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This paper is a critical reflection on the linguistic conservatism as found within current curriculum policies and assessment regimes in the UK, arguing that they represents a form of linguicism which serves to entrench linguistic social injustices. This paper aims to trace the “trajectory” of policy across different levels, discourses and settings, with a particular focus on how linguicism is conceptualised, defended and resisted by teachers. The author draws connections between language ideologies within policy discourse, language tests and teacher interviews.

This study adopts a critical approach to examining educational language policies and assessments. It begins with the assumption that policies and tests are powerful political and ideological tools, which can steer teachers into making certain decisions in the classroom, some of which they may not believe in or agree with. Data are drawn from policy documents, test questions and teacher interviews, with a focus on how teachers talk about language and pedagogies in their classrooms. In total, 22 teachers were interviewed, with this data being transcribed and thematically indexed.

The findings reveal how linguicism is embedded within UK education policy, and how this comes to be replicated within teachers’ discourse and practice. There are three main findings: that teachers can come to operate under a form of “pedagogical coercion”, whereby language policies and tests have a powerful hold on their practice; that teachers see current policy as championing standard English at the expense of non-standardised varieties, and that teachers often see and talk about language as a proxy for other social factors such as education and employability.

This study provides a critical perspective on language education policies in the UK, arguing for greater awareness about the nature and dangers of linguicism across all levels of policy. Data generated from classroom interaction would be a useful avenue for future work.

This paper offers an original, discursively critical examination of language education policy in the UK, with a particular focus on the current curriculum and using original data generated from teacher interviews and associated policy documents.

Discussions in contemporary spirituality frequently highlight a phenomenon of spiritual seeking; moreover, people often describe their spiritual journeys in terms of a search. This paper takes a closer look at this metaphor by presenting a study that analysed spiritual seeking and its informational features in contemporary non-institutionalised settings.

In this study, the authors conducted semi-structured interviews with thirteen spiritual teachers and speakers who were asked questions about spiritual seeking in contemporary non-institutionalised spirituality.

The authors' participants explained that contemporary spiritual seekers sought spiritual information as a result of affective, developmental and metaphysical concerns. Moreover, their analysis indicated that spiritual information-seeking behaviour incorporated practices such as prayer, yoga and meditation, and contemporary spiritual information interactions were facilitated through spiritual retreats, meditation classes, yoga classes and online social platforms.

Since the authors focused on spiritual seeking in contemporary non-institutionalised settings, their findings cannot exhaustively represent all spiritual pursuits in contemporary society. Their study (1) identifies the informational features of contemporary spiritual seeking, (2) explains spiritual seeking as an activity that may theoretically reside within a broader framework of profound information interactions and (3) helps theorise the concept of qualitative profundity in information science research.

This study provides an intuitive contextual approach for undertaking information research in under-explored domains such as contemplation and spirituality.