The Language and Education team (LED) conducts research into ways of improving the linguistic education of learners in primary, secondary and tertiary education within a formal education context, where the target language is both the vehicle and the object of learning. In a necessarily complementary fashion, LED carries out research into the use of first languages (L1) and second or foreign languages (L2) to assist the learning of curricular content. Taking Freire’s dichotomy (reading the word vs. reading the world) as a starting point, we are interested in exploring the spiral that leads from ‘learning to speak another language’ to ‘using speech as an efficient way to learn an academic subject’. That is to say, LED is interested in exploring the interrelation between a) the use and learning of first languages (L1), second languages (L2) and foreign languages (FL), and b) the use that students and teaching staff make of language as a tool to teach and learn about the world around them.
LED is a group essentially oriented towards applied research, whose ultimate goal is the formulation of educational and teacher education proposals, solidly backed up by the analysis of empirical data gathered in the classrooms of primary, secondary and tertiary schools.
LED belongs to the LLETRA consortium, formed by research groups on language education.