Engaging pre-service English teachers with language policy

Teachers have the potential to be active agents in language policy and planning (LPP) processes when designing lessons or managing linguistic resources in their classrooms. A key consideration, then, is to guide pre-service educators towards an understanding of LPP principles and how they can be applied in practice. The present study documents an interactive LPP roleplay project that was designed to raise awareness among pre-service teachers about how they can engage with policy interpretation and negotiation. The project took place in the context of a sociolinguistics course within an English teacher education programme. Following the roleplay, pre-service teachers wrote reflective journals which were analysed inductively in order to investigate how they experienced the roleplay with respect to professional development. The findings show that roleplay helped these teachers see the relevance of policy to educational practice and also provided hands-on experience with the challenges and benefits of negotiating policy interpretations with colleagues.