Welsh and Bilingual teaching methods in Higher Education

The Welsh Government aims to ensure there are a million Welsh speakers by 2050, with universities playing a crucial role in reaching this goal. Nonetheless, the number of bilingual students choosing Welsh-medium study has not changed during the last 5 years. Promoting flexible Welsh-medium teaching, assessment, and support could encourage positive language choices.

This 12-month study across Bangor and Cardiff Met Universities focuses on three main areas:

1. Understanding what teaching, assessment and support models are attractive to bilingual students who are not currently choosing Welsh-medium study options.
2. Identifying successful educational interventions that boost confidence in using Welsh in higher education in Wales and lesser used languages in higher education in other countries and regions where government policy supports bilingual Higher Education.
3. Piloting good practice interventions and reporting on their impact.

If you are a Higher Education provider who has experience of successfully promoting the  use of a lesser used language in teaching undergraduate students, please click here: Good practice in Promoting Positive Student Choice to Study through Lesser Used Language - Provider Questionnaire

If you are a bilingual student in Bangor or Cardiff Met University who is not currently choosing Welsh medium provision, please click here for more information and a short survey. We will ask for your student email so that we can transfer a small payment to you for your time and effort.

Mi Young Ahn- Author of papers on students' perception of belonging across Welsh universities considering the role of language (Ahn, andDavis, 2019, 2023),Mi Young specializes in survey design and use. Along with Katherine Young and Myfanwy Davies she will lead the analysis of the student survey data.

Angela Dalrymple –A principal fellow with the HEA with expertise in collaborative research on pedagogy, particularly using qualitative methods. Following a successful career in business and lecturing at LSE and Oxford Universities, she is a lecturer at Swansea University's School of Management. Along with Monica Ward, she leads on identifying good practice in promoting undergraduate students' positive choices to study through a minoritized language in settings where public policy now promotes those choices.  

Myfanwy Davies – Dean of Welsh in the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, she has successfully undertaken £1.5 million of social research (in health, social care and education) with close to one million as a Principal Investigator. She is a Principal Fellow with the HEA and chairs the Editorial Board of Gwerddon https://gwerddon.cymru/. She is particularly interested in flexible and collaborative learning models. As the project PI, she coordinates the work across the project and she leads on the scoping reviews.

Phil Davies Experienced linguist, academic, language tutor and project manager. He leads on advanced Welsh skills for Canolfan Bedwyr. He is also responsible for a number of Welsh language skills improvement projects and initiatives at the University which contribute to the project. Phil contributes to planning the pilot intervention and their evaluations.

Gwawr Maelor -Leader on the Welsh language within the School of Education, Bangor University and lecturer in primary and secondary Initial Teacher Training(ITT) programmes, she has extensive experience of teaching in the secondary education sector. She has contributed and co-authored on CEN/Collaborative Evidence Network projects on topics such as access to Welsh during the COVID-19pandemic and cross-language in class.

Monica Ward – A principal fellow with the HEA and Dean of Learning and Teaching at Dublin City University, she is Chair of a Special Interest Group for less commonly taught Languages at EUROCALL(European Association forCALL). She researches Irish language learning mainly within schools but increasingly with HE students. Current interests are the use of AI (especiallyGenAI) in the process of learning languages. She shares the responsibility of leading on collating good practice in promoting positive choices among bilingual students with Angela Dalrymple.

Mirain Rhys – A psychologist with a strong research background, Mirain's research interests relate to developing/bridging the Welsh language within education, the community and the home and how this compares to the examples of minority language populations in other bilingual contexts beyond Wales. Mirain was recently seconded with the Information and Analytical Services team in Welsh Government as a Senior Research Officer on the Welsh language.

Katharine Young – a lecturer in the School of Sport and Health Sciences, with a primary teaching focus on research methods through the medium of Welsh, Katherine is interested in education, and bilingualism in Wales and beyond. Katherine has recently collaborated successfully on research with the Open University, exploring perceptions of citizenship in the new Welsh curriculum and contributing to the creation of CorCenCC, a corpus of contemporary Welsh. Katherine played a key role in shaping the survey for students and is leading on this aspect along with Mi Young.