to be in Leeds tonight for @snelljulia.bsky.social’s inaugural lecture! for over 20 years she has challenged deficit thinking about working class children’s language. im so honoured to know her and collaborate with her and have her as a friend 🌸

the curriculum and assessment review is 197 pages long and does not make a single reference to multilingualism. in England's schools, ~20% of children (~2 million children) are multilingual. this is just another example of how multilingual identities and knowledges get erased in policy and practice.

the DfE have responded enthusiastically to the curriculum and assessment review, stating that oracy is an 'important vehicle for social justice'. so more reproduction of this flawed theory of change which isolates 'better oracy' as a solution to injustice. doi.org/10.1080/0305...

solidarity with all colleagues and students at Nottingham who are having their jobs and degrees destroyed by management. the relentless annihilation of language provision in UKHE is something that *every* academic should be calling out and pushing back against.

I am hearing that @uniofnottingham.bsky.social is suspending (i.e shutting down) *all modern language courses* in 2026-27. One of the largest departments in the UK. A shocking short sighted move that damages regional and national prospects @britishacademy.bsky.social @hetanshah.bsky.social

"He essentially said, 'I’m not going to hide who I am to make you comfortable.' In doing so Mamdani delivered a raciolinguistic reality check that refuses the idea that politicians of color need to translate themselves into whiteness to be viable." educationallinguist.wordpress.com/2025/11/05/z...

A culture of institutional disability discrimination within the Metropolitan police is exposed today by the former head of its disabled staff association. www.disabilitynewsservice.com/former-detec...

This Sunday Join us for an evening of poetry reading, solidarity and witness. Join us as we word the world with Gaza in this medicinal ritual of making the articulation of pain possible and pronouncable. Free tickets: tickettailor.com/events/sdhepre…

the spelling bee is... 'a public ritual of linguistic discipline. It doesn't just reward memorisation; it performs a particular vision of language as precise, codified, and rule-bound, and positions that vision as natural, inevitable, and good' compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Congratulations to Ian Cushing who has been awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize from Leverhulme Trust for a new study challenging linguistic injustice in schools. The three-year study will enable transformative change and influence education policy. 🔗 https://bit.ly/49hB69k

ICYMI: Selected from over 350 nominations, this year the Trust offered five Philip Leverhulme Prizes in each of the following subject areas: Archaeology, Chemistry, Economics, Engineering, Geography, and Languages and Literatures. www.leverhulme.ac.uk/news/2025PLP @annavignoles.bsky.social

had so so many kind messages about this - it is deeply appreciated. funding apps are never solo efforts. and this grant will be in collaboration with teachers and children who are pushing for transformative change in relation to linguistic justice. can’t wait to get started 🫶🌸

Pals! Do I know anyone who’d be particularly interested in being a podcast expert on representation of disability in fiction for a rather lovely podcast by and for and about disabled people? U.K. based preferred but not essential!

We're really keen to get the views of English teachers (in England) about the state of English teaching. If you have a few minutes to fill in our survey, we'd be very grateful.

The Trust is thrilled to announce the 2025 Philip Leverhulme Prize Winners. Congratulations to this year’s cohort. Thirty extraordinary researchers from across a range of disciplines: leverhulme.ac.uk/news/2025PLP

Great stuff! Will be looking forward to seeing how this develops and where it leads.

@iancushing.bsky.social @callanjd.bsky.social @noreenmasud.bsky.social @manmetuni.bsky.social @unisouthampton.bsky.social @bristolunienglish.bsky.social @bristoluni.bsky.social @artshumsucl.bsky.social @ucl.ac.uk @manchester.ac.uk

i am still in shock but I have won a Philip Leverhulme Prize. starting in autumn 2026 for 3 years, i’ll be looking at linguistic justice in schools, particularly in how children and teachers engage in radical, grassroots activism for structural change. it's such an honour to receive this funding 🌸🩷

Last night, I hosted an important discussion in Parliament on the ESN scandal & systemic racism in education, with Leigh Day. Titled 'Justice for Educationally Subnormal Survivors – Racism in Education: From Coard and Beyond', we examined past & ongoing injustices. (1/6)

This looks really brilliant 👇🏿👇🏿👇🏿

Please join me on 12th November at my @universityofleeds.bsky.social professorial inaugural lecture on ‘Language Diversity and Social (In)justice’. More info here, including a link at the bottom to book a ticket (which is free but we need to track numbers): ahc.leeds.ac.uk/english/even...

Shit

Please share! We have a number of fully funded PhD studentships in "Designing Responsible Natural Language Processing". I'm a possible supervisor & I'd be keen to support projects on sociolinguistics-AI, e.g., accent bias in AI, language+gender/sexuality+AI. www.responsiblenlp.org

it takes a long time to socialise most undergraduate students out of the idea that there is an ‘academic language’ they must conform to, but once they unlearn this ideology then their writing becomes better and more powerful than it ever was before 🌸

The linked article below from @iancushing.bsky.social provides a linear explanation of the critique through an international lens. The argument is that the WG is a red herring that distracts from the neoliberal education reforms ushered in during the 1990s. e-space.mmu.ac.uk/641609/8/Rea...

We're hosting Lavender Languages from 2-4 September 2026. Save the date! Plenaries and a formal announcement to be follow shortly...

Looks great! Adding it to my to-read list.

new article published open access in Reading Research Quarterly 💫 Follow the word gap: the social life of a deficit concept doi.org/10.1002/rrq.... i trace how deficit ideologies associated with the 'word gap' get reproduced - and rejected - in teacher education and schools.

Alright, I want to make sure my team are booked and busy this autumn and so I’m offering a special discount for Bsky users only Send us an enquiry via the web form or via email with the code ‘BSKYBELOVEDS’ for a tasty 15% discount off all interview, focus group, and workshop transcription services

Great bargain for all transcription needs! Spend your money wisely and ethically at the same time

i hope this article gives hope to any teachers who are confronted with ideologies of the 'word gap' in their schools. despite the stubbornness of this deficit concept, there are always spaces for resistance 💕 ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

I’ve written to Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper demanding urgent action to ensure the safety of the Global Sumud Flotilla. 52 boats carrying aid and peace activists to Gaza. The UK must act to assure their safety. Israel is committing a genocide. All eyes are on this flotilla.

follow the thing methodologies normally trace the global flows of food products. here i use that methodology to trace the global flow of an idea - the word gap - and how teachers get positioned as consumers who have the ability to both reproduce and resist dominant ideologies about language.

A compelling article by @iancushing.bsky.social Schools don't have to subscribe to language deficit views. In one school a leader 'had run whole-school training on asset-based pedagogies, which included a sharp critique and rejection of dominant word gap narratives.'

A brillliant, fascinating article by @iancushing.bsky.social about the word gap concept - but also about the whole ecology of our current education system, uncovered by tracing the experiences of one teacher and what these reveal about the system as a whole.

The Word Gap ™️ is something most teachers learn by osmosis. Given that what we think it means is not correct, we need to unlearn it, and dig at the biases that made it so attractive and idea in the first place.

A really great read about the tyranny of the "word gap"; like a "zombie statistic", it refuses to die, despite its troubling & misleading origins. The article reminds me of www-tandfonline-com.soton.idm.oclc.org/doi/full/10.... which shows how such thinking plays out in practice.

new article published open access in Reading Research Quarterly 💫 Follow the word gap: the social life of a deficit concept doi.org/10.1002/rrq.... i trace how deficit ideologies associated with the 'word gap' get reproduced - and rejected - in teacher education and schools.

what does ‘misbehaviour’ sound like? in new open access work i ask this question in the context of school discipline policies, looking at how ideologies of ‘im/proper language’ and ‘im/proper behaviour’ coalesce and get co-constructed with one another. doi.org/10.1080/0962...

And by explicitly rejecting 'behavior as communication', the deficit framing of 'misbehaviour' precludes any curiosity or empathy about why kids with developing brains & bodies might disengage, intentionally or not, with systems designed by adults to serve the obscure purposes of adult society.

100% COMPLIANCE

in analysing 563 behaviour policies from the 34 largest multi-academy trusts in England, i show how 'misbehaviour' is associated with a constellation of linguistic features - these are of course not empirically connected, but ideologically connected.

few things in life are inevitable but one of the most inevitable things has to be Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion being exported from schools to prisons. 🤷‍♀️ improvingteaching.co.uk/2025/09/07/i...

Scotland’s leading academic on refugees warns that British political rhetoric is taking the UK ‘into the foothills of genocide’ Professor Alison Phipps, Unesco chair in refugee integration at Glasgow University, says demonisation will end in deaths www.heraldscotland.com/news/2544663...