Educational systems in many nation-states continue to operate under a monolingual paradigm, overlooking the multilingual realities shaped by migration and minority communities. This neglect perpetuates educational inequities by failing to recognize students’ diverse linguistic repertoires as valuable resources for learning. Translanguaging (García, 2009) has been proposed both as a lens for understanding how multilingual speakers flexibly mobilize their languages to communicate and as a pedagogical approach that leverages these practices in teaching and learning. Building on this, Cenoz & Gorter (2021) have introduced “pedagogical translanguaging,” which systematically integrates students’ linguistic repertoires into classroom practice. Despite increased attention in research, translanguaging in mainstream education remains underexplored, particularly regarding its potential to enhance learning outcomes, foster socio-emotional development, and reduce gaps between monolingual and multilingual pupils. Moreover, many teachers regard translanguaging-based approaches as too abstract or idealistic (Ticheloven et al., 2021), raising questions about their feasibility. 

The presentation will discuss recent empirical work addressing the affordances and challenges of translanguaging-based approaches, focusing on interactional dynamics (Dekker et al., 2023; Nap et al., 2023), attitudinal dimensions (Dekker et al., 2021), policy implications (Duarte, 2022), and teacher-researcher collaborations (Robinson-Jones & Duarte, 2023). It concludes with reflections on the extent to which translanguaging-based approaches can contribute to greater equity in education.

Biography

Joana Duarte is full professor of Educational Sciences at the Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences, University of Groningen and director of the teacher education department. Her research expertise spans multilingualism and education, diversity and inclusion, global citizenship education, language didactics, and minority languages. Her work explores how learners from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds navigate educational systems and how their multilingual repertoires can be harnessed to promote equity and inclusion. Through empirical and policy-oriented research, she investigates pedagogical innovations that support minority-language speakers and aims to inform teacher education and professional development.

Xuesong(Andy) Gao is a Professor of Language and Literacy Education in the School of Education, the University of New South Wales, Australia. His research interests include language learner autonomy, language education policy, and language teacher education. He is the editor-in-chief for International Journal of Applied Linguistics (Wiley), an executive editor for Teaching and Teacher Education (Elsevier). He also edits the English Language Education Series for Springer.  

Biography

Peter Crosthwaite is an Associate Professor in the School of Languages and Cultures at UQ. His areas of research include corpus linguistics and the use of corpora for language learning (known as 'data-driven learning'), as well as computer-assisted language learning, and English for General and Specific Academic Purposes. He is the Editor-in-Chief for the Australian Review of Applied Linguistics (from 2024) and serves on the editorial boards of key journals including IRAL, Journal of Second Language Writing, Journal of English for Academic Purposes, CALL and System.

Teachers at the AI Table

Lucy Macnaught, Auckland University of Technology

With constant developments in AI tools, it is understandable for us, as TESOL teachers, to be questioning whether design and innovation belong only to the role of computer programmers. By drawing on our knowledge of language and literacy and also pedagogic practices for teaching it, I argue that we have much to offer. In this talk, I focus on three levels of contribution. At a micro level, we can create and organize metalanguage with our students and then use it for mapping the types of tasks that we want GPTs to perform. At a meso level, we can use theoretical frameworks to design AI agents (customized chatbots). For the purpose of writing development, this involves designing a layer of instructions to steer how we want a GPT to behave, such as what to identify and give feedback on. No specialized programming language, like python, is required. Instead, we anticipate students’ needs in the instructions (the system message) that we create. Lastly, at a macro level, we can draw on pedagogic models to make principled choices about where and why AI tools are integrated in our teaching. I’ll discuss examples of using GPTs and customizing chatbots for literacy development at a tertiary level. This includes opportunities for making structural changes to assessments so that AI tools contribute to the development process, and not just the tweaking of a final product. Examples focus on classes with high numbers of linguistically and culturally diverse students. These decisions about AI integration and chatbot customization are relevant to TESOL educators and researchers in a range of contexts, as we all grapple with the pace and impact of technological change.

Biography

Dr Lucy Macnaught is a Senior Lecturer in the role of Learning Advisor at Auckland University of Technology. She collaborates with faculty to teach academic literacy within coursework and research programs. Her research interests include: embedded approaches to academic literacy development, including integrating AI and designing AI agents; classroom discourse analysis; and multimodal metalanguage. Her book, Writing with Students, is published with Bloomsbury Academic and is currently shortlisted for the M.A.K. Halliday Book Prize.

Language education in a world where GenAI is everywhere

Benjamin Moorhouse, Hong Kong City University

When ChatGPT was first released, it seemed like we would have to consciously interact with GenAI chatbots to get them to do what we want. However, a couple of years later, and we are now seeing GenAI-assisted features appearing everywhere. Use WeChat, and it'll automatically translate for you. Go to Google Docs, and you’ll be asked if you’d like the text you're reading summarized. You can practically use any application or go to any website, and you’ll find some kind of GenAI there to ‘help’ you with the task. Of course, there are accuracy and other ethical issues that this may bring. However, the main question we may have as language teachers is, ‘If all these GenAI tools are here to help us do language tasks for us, how will language learners get the opportunity to be exposed to language, engage in incidental learning, and practice their language use?’
Research is beginning to show that GenAI has the potential to decrease or increase learners’ cognitive and social engagement in the process of completing tasks, as well as their opportunities for language learning. The automation of processes that would have taken mental effort reduces opportunities for language learning; however, the purposeful use of GenAI as language learning partners has the potential to increase language learning opportunities.
In this talk, I’ll problematize the current GenAI landscape from the perspectives of cognitive and social engagement. I’ll argue that language teachers have an essential role to play in guiding learners to be strategic users of AI, where they use GenAI deliberately and purposefully to assist with their language learning goals. This requires critical GenAI literacy to be part of language teacher education and professional development.

Biography

Benjamin Luke Moorhouse (SFHEA) is an Associate Professor in the Department of English, City University of Hong Kong. He has extensive experience as a teacher educator and primary school English-language teacher. He has received several teaching awards, including the President’s Award for Outstanding Performance in Individual Teaching from Hong Kong Baptist University in 2023. Benjamin’s research has appeared in international journals, including System, TESOL Quarterly, TESOL Journal, RELC Journal, and ELT Journal. He is the author of Generative Artificial Intelligence and Language Teaching (Cambridge University Press, 2025).

Featured Symposium 3: How long does it take to learn EAL alongside the curriculum?

Chair: Marg Turnbull

Please come back later for details

Honglin Chen is Professor in TESOL and Language Education at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Her research focuses primarily on three interconnected areas in language and literacy education, including writing development, English curriculum and policy, and teacher knowledge and pedagogy. She has a keen interest in the roles of metalinguistic understanding, thinking and reasoning, disciplinary literacy, and intersubjectivity in supporting writing development.

Language is central to the accumulation and communication of disciplinary knowledge, yet its role in science teaching often remains peripheral, with teachers typically acknowledging its importance, but varying widely in their confidence to teach specific language resources for science writing. The current emphasis on evidence-based literacy instruction and explicit pedagogies place renewed focus on the role of language in learning. However, this emphasis does not necessarily ensure that literacy instruction will be meaningfully integrated with curriculum learning. In this presentation, I draw on a Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) study of student writing development during the transition from Year 6 to Year 7 in Science to describe the linguistic resources developing in students’ writing at the stage and to consider how different writing experiences afford opportunities for such development.

Insights from the study are brought together with the evidence base for effective writing instruction to identify critical language resources at the transition to high school science.  Revisiting the BICS – CALP distinction through an SFL lens, I treat the everyday to technical shift as a gradient of congruence and abstraction rather than a binary, drawing on fine-grained nominal-group analysis alongside an analysis of logical resources to identify instructional priorities. The paper offers practice-focused implications for EAL/D teachers and curriculum designers to prepare EAL/D learners for the academic demands of science writing across the transition.

Biography

Emma Rutherford Vale is an experienced literacy educator with a background in EALD education.  She has worked as a cross curriculum literacy instructor, literacy consultant and teacher educator in the areas of TESOL and English language and literacy at the University of Wollongong and University of Tasmania.  Emma is currently completing her Doctoral Thesis exploring writing development at the transition from primary to high school in science.  Emma’s research interests include writing pedagogy, the role of knowledge about language in classroom instruction and language development across the years of schooling.

Biography

Erika Matruglio is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Her research explores connections between language, knowledge, and values and the disciplinary bases of these connections using the complementary theories of Systemic Functional Linguistics and Legitimation Code Theory. Her publications engage with topics such as the nature of classroom discourse, conditions which enable cumulative knowledge building, disciplinarity and the demands of writing in the disciplines.

Please come back later for details of events to be held by ACTA.

Events include

• Colloquia organised by ACTA's Teacher Education Consultancy Group. (Convenor: Ronan Kelly)
• Colloquia organised by ACTA's Adult ESOL Consultancy Group (Convenor: Helen Moore/Gillian Edmiston) 
• Colloquia organised by ACTA's Schools Consultancy Group (Convenor: Michael Michell)
• Colloquia organised by ACTA's Indigenous EALD Consultancy Group (Convenors: Helen Moore/ Liz Easton)