Sarah Mercer is Professor of Foreign Language Teaching at the University of Graz, Austria, where she is Head of ELT methodology. Her research interests include all aspects of the psychology surrounding the foreign language learning experience. She is the author, co-author and co-editor of several books in this area. She has served as Principal Investigator on several funded research projects, has worked on the editorial board of various journals, is co-editor of Multilingual Matters’ Psychology of Language Learning and Teaching book series, is currently president of IAPLL, and is an ambassador for IATEFL.
Language teacher wellbeing has become a core topic in language education as awareness has grown that teacher wellbeing affects not only the teacher themselves but also the quality of their teaching, relationships, and practices in the classroom. When teachers flourish, so do their learners, and everyone benefits when teachers are nurtured and happy in their professional lives.
In this talk, we will look at how teacher wellbeing can be sustained, focusing on the impact of technology especially AI inside and outside the classroom. While considerable attention has been paid to the affordances offered by AI, less attention has been paid to the effects on the human dimensions of language learning and teaching as a result of these technological developments. In this talk, we will reflect on what is special about humans, human-to-human interaction, social relationships, and humanistic values. We will consider how teaching in ways that align with humanistic values and approaches can enhance language teachers' long-term wellbeing, agency, and professional job satisfaction. We will examine evidence suggesting also the benefits for learners when the human dimensions of the language class are foregrounded. We will explore the notion of ‘digital wellbeing’ which refers to the ability to use technology and AI with intention in ways which are healthy and sustainable, considering both the short- and long-term effects of different forms of AI usage as an educator. We will conclude by considering what practical actions we can take to remain a humanistic language teacher in the age of AI in order to benefit both language teacher wellbeing and learner engagement now and in the future.
Steven L. Thorne (Ph.D., UC Berkeley) is Professor of Second Language Acquisition in the Department of World Languages and Literatures at Portland State University (USA), with a secondary appointment in the Department of Applied Linguistics at the University of Groningen (The Netherlands). His research draws upon contextual traditions of language analysis and usage-based approaches to language development. Areas of interests include formative interventions in world languages education, communication across digital media and mobile technologies, Generative AI, and Indigenous language reclamation/revitalization.
Globally, language education is widely acknowledged as being in crisis, with decreasing student interest and enrollment, fewer languages taught at K–12 and higher education levels, and reductions in funding or the elimination of language departments (e.g., Bowler, 2025). Contributing factors include the expanding role of English as a lingua franca, a broader decline in humanities education alongside increased emphasis on STEM, and rapidly improving translation technologies and Generative AI. These conditions raise questions about the sustainability of language programs and also about the purposes and practices of formal language education. This presentation argues that sustaining language education requires continued adaptation to the evolving technologies, social practices, and communicative environments in which languages are used.
Over the past two decades, research and pedagogical innovation have increasingly connected formal L2 education with interaction and learning occurring outside classroom contexts (Reinders et al., 2022; Thorne et al., 2009, 2021). Building on this trajectory, this presentation describes a 20-year program of research-informed pedagogical innovation using the metaphor of “rewilding.” Rather than treating the classroom as a self-contained environment for language development, rewilding positions instructed language learning within broader ecologies of linguistic activity. Rewilding language education (Thorne, Hellermann, & Jakonen, 2021) involves reverse engineering from studies of language use and learning in the wild to augment and restore diverse real-world activities, social contexts, and interactional affordances within instructional curricula. Importantly, these ecologies encompass the multilingual, culturally diverse, and often marginalized communicative practices that conventional curricula may overlook, making questions of participation, access, and social justice integral to pedagogical design. From this perspective, sustainability involves not preserving existing forms of language education unchanged, but continually adapting formal learning environments to changing communicative practices and sociotechnical conditions. Case studies involving mobile augmented reality, online fandom and gaming communities, and Large Language Model Generative AI tools illustrate this approach across diverse L2 and ELT contexts. Together, they position rewilding as an adaptive approach for strengthening connections between formal instruction and the dynamic social, technological, and linguistic ecologies of life beyond the classroom.
Dr Robyn Tyler is a senior researcher in the Centre for Multilingualism and Diversities Research (CMDR) at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. Her research and teaching focuses on multilingual learning, translanguaging, school language policy, biliteracy, bilingual learning materials development, language across the curriculum and research methodology. She has a keen interest in decoloniality in language and literacy theory and practice. Robyn is also a founding member of the bua-lit language and literacy collective which advocates for multilingual education and rich literacies for South Africa’s children.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/robyn-tyler-55bb1715a/?originalSubdomain=za
My presentation is inspired by recently articulated visions of more human, more sustainable and more pleasurable language education in the age of the polycrisis (Morin & Kern, 1999). Earth-centred education (Andreotti, 2022) and ubuntu multilingualism (Makalela, 2018) are two such propositions which have emerged from decolonial theory in the global South. These and other similar concepts point towards a radically different way of doing language education than that which is visible in most classrooms around the world today.
The shifting language education context I will explore is South African primary and secondary education in the de/colonial era. Despite a progressive Language-in-Education Policy drawn up at the end of Apartheid which promotes multilingualism and indigenous languages, South African schooling is beset by coloniality and Anglonormativity (McKinney, 2017). English - one imbued with the ethnolinguistic repertoire of whiteness - is the currency which is valued over almost any other quality that a school-leaver can possess. However, one decolonial crack (Walsh, 2014) which has begun to emerge since 2025, is the implementation by the national education department of Mother Tongue Based Bilingual Education in senior primary mathematics and science.
As a linguistic ethnographer working predominantly in content-subject classrooms in under-resourced schools for the past 12 years, I have met many children and teachers enacting change through heteroglossic language and literacy practices. Despite the stifling monolingual conditions imposed by department officials, standardized tests and language ideologies circulating in society, they resist through different forms of multilinguality (Agnihotri, 2025). Drawing on concepts such as identity meshing (Tyler, 2022, 2023) and (trans) languaging-for-learning (McKinney & Tyler, 2024), I will analyse examples from a young bilingual Cape Town woman, Khethiwe. Khethiwe’s oral and written multilingual meaning-making, in and out of class, offer glimpses into how to sustain and foster multilinguality and Southern ways of knowing in global language education.
