Investigating and responding to teachers’ beliefs of the integration of variation in Arabic school teaching

• Dates: 2022–23
• Funding body: Qatar Foundation International
• Value: £9,000
• Primary investigator: Rasha Soliman (LCS)
• Co-investigators: Melissa Towler (LCS)
• Language at Leeds satellites: Centre for Excellence in Language Teaching (CELT); Centre for Language Education Research (CLER); Embracing Linguistic Diversity
• Language at Leeds themes: Language learning and teaching

This research aims to investigate the current beliefs that schoolteachers have in relation to the integration of different varieties of Arabic into their teaching.

The data analysis will aim to produce a set of principles to clear misconceptions and guide schoolteachers in how to integrate more variation into their teaching.

A variationist approach to Arabic teaching may seem sensible from communicative and motivational points of view. However, it is still novel and unusual for the majority of Arabic schoolteachers who themselves have learnt languages with a monolingual perception of what they are, how they are used and how they should be taught and learnt.

In order to encourage teachers to have a more open holistic approach to Arabic variation, it is crucial to investigate their attitudes towards and perceptions of Arabic dialects variability.