As increasing numbers of students disclose mental health conditions, this study is the first to examine mental health status as a critical variable in foreign language anxiety research. Using a mixed-methods approach and drawing on data from 262 languages students at the Open University, it systematically compares foreign language speaking anxiety (FLSA) experiences between students with and without declared mental health conditions. Vocabulary retrieval emerged as the primary anxiety trigger common to all learners, however, significant distinctions emerged: students without mental health conditions expressed more academic-focused anxieties, whereas those with mental health conditions faced confidence and identity-based barriers. Students with mental health challenges are less likely to speak spontaneously and undertake spoken assessments, often opting to avoid online synchronous sessions entirely, requiring different coping strategies. The findings are analysed through a Universal Learning Design lens and reveal the need for tailored support and innovative pedagogical solutions, including AI-powered practice environments and self-compassion interventions specifically designed for online language learning contexts, to address the emotional barriers faced by students with mental health conditions. The study offers broader implications for inclusive (language) course design and learner engagement.

This study examines the role of gakushū manga, or educational Japanese comics, in shaping collective memory narratives of World War II. It explores whether these works diverge from or perpetuate Japan-centric interpretations of World War II by analysing thematic trends, representational strategies, and selective memory frameworks. The findings reveal a dominant emphasis on Japanese victimhood, mainly through graphic depictions of civilian suffering, while representations of foreign victims, such as Chinese and Korean civilians, remain abstract or marginalised. The responsibility of those in positions of leadership is selectively portrayed, often exonerating figures like Emperor Hirohito, and the actions of such militaristic leaders are contextualised within broader systemic ideologies.

These manga replicate postwar narratives by foregrounding societal complicity, deliberate omission, and the delegation of the ‘Other’ to the periphery, in line with broader patterns of media-driven nationalism. They provide nuanced critiques of Japan’s wartime conduct but simultaneously maintain a selective focus that minimises Japan’s responsibilities as an aggressor. This research underscores the need for a balanced collective memory to foster reconciliation and a more inclusive understanding of wartime legacies in East Asia.

In this paper, we explore the challenges and possibilities of environmental teacher education in the unravelling of a metacrisis. Drawing from multiple perspectives from post-growth literature, environmental sciences, political ecology and philosophy of education, we argue for the need to navigate complex environmental issues through simple yet profound narratives, what we term simplexity. As environmental educators working in the Pacific Northwest, we reflect on our distinct positionalities to propose five pedagogical touchstones that bridge the gap between overwhelming complexity and oversimplification in teacher education. These touchstones include: (1) challenging nature – culture divides and acknowledging alternative ontologies, (2) countering pessimistic views while fostering post-growth imaginaries, (3) confronting the Great Acceleration and ecological overshoot, (4) recognising power dynamics and colonial legacies in metropolis-periphery relations and (5) engaging with the aesthetic and embodied dimensions of climate disasters. Our framework seeks to propose pedagogical openings for teacher educators to cultivate agency and critical hope in environmental teacher education.

The Sundarbans in the short stories by Dalit writer Shyamal Kumar Pramanik is not some geographical setting but is instead a living environmental being that reinvents the relationship between man and the nonhuman world. Dalit, a word translating to “oppressed” and applied to groups that were traditionally marginalised by the caste system of India, becomes a key category through which Pramanik explores the ethics of survival, belonging and ecological resistance. This paper argues that the mangrove forest in Pramanik’s narratives such as “Life in the Forest” and “In Dakshin Rai’s Land” operates as a responsive vegetal agent that shapes the social, ethical and ontological dynamics of forest life for marginalised communities. Drawing on Michael Marder’s Plant-Thinking (2013), J. C. Ryan’s (2018) botanical imagination, Jeffrey T. Nealon’s Plant Theory (2015) and Matthew Hall’s (2011) articulation of vegetal life as a moral force – this paper develops the concept of “Dalit Botanics” – a term for a theoretical framework that understands forest life as a pedagogical and ethical system in which trees act as epistemic agents, to theorise the Sundarbans as a sentient pedagogical ecology and to examine how caste and plant life co-constitute each other in Dalit experience.

Humans possess the capacity to make sense of stories unfolding across different and difficult times with nuanced understanding and to unlearn and relearn what once seemed familiar. All human beings are storytellers, and the narratives of minorities deserve recognition and value within Westernised contexts. Drawing on sociocultural perspectives and employing a narrative inquiry approach, I share stories from my lived experiences as a former graduate student and current educator. These stories focus on pedagogical practices, dynamic identity formation and reflective engagements with place as valid and vital ways of knowing, doing, being and becoming. I highlight how choice often entails challenge, how agency and struggle can be intertwined with empowerment, and how marginalisation can coexist with celebration. This inquiry aims to reveal the layered complexity and sometimes paradoxical dimensions of learner and teacher identities within the assemblage of learning and teaching in higher education.

Native forests in Aotearoa/New Zealand are at significant risk from the plant diseases myrtle rust and kauri dieback. Mobilising for Action (MFA) was a four-year transdisciplinary research project exploring the social dimensions of these pathogens and forest health through social science, humanities, creative arts and mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge), with experts, artists, iwi/hapū (tribes/sub-tribes) and communities, empowering and supporting them in their efforts to address forest disease and promote forest health. A waka houora (double-hulled canoe) framework guided MFA to enable Western knowledge systems to operate alongside mātaurangā Māori, allowing for collaboration, cross-cultural learning and Indigenous empowerment through artistic research and related approaches. We propose that through various creative arts approaches, MFA built relationships and partnerships between Māori and other cultures, people and forests and disciplines, in addition to developing novel research methods in forest health through storytelling and narratives, offering new possibilities in critical forest studies and care.

Martuwarra the Fitzroy River, is a living entity encompassing law, values, ethics and virtues who has laid the foundation for learning and self-regulation. Martuwarra foster peace, harmony and balance within a water system covering 93,829 square kilometres of the Western Australian Kimberley region. However, climate uncertainty as part of the unfolding metacrisis demonstrates the limitations of decades of colonial invasive development in the Kimberley. In this paper the authors illustrate Traditional Owner water knowledge, science and lived experiences as managers of the catchment from the beginning of time. Traditional Owner knowledge and practices, fine-tuned over thousands of years, carry water governance and management through First Law, the law of the land and not man. The authors advocate for this ancient knowledge to be learned by fellow citizens in the region, governments, industries and other parts of Australia, as it is essential to modernity. They propose a bicultural and bioregional governance model to create a better future for the greater good of all.