Understanding attitudes to accent and dialect in UK teacher training

This workshop session took place at the ITE/ECT 2025 Annual PGCE Conference Inclusion & Inspiration - Education for Social Justice. 17 January 2025. University of Manchester. This session explained accent and dialect in detail, their inclusion, and standards for both, within the Teachers' Standards and then focused in depth on the results of Alex's work with UK teachers, notably trainees. The results show a tendency for Northern and Midlands-accented speakers to be told to reduce their accents, with mentors having a preference for accents judged overall as more 'general' varieties, as opposed to broad. This discussion also took the time to explain regional accents in terms of a trichotomy of broad - general - neutral varieties and what this means from a purely phonological perspective.