Dr Angela De Britos

Senior Teaching Fellow

Strathclyde Institute of Education

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Personal statement

Prior to moving into academia, Angela taught in numerous schools with a variety of age groups in Scotland, England and Spain. During her time in school, Angela led successful European projects, established links abroad, mentored Language Assistants, and took part in teacher exchanges and educational visits to Barcelona, Cyprus, Finland, France and Lithuania. Awarded 'Advanced Skills Teacher' status in 2007, she then became a Local Authority advisory teacher for languages and later led the Ethnic Minority Achievement Service.

Before joining the University of Strathclyde, Angela worked as a lecturer in primary education at the University of St Mark & St John, Plymouth where she was also responsible for the early career development of NQTs. Angela completed her Masters research which focused on how primary teachers and senior leaders can successfully embed best practice in modern languages. 

Angela's PhD research investigated the experiences of bilingual children and their families in Scotland. It revealed the importance of bilingualism and biculturalism in their lives and the impact of this on their social, emotional and communcative development, especially for non-European families. Angela speaks Spanish at home and raises her children bilingually. 

Angela leads the MEd Education Studies course and teaches on a variety of modules across undergraduate, PGDE and postgraduate courses. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She is interested in supervising postgraduate students (Masters & PhD/EdD) in the fields of bilingualism, languages, literacy, culture and the teaching & learning of English.

 

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Professional Activities

Strathclyde Institute Of Education (Organisational unit)
Member
22/5/2025
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Action
Speaker
22/5/2025
Nordic Languages as Second Languages final seminar event
Invited speaker
5/5/2025
Nordic Education Research Association (NERA)
Chair
5/3/2025
Building socially sustainable societies through the linguistic and cultural integration of immigrants - seminar series
Participant
21/11/2024
FEMINIST RESEARCH METHODS ACROSS UNIVERSITIES RESEARCH PRACTICE, PROCESS & POWER RELATIONS
Invited speaker
25/4/2024

More professional activities

Projects

Building socially sustainable societies through the linguistic and cultural integration of immigrants
De Britos, Angela (Principal Investigator) Mouat, Clare (Principal Investigator)
The Nordic countries share the ambition of building socially sustainable societies, and to achieve this goal, the inclusion of newcomers – and hence the successful teaching of the Nordic languages as second languages – is a key component. The Nordic welfare societies share several unique traits regarding societal and educational structures, therefore sharing and building knowledge about the Nordic languages as second languages is highly relevant. This project brings together researchers and teacher educators from across the Nordic region who will share ongoing research and development projects from the field of second language teaching and learning in the Nordic countries through on-line seminars and a network meetings. The meetings and seminars will address the following themes: Current issues in second language pedagogies i.e. technology, translanguaging, grammar; the Nordic languages as second languages across the Nordics; the status of the Nordic languages and language policies across the Nordics; the status of minority languages/family languages; innovation in second language teaching and issues of inclusion of second language learners. The network will focus on a comparative Nordic perspective, and the outcomes will include an extensive overview of insights from current research in the Nordic languages as second languages and the different educational models and practices in use in the participating countries. The outcomes will be highly relevant for both teacher educators and their students and will be made accessible to both educators and students, but also constitute a resource for further research and network building both for researchers within and beyond the network.
01-Jan-2024 - 31-Jan-2025
International Proposal Development Funding
De Britos, Angela (Principal Investigator) Mouat, Clare (Principal Investigator)
£730 funding granted for visit to meet with international partners to prepare NordPlus funding bid.
04-Jan-2024 - 06-Jan-2024
Erasmus+ Project: Integrating primary and pre-school virtual exchange projects into language teacher education
De Britos, Angela (Co-investigator) Birnie, Inge (Principal Investigator) Mouat, Clare (Co-investigator)
Ongoing consultancy for the INVITED project (integrating primary and pre-school virtual exchange projects into language teacher education) seeks to promote the use of virtual exchange (VE) projects in primary and pre-school language education and to develop teachers' competences regarding VE by integrating VE projects with young learners into pre- and in-service language teacher education. Project members are teacher educators from five different universities in Europe in cooperation with local schools.

Outputs:
The project is going to implement a survey on teachers´ experiences with VE in pre-school and primary language education to find out about teachers´ needs.
A community for teachers interested in VE is created in the form of an e-twinning group to exchange experiences and materials and display good practice.
A teacher education module that includes the implementation of a VE project in a local school is developed, adapted for a professional development course and made available on the ESEC platform.

The project provides opportunities for pre- and in-service teachers to connect through the online community and offers support for their VE projects. It develops a teacher education module that will be part of the partners´ curricula and made available as an online training course. These outcomes will help promote the use of VE in young learner language education, develop teachers´ competences regarding VE and foster children´s and teachers´ cultural, linguistic and digital competences.
01-Jan-2023 - 01-Jan-2026
English as an Additional Language and Supporting Bilingual Learners
De Britos, Angela (Principal Investigator)
Drawing on current research evidence on the benefits of bilingualism, this short course will support teachers and practitioners to develop their understanding around the importance of heritage language and culture in teaching English as an Additional Language (EAL).

Participants will gain confidence in teaching EAL and developing literacy skills across all languages. The course offers practical strategies practitioners can use to promote bilingualism in their setting, and to engage bilingual learners and their families.

This course is suitable for the following participants: early years practitioners; primary teachers; secondary teachers; and headteachers

I delivered this two-part CLPL course to eight teachers from West Partnership LAs.
21-Jan-2022 - 06-Jan-2023
“Delivering 1 + 2 Languages” – pre-service teachers’ perspectives
De Britos, Angela (Co-investigator) Birnie, Inge (Principal Investigator)
This study aims to build on a previous study conducted by Birnie (2021) to evaluate the experiences and attitudes of new entrants to the teaching profession in Scotland towards languages in order to support these students’ pre-service provision in line with the latest Scottish Government short-life working group recommendations on the 1 + 2 policy. Furthermore, this study will aim to identify the attitudes of student teachers towards languages themselves; an important indicator of how they will conceptualise this in the classroom but also their perceived confidence and competence in different languages. Where teachers feel confident and competent in the delivery of a curricular area, they are more likely to be able to deliver this successfully (Valdera Gil & Crichton, 2020) and therefore any measures that can be taken to support student teachers pre-service will impact on the delivery of this area of the curriculum in primary schools. This will guide future development on the post- and under-graduate Initial Teacher Education Programmes and provide a valuable insight into the future support needs of early-career teachers.
01-Jan-2022
Leading Learning & Transformative Practice in Colleges - with TQFE
De Britos, Angela (Co-investigator)
I was part of the course development team who designed this new programme for college lecturers.

We are excited to launch our new Teaching Qualification for College Lecturers - Leading Learning & Transformative Practice in Colleges (with TQFE). The programme, developed in consultation with Colleges and stakeholders from across Scotland, will commence with our first cohort in August 2023.

The programme aims to provide a student-centred, socially progressive and research-informed journey to enable participants to lead learning and transformative practice in Colleges. It has a clear focus on context-relevant learning, sustainability and active participation. Completion of the programme will enable participants to evidence the Professional Standards for Lecturers in Scotland’s Colleges and to register as a College Lecturer with the General Teaching Council for Scotland.

At the University of Strathclyde, we are proud to be a place of useful learning and to offer our students the opportunity to learn at a pace suited to their work and personal commitments. This programme is therefore available online, part-time over 9 or 21 months, depending on individual participant needs. Professional authentic assessment is employed (including professional enquiry and viva), working with participants to negotiate the activities most appropriate to their context. There are no traditional essays on this programme.

We will offer the qualification at both undergraduate (level 9) and postgraduate (level 11) depending on each participant’s experience and existing qualifications. Both qualifications can provide a gateway to further study, including Masters and Doctorates at Strathclyde.

A virtual launch is planned for Monday 17 January 2022 (4pm- 5pm). Please register to attend at https://bit.ly/30DdNFT Speakers will include WorldSkills Scotland and GTCS. More information can also be found on our programme’s Twitter page @StrathLLTP
02-Jan-2022

More projects

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Contact

Dr Angela De Britos
Senior Teaching Fellow
Strathclyde Institute of Education

Email: angela.de-britos@strath.ac.uk
Tel: 444 8060