Recognising LGBTQ+ Identities in Language Teaching Materials

A toolkit created tor teachers to help them consider recognition and inclusion in language teaching, in development with LGBTQ+ Equality Steering Group (UCL LESG) and colleagues across UCL.

The idea of creating a short toolkit aimed at language teachers at UCL was inspired by a series of workshops for language teachers on ‘Recognising LGBTQ+ identities in language teaching materials’ led by Professor John Gray (IOE, UCL's Faculty of Education and Society) in 2019-2020. These were very well attended and it became clear that many people had thought carefully about recognition and inclusion in relation to our language teaching, but also that many struggled to find an approach that were happy with. As a result, the project has devised a toolkit for staff.

The toolkit was designed to facilitate reflection and discussion among individual teachers, module and programme teams or departments. It is meant to support colleagues in starting to think more about recognition in their day-to-day modules as well as in their curricula more broadly. The toolkit is therefore not meant to be a comprehensive discussion about recognition but should rather be seen as an actionable document, a place to start conversations and, ultimately, encourage change that will make our teaching more inclusive for students as well as staff.