Changing Teaching Practices and Empowering Students: Towards a More Inclusive Language Teaching in Merseyside and Beyond

The Change Empower Include project aims to address educational inequalities related to spoken language (oracy) and writing skills in the Liverpool City Region. It highlights two main issues:

• Dialect Bias: There is insufficient guidance on teaching spoken language, particularly regional dialects, due to the curriculum’s strong focus on Standard English. This negatively impacts students who speak regional dialects, hindering their confidence, identity, and educational aspirations.
• Gender-gap in Writing: Primary education often holds gendered assumptions, particularly the stereotype that boys underachieve in writing. The project’s research indicates minimal gender differences in actual writing ability but finds significant impacts from these stereotypes on boys’ motivation and emotional responses to writing tasks.

The project addresses these inequalities by collaboratively developing teaching materials with local Merseyside schools, aiming to benefit teachers across the wider UK. This toolkit is designed to help reduce educational inequalities related to dialect bias and gender-based assumptions in language teaching.

Open-source materials developed as part of the project are available on the website by following the links in the menu at the top of the page.

Meet The Team


Dr Victorina González Díaz
BA (Hons), MA, PhD
Reader in English Language at The University of Liverpool
Contact: vgdiaz@liverpool.ac.uk

Dr Sofia Lampropoulou
BA (Hons), MA, PhD
Reader in English Language at The University of Liverpool
Contact: S.Lampropoulou@liverpool.ac.uk

Dr Liz Parr
BA (Hons), MA, PhD
Head of Primary Programmes at Liverpool John Moores University

Dr Kate Flynn
Researcher at The University of Newcastle

Dr Paul Cooper
Senior Lecturer in English Language at The University of Liverpool
Contact: p.cooper@liverpool.ac.uk

Dr Kristi Nouri
Senior Research Associate in the School of Education and Lifelong Learning at the University of East Anglia

Rachel Byrne
Researcher at The University of Liverpool

David Clay
Researcher at The University of Liverpool
Contact: david.clay@liverpool.ac.uk

This research was funded through an Economic and Social Research Council Impact Acceleration Account (ESRC IAA) UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) grant. To find out more about this, please follow this link (University of Liverpool – ESRC IAA Grants).