Rowland is a linguist by academic training with a research interest in language acquisition and language teaching/pedagogy. His DPhil programme is jointly funded by the Clarendon Fund and the Jesus College Old Members Scholarship.
Prior to moving to Oxford, Rowland spent three years at the Centre for English Language Communication (CELC), National University of Singapore teaching an academic writing module for undergraduate students in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. He also taught several English language and communication courses at both undergraduate and graduate levels during his time with CELC.
For his DPhil project, Rowland will be critically examining issues of authenticity and normative influences in the teaching and learning of English in classrooms in the Philippines. He aims to engage in highly transdisciplinary research work and draw his philosophies, conceptual knowledge, and methodological considerations from sociolinguistics, second language acquisition, applied linguistics, and educational research. As both teacher and researcher, Rowland believes that teachers and teacher educators should take on the mantle of leadership in educational research. Also, he champions the use of reflective teaching, experiential learning, and other praxis-based approaches to academic research and professional teaching development.
Publications
Imperial, R. A. (2014). Lexical variation in Philippine English: The case of deontic MUST and HAVE TO. Philippine Journal of Linguistics, 45, 1-18.
