Coming soon – the LANTERN Lunchtime talks

This is a new LANTERN initiative to share current research in our community. We are also hoping that there might be some involvement with the Islamic University of Gaza and Prof Nazmi Al-Masri.

We have two of these in the pipeline in the next couple of months. The first will be on Friday 20th November from 12-1. Paul Smith and Alex Barratta will be speaking on:

Academic identity and religious identity: cognitive dissonance in students’ higher education learning and assessment

Our research is concerned with investigating the interplay of two identities – academic and religious – in students who profess a faith. We wish to investigate how students manage these two identities, especially when there is an identity clash, as it were, between them, involving students’ religious beliefs, notably in assessment, not agreeing with those from the discipline (e.g. creation vs. evolution).

The second will take place on Friday 11th December 12-1 and will be led by Fitri, Khwan and Elisa.

We are professional English language practitioners sharing similar situations which are interesting for us. Our contexts are situated in three different countries, namely Indonesia, Thailand and Spain can be regarded as Expanding Circle countries (Kachru, e.g. 1992, 1996) i.e. countries where English is used and taught as a foreign language but has a high status in our societies. Moreover, our contexts are located within supra-national organizations i.e. ASEAN and EU respectively, which definitely influences our language policies. However, our situations are unique and the three of us come from different personal, professional and cultural backgrounds. Therefore, we want to improve our knowledge and understanding about English language teaching in our contexts in order to cross-fertilise ideas and learn from each other’s insights.

Get those dates in the diary and watch this space for more details …