CLCL Projects
Discover some of the centre's recent and ongoing research projects.
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Creative Pedagogies - Dr Francis Gilbert
The Centre for Language, Culture and Learning is committed to promoting and researching imaginative ways of teaching and researching teaching. It seeks to experiment with innovative pedagogical approaches which are creative in themselves and teach subjects creatively. It seeks to host conferences, seminars, presentations, research papers and other publications in this area of creative pedagogies, as well as find multimodal forms to express its ideas creatively, such as through film, audio, and art.
Disappearing Londoners - Professor Eve Gregory
Disappearing Londoners (funded by the Leverhulme Trust) presents a portrait of a forgotten community in East London. Four families talk about growing up, work, values and ‘Englishness’ across 3 generations. An interactive website traces how local folk knowledge, stories, language and learning are passed across generations.
Language to express love - Dr Judith Rifeser
Judith has been actively involved in supporting the language teacher community - specifically during Covid-19 - by promoting examples of good practice by fellow languages teachers and sharing her expertise on the use of film(making) to develop and nurture intercultural understanding in webinars for various educational institutions such as ALL London.
Lived Interculturality: living multilingualism with everyday objects - Dr Cristina Ros i Solé
The question of identity and subjectivity in multilingual speakers is one that has preoccupied Cristina for some time. At the moment Cristina is looking at the interplay of materialities, the biographical and the mundane in the building of intercultural identities. Firstly, this has taken the shape of a special journal issue that looks at reconceptualising identity from a post-human philosophical perspective (‘Vibrant Identities’ Language and Intercultural Communication Volume 20, issue 5).
Reconfiguring Greek language education abroad for a global age - Dr Vally Lytra
This project documents how the mission, curricula and pedagogy of Greek language and culture classes for children and adult learners of Greek have been changing due to three critical moments (the “new” Greek migration, educational policy changes in Greece and more recently the pandemic).
Digitally ‘retelling’ the tale: children’s learning encounters and materiality - Dr John Jessel
Much existing work on digital storytelling with young people has focused upon forefronting their own personal narratives and viewpoints. However, less attention has been given to what is gained from digitally retelling an existing story without the intention of bending the original text to prominently introduce the self or a diversity of other perspectives into the narrative.
Peace, Pacifism and War Resistance in British Children’s Literature - Dr Julia Hope
Children’s books about war, written in English, have become increasingly popular since the turn of the century. However, despite this, very few texts feature those who have resisted the call to war, such as conscientious objectors, even though the number of these in the UK grew from 16,000 in the First World War to 60,000 in the Second World War. Themes of peace, pacifism and war resistance would seem to be a necessary part of the wide-ranging tapestry of experience that children’s literature is increasingly representing.
Considering the impact of an engaging/spiral curriculum in German on teacher motivation in a primary school in south-east London: Susi Sahmland
The past year Susi Sahmland has been conducting an ethnographic case study in a year 3 class considering the impact of using stories to support progress, motivation and literacy. The study was conducted during the last academic year (2018-19) when Susi was team teaching with a year 3 teacher in a bilingual primary school in South East London. The study has been presented at conferences, features in a MOOC and will be discussed in an international journal article (forthcoming, 2021).
Mette Reads Carnegie - Mette Lindahl-Wise (MA Children’s Literature student)
This summer Mette is reading all the Carnegie Medal Winners. She will start at the inception of the medal in 1936 and read chronologically to the present day. Mette will be blogging about her progress and thoughts on the books. The aim is to investigate what has been considered some of the best children’s literature written in the English language, look at the themes which are emerging and to form her own impressions and opinions of this particular piece of literary history.
Deptford Storytelling Project 2020 - Lucy Rogers, Dr Vicky Macleroy and Dr Jim Anderson
A multilingual community film-making project in Deptford funded by Language Acts and Worldmaking (2019-20). This film project was for people of all ages, languages and backgrounds, including those learning English. Use of subtitles allowed films to be made bilingually reflecting the value that multilingualism brings for the community. The project celebrated Deptford’s rich history and vibrant and diverse community.