The Language Teachers’ Committee Workshops: an Oxford Case Study

Abstract

This study briefly recounts the journey of the teacher-led Language Teachers’ Committee (LTC) workshops that started in 2015 as a simple space for the language teachers of less commonly taught languages at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (AMES), University of Oxford, to find out more about how individual teachers teach their specific target language, but that later developed into a platform for Continuous Professional Development (CPD) to share best practice and scholarship, and even went beyond these.

During the LTC workshops, teachers discovered resources they already had while reflecting on, appreciating, embracing, and enriching them; this had a positive impact on teachers’ wellbeing, future actions, and crucial joint professional decisions. The platform was not only important to overcome or ease challenging times like the COVID-19 pandemic when language teachers had to switch to online teaching overnight, but it also led to more sustainable kinds of impact, such as raising awareness to the fundamental rights of language teachers as part of their wellbeing.

Thus, this paper aims to give a chronological outline of and insights into the last twenty-five years of an HE institution in the UK that has been shaping/affecting the wellbeing of its language teachers. It endeavours to set an example and to raise awareness of the importance of language teaching and to rethink the position of language teachers in the academic world.