Professor Gregory Hadley shortlisted for British Council ELT resources award

Kellogg Visiting Fellow, Dr Gregory Hadley, and his co-author Dr Andrew Boon are among the six finalists for the British Council’s prestigious ELTons Innovation in Teacher Resources Award for their book Critical Thinking (Routledge, 2023).

With fake news and untrustworthy sources in the modern multimedia landscape, today’s language learners face all kinds of deceptive messaging. Critical thinking skills are vital not only in one’s native language but also when learning a new language to decode meaning. Written with the language teacher in mind, the book provides a springboard for teaching critical thinking skills in multicultural and multilingual classrooms, providing an invaluable resource for teacher-directed classroom investigations and graduate dissertation projects. Critical Thinking empowers language teachers with a dynamic framework to develop critical dispositions, identify faulty thinking and encourage clear communication. It supports teachers to encourage critical thinking skills in explicit, systematic ways during their lessons and offers methods for investigating the impact on their learners. Suitable for graduate students, in-training teachers, and language curriculum developers interested in purposeful applications of critical thinking pedagogy for the second-language classroom, this volume presents classroom activities, suggestions for lesson planning, and ideas for researching the impact of critical thinking activities with second-language learners.

The British Council’s ELTons shine a spotlight on innovators and experts across the English language teaching (ELT) sector through global awards and celebrate those who are finding ground-breaking initiatives and products. As part of the ELTons Innovation Awards, the Innovation in Teacher Resources award recognises innovation aimed at supporting English language teachers around the world to achieve their goals and might include training courses and materials, reference publications intended specifically for teachers and online resources to support teaching activity. This year, the awards attracted over 200 entries from Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas, spanning the different needs of English language learners at every age, in diverse contexts.

Gregory Hadley is a Professor of Applied Linguistics and Cultural Studies in the Department of Humanities at Niigata University, Japan, and specialises in the applications of Grounded Theory research methodology. He received a nationally-funded Japanese grant for developing a grounded theory on the social processes related to Extensive Reading in Second Language Classrooms.

With the award ceremony in November 2024, we congratulate Dr Hadley and wish him the best of luck.

Watch a video description of the book in this 30-second video.