Introduction

Significant numbers of research projects on linguistic variation and change in English have focused on the language of adolescents, who are often seen as the driving force behind the propagations of linguistic innovations (see, for instance, Cheshire 1982a; Eckert 2000; and Moore 2003). Young people, therefore, bring into the classroom a wide range of linguistic forms, some of which may be established and stigmatised, while others may be emergent and not yet subject to overt evaluation. This fact has long been recognised by educators, yet there is often a lack of consensus as to how best to treat dialect variation in the classroom. Furthermore, the relationship between variation in English and educational policy and practice must always be seen in a political context. This manifests itself in a number of different ways: for example, in the debate on African American English in schools in the United States, or in the treatment of non-standard accents and dialects in the development of a national curriculum in England and Wales. In what follows, I address some of the ways in which research into variation in English has helped to inform aspects of educational policy in different parts of the world, as well as some of the ways in which a lack of understanding about the nature of variation (as a consequence of the marginalisation of the study of linguistics in the classroom) has caused significant problems for government, teacher, parent and student alike.