This book brings together studies from Georgia, Germany, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Poland, South Korea, and the UK which explore links between policy and practice in language teaching in the twentieth century. The 14 contributions set out to expand the remit of ‘grounded history’ within the field of History of Language Learning and Teaching (HoLLT) by focusing on language teaching policies and linking these to practices and to contexts, situating policy formulation in particular contexts on the one hand, and exploring the relationship between policy and practice on the other. In this sense, the book shows how the theories, policy pronouncements, curricula, textbooks, and overall teaching approaches which tend to feature in most histories of language teaching always emerge from particular, researchable contexts, and, in the other direction, are interpreted and responded to in practice, again, in particular contexts. In this way, we hope to contribute a context-based perspective that highlights diversity of practices, in opposition to received views that language teaching methodology is ‘universal’ and context-free.

Contributions by: Norman Ächtler, Tim Giesler, Stefan Kipf, Irmina Kotlarska, Joanna Pfingsthorn, Laura Pinnavaia, Annalisa Zanola, Silvia Pireddu, Sabine Reh, Shona Whyte, Sharon Harvey, Ekaterine Shaverdashvili, Nino Chkhikvadze, Kohei Uchimaru, John Michael Daniels, Robert J. Fouser