Learning to write Scots: a school ethnography of Scots literacy development

Scots is one of three indigenous languages in Scotland, alongside English and Gaelic, spoken by 1.5 million people (National Records of Scotland 2011). Historically, Scots was excluded from formal education, but since the launch of a Scots qualification in 2014, the language is now taught in a growing number of schools.

Findings from a school-university research partnership into the use of Scots show that lack of a standardised orthography, lack of exposure to written Scots, teacher attitudes, and lack of confidence in writing Scots are factors that influence Scots literacy development.

This research was undertaken in 2018–2019, at Banff Academy in North-East Scotland, where Scots is spoken by approximately 50% of pupils. I used Participatory Action Research and Linguistic Ethnography (Creese 2010; Shaw, Copland, and Snell 2015) as a method and theoretical framework to explore attitudes towards Scots, set within a broader language policy framework. Data from ethnographic interviews with pupils, teachers and Scots language experts suggests that innovative pedagogical approaches can stimulate students to develop positive language attitudes and language awareness and that improving language attitudes can influence linguistic behaviours. These approaches to creative language teaching could be applicable in other regional or minority language contexts.