Understanding attitudes to accent and dialect in UK teacher training

Worksop session from the ITET 2024 Annual PGCE Conference Inclusion & Inspiration - Education for Social Justice. 12 January 2024. University of Manchester. This session will first explain accent and dialect in detail, their inclusion, and standards for both, within the Teachers' Standards and then focus in depth on the results of my 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 will also take 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.