Increasing global digitalization is changing the everyday language skills required to participate in society, to carry out professional activities, and to take advantage of educational opportunities. As a result, new linguistic and digital competences are required for migrants. At the same time, digitalization offers new potential for learner-oriented language learning. In this article, we compare the results of two studies on teachers of adult multilingual migrant learners. These teachers instruct learners at different levels of literacy and with varied prior formal learning experiences. Both studies are situated in the German education system. The results illustrate how teachers and learners can work together using digital technologies to promote language learning. We explore the opportunities for effective, multilingual, and motivating language learning, as well as the challenges faced by learners and teachers, pointing to the need for further training in digital technology for both groups.

Migrants encounter multiple challenges, such as learning new languages and adapting to a new life. While digital technologies help them learn, limited research has been conducted on their digital skills development. In this article, we report on migrants’ digital skills development while learning language through culture using a web app developed by an EU-funded project that aimed to promote social cohesion through a two-way exchange of knowledge and skills. Forty-six migrant and 43 home community members in Finland, Spain, Türkiye, and the UK participated in intercultural and intergenerational pairs to engage with and co-create interactive digital cultural activities in multiple languages. Participants’ digital, linguistic and cultural gains were measured before and after the workshops. We report on participants’ digital skills, measured by a digital competence self-assessment tool developed based on DigComp, and interviews with the participants. Quantitative data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Qualitative data were analysed deductively using the categories of the DigComp framework. Findings indicate statistically significant improvement in migrants’ self-reported digital skills. Highest gains were in the competency area of digital content creation. Comparison of migrants’ digital skill development with that of home community members did not show any statistically significant differences, supporting our argument against the deficiency perspective towards migrant populations. Interview data suggested overall positive evaluations and highlighted the role of the web app instructions for content creation. We conclude with suggestions for further research and argue for inclusive pedagogies, emphasising how both community members learned from and with each other during the workshops.

While previous studies in computer-assisted language learning have extensively explored sociolinguistic factors, such as cultural competence, important psycholinguistic factors such as online L2 motivational self-system, L2 grit, and online self-regulation in relation to virtual exchange (VE) have remained widely unexplored. To address this gap, a study was conducted with 92 Spanish English as a foreign language learners who exchanged language and culture with Cypriot and Irish students and responded to questionnaires adapted for the study context, as part of the SOCIEMOVE (Socioemotional Skills Through Virtual Exchange) Project. The partial least squares structural equation modeling approach showed that language learners who set positive personal goals for the future and evaluate their current learning progress in VE can regulate their learning in it. Interestingly, the sign of authenticity gap was found in the study context, since learners’ motivation to learn in VE was higher compared to their previous language learning contexts, resulting in more effort and consistency of interest in setting their goals, evaluating their progress, and asking for help from others. Furthermore, learners’ L2 grit moderated and mediated the correlation between learners’ online motivation and online self-regulation, indicating that VE success requires long-term perseverance of effort and consistency of interest. Accordingly, a new conceptual framework for VE was developed. In addition, one of the main implications is that teachers who employ VE should focus more on learners’ current needs and the goals they wish to achieve when exchanging information rather than only focusing on their accomplishments based on the course syllabus.

The past few years have witnessed an emergent growth of both academic and practical works on English medium instruction (EMI) teachers' professional development. This paper presents a critical analysis of 30 empirical studies on EMI teacher development in a wide range of higher educational settings from 2018 to 2022. Through a systematic process of paper selection and review, we have identified three general routes to EMI teacher development, namely: (1) formal training activities; (2) opportunities for teacher collaboration; and (3) self-initiated practices. For each route, we presented a critical appraisal of their design and implementation, as well as reported gains and challenges. Meanwhile, we also conducted a critical analysis of the methodological issues pertaining to the selected papers. Overall, we argue that EMI teacher development in higher education is largely construed as a hybrid, contested, and transformative enterprise featured by EMI teachers' constant boundary-crossing at different levels to seek professional growth in linguistic, pedagogical, cultural, and psychological domains. During this process, EMI teachers may encounter conflicted dispositions, power asymmetries, and individual contradictions. Such a process thus requires EMI teachers to rethink, reexamine, and reflect critically on their accustomed preconceptions and practices, in order to facilitate transformation and achieve sustainability in the long run. The review also presents implications for EMI teachers, teacher educators, policymakers, and researchers on effectively facilitating EMI teacher development in higher education.

As Kathleen Graves argues in her 2023 article, the belief that students learn best when teachers deliver a curriculum exactly as written is a common fallacy, based on an underlying assumption that ‘the institutional curriculum is the most important determinant of what happens in the classroom’ (p. 200). Graves stresses that, in reality, the institutional curriculum itself does not guarantee effective learning and that, instead, it is up to teachers to modify, adapt, or ‘enact’ the curriculum for it to make sense and work effectively in each unique context (p. 200). In our roles as academic writing instructors at a university in Japan, we are simultaneously teachers and curriculum developers. As such, we were drawn to this article and have examined how Graves’ ideas relate to our teaching beliefs and experiences. In this response article, we first discuss issues caused by an overemphasis on the institutional as well as on the enacted curricula. We then highlight the importance of building a program culture that invites open dialogue about how teachers creatively adapt a given curriculum in order to involve teachers meaningfully in course development.

The timing of corrective feedback (CF), alternatively called feedback timing, refers to the choice of a timepoint for providing corrections on second language (L2) errors or making comments on the appropriacy of L2 learners' verbal or nonverbal behaviors. A typical distinction related to the notion of feedback timing is between immediate and delayed feedback, but what constitutes immediate or delayed has been interpreted and defined in different ways. In one stream of research, immediate feedback is operationalized as feedback provided during a learning task and delayed feedback as feedback provided after a task is completed (Arroyo & Yilmaz, 2018*; Li Zhu & Ellis, 2016a*; Quinn, 2014*). One methodological variation in this distinction is interim feedback, which is provided after the first task is completed and before the second task is started (Li, Li, & Qian, under review). Interim feedback is relevant or possible when multiple tasks are performed. It refers to feedback provided during the interval(s) between tasks. Interim feedback is different from delayed feedback in that the latter refers to feedback provided after the task (if there is only one task) or all tasks (if there are multiple tasks) are completed and there is no further task performance following the feedback session. This way of conceptualizing feedback timing is based on the positioning of feedback during a task cycle, instead of the proximity to errors. Another way to examine feedback timing is to distinguish feedback provided immediately after an error is made and feedback delayed until a later time in the instructional cycle, such as one week later (Lavolette, Polio, & Kahng, 2015*). In this case, both immediate and delayed feedback can occur either during or after the completion of a learning task. A third way is to define feedback timing options in terms of their relation to instruction, namely whether feedback is provided immediately after explicit instruction or at a later stage after learners complete some practice activities (Fu & Li, 2022*). It should be clarified that this way of operationalizing feedback timing is markedly different from that in other studies in that it focuses on feedback's relation to instruction instead of errors. To conclude this section, it is necessary to point out that the conceptualization and operationalization of feedback timing should be reconsidered in L2 research. Feedback timing is not merely a matter of the length of interval or the distance between errors and feedback, and other parameters of the instructional system where errors occur are also involved or relevant, such as the distance between feedback and instruction, the positioning of feedback in a task cycle (such as within, after, or between tasks), and so on. These parameters are important because they contribute to the effectiveness of different timing options. Despite the variation in the operationalization of feedback timing, we argue that it is a unified construct that is theoretically justifiable, empirically examinable, and pedagogically valuable.

This paper shares a heuristic to support thinking about meaningful transformative education within the context of the contemporary environmental and social crisis. We describe the context of this work and explore the epistemological foundations for this model, which has been evolving and guiding our research and teaching and which underpins the six qualities of meaningful transformative education. The qualities are being open to alternative visions of the future and alternative approaches to education, accepting and embracing complexity, incorporating multiple types of knowledge, reorienting towards justice, developing ecological worldviews and supporting students to bring about systemic change. We also present a series of illustrative vignettes, informed by real-world practices of schools in England, which bring these qualities to life. The vignettes and subsequent discussion highlight possibilities and challenges for enacting a meaningful transformative education in schools.

Spain’s greatest modern philosopher, José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955), wrote about many aspects of education including its aims; the education of children, nations, and elites; types of pedagogy; the reform of the university; and the challenges facing educators in an era of “triumphant plebeianism.” The article examines all aspects of Ortega’s educational thought, with a particular focus on his ideas about elites and their education, drawing on writings unavailable in English, including texts not published during his lifetime. At the heart of his writing is a vision of the qualities needed to enable individuals to make what he called a “project” out of their lives along with a powerful advocacy of the non-utilitarian and Socratic pedagogies that would help achieve that vision. The article looks at the balance of radical and conservative elements within Ortega’s educational thought and its relation to earlier “progressive” thinkers, and concludes with an evaluation of his legacy.