XXIVth International CALL Research Conference

Sarah Mercer
Professor, University of Graz, Austria
Head of ELT Methodology

“Humanising CALL for Language Teacher Wellbeing: Why We Should ‘Care'”

Abstract

In this talk, I focus on the teachers who have traditionally been in the background of academic concerns where the focus instead tends to be on learners’ needs and wellbeing. I outline why language teacher wellbeing is not an optional extra but rather the foundation of good practice whether in CALL or otherwise. Together, we reflect critically on what wellbeing is and why we should ‘care’. We explore reasons why teacher wellbeing is increasingly under threat from changes in learner profiles, developments in technology as well as broader societal issues including teacher status and neoliberal discourses and social pressures, which ignore teacher needs. Drawing on data from studies conducted with the Graz team for wellbeing in language education, I illustrate educator concerns from across the career span in diverse contexts. The talk moves on to reflect on the implications of these issues and what it means to take a contemporary humanistic view of CALL. We discuss how technology can be meaningfully drawn upon to humanise practice and support teacher wellbeing, while remaining critically mindful of some of the commensurate concerns it poses. The talk concludes by asking the audience to reflect upon how their own research and/or practice can humanise language education, integrating technology in ways which care for the wellbeing of both teachers and their learners.

John Erni
Dean of Arts & Chair Professor of Cultural Research, Lingnan University

“AI, Cultural Authenticity, and Care: The Case of the ‘Visual Aura'”

Abstract

Artificial intelligence is no longer just a topic about language and culture; it is rapidly becoming one of their main authors, editors, and translators. For scholars of language studies, this raises an unsettling question: when words, voices, and images are co‑written with machines, what does it mean to call an utterance or representation “authentic,” or a relation “caring”? This keynote asks whether the clash between AI, cultural authenticity, and care is truly unavoidable—or whether it looks that way only because we continue to imagine “real” language as human, solitary, and unmediated. Turning to the visual language and drawing on Walter Benjamin’s reflections on the notion of “aura” as a historically situated regime of seeing, I treat the AI turn not as a mere crisis of originality, but as a reconfiguration of visuality itself—that is, of how images organize attention, attachment, and indifference, and thus redistribute care and neglect across linguistic and cultural worlds. To make this reconfiguration analytically workable for language studies, I propose a threefold model of AI-mediated visual authenticity—objectivist (referencing heritage and linguistic traditions), existential (felt experience in text and visuals), and constructivist (collective images and narratives about who “we” are)—and recast each as a way of tracking where care and neglect settle in AI‑saturated communicative worlds. Examples drawn primarily from Asian contexts illustrate how these three dimensions of authenticity are negotiated in practice, as AI‑generated images and prompts reframe which linguistic varieties, cultural memories, and affective stances are foregrounded and which are pushed to the margins. Ultimately, I argue that the key task for language studies at large is not to defend a pure, pre‑digital authenticity, but to cultivate practices of what I call careful visuality: ways of working with AI that connect our attention to how machines see and display the world to an explicit, sustained concern for how care and neglect are distributed through the visual aura.

Mirjam Hauck
Professor, The Open University, United Kingdom
Academic Co-Lead for AI in Learning, Teaching & Assessment, President EUROCALL

“Why Care Demands Criticality: Critical CALL as Critical Digital Pedagogy”

Abstract

Care without criticality risks reproducing the very inequalities it claims to address. In this contribution I will argue that genuine care in CALL contexts requires systematic engagement with issues of power, and an understanding of how our digital classrooms are connected to broader social, cultural, and political challenges. In an era of accelerating AI integration, the question is not simply whether we care, but how we care, and whether our caring practices challenge or entrench existing injustices. Critical Digital Pedagogy (CPD) provides a framework for examining these questions, and Critical CALL represents an instantiation of CPD within the learning and teaching of languages and cultures. Critical CALL takes as its premise that the world is inequitably multilingual and technologised. It demands acknowledgment that technology tools are not neutral, and that their use must be considered in the light of issues related to gender, race, social class, geography, etc. . The digital divide, the dominance of the English language, and the prioritisation of Global North knowledges constitute forms of structural carelessness embedded in language learning technologies. Caring ethically requires educators to question value-neutral claims and to systematically identify inequalities that mediate technology use. Why should we care about criticality? Because care that ignores power is potentially complicit in harm. Because wellbeing cannot be divorced from equity. Because ethical design must address epistemic justice: whose knowledge counts, whose voices are amplified, and whose are being silenced. As AI increasingly mediates learning including in CALL, Critical AI Literacy becomes essential: equipping educators and learners to identify embedded biases and leverage technologies for social justice rather than its erosion. My contribution is a call for pedagogical approaches grounded in critical consciousness and the courage to truly care in CALL and beyond.

Andy (Xuesong) Gao
Professor, School of Education, University of New South Wales, Australia
Editor-in-Chief, International Journal of Applied Linguistics

“Human‑centred Language Education in the Age of GenAI: Ethics of Care and Learner Agency”

Abstract

The rapid rise of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) presents significant challenges for language teachers, prompting a re‑examination of their professional roles and a restructuring of pedagogical relationships with learners. These technological shifts also require reconsideration of the aims and priorities of language education. In this presentation, I argue that a central goal of language education is to foster learner agency, enabling students to take ownership of their learning and navigate linguistic and life pursuits beyond the classroom. This humanistic orientation situates the ethics of care at the core of technology‑enhanced language education. Accordingly, a human‑centred approach to technology integration emphasises nurturing, trust‑building, and responsive, reciprocal relationships between teachers and learners. Language education thus becomes not only a process of developing a repertoire of communicative skills for diverse real‑world contexts, but also a process of socialising learners into becoming individuals with desirable attributes and dispositions. Ultimately, language teachers play a crucial role in supporting learners’ subjectification—helping them author their own life trajectories and act agentively in response to emerging situations in real‑life contexts beyond the classroom.

Peter I. De Costa
Professor, Michigan State University, United States
Associate Editor, The Modern Language Journal; Former Co-Editor, TESOL Quarterly;  Past President, American Association for Applied Linguistics

“Mobilizing Care and Tough Love in the Language Classroom: Using Technology to Enact Pedagogies of Discomfort To (Re)humanize Us”

Abstract

Humanizing pedagogy, as envisioned by Paolo Freire (1972), is social justice-oriented and emphasizes the importance of recognizing and respecting each person’s humanity. In that respect, such a pedagogical stance is aligned with efforts to engage in critical care and an ethics of care, as well as calls to address epistemic injustice, especially with respect to recognizing marginalized groups within school and society. Care, however, can only be administered if individuals who have been invisibilized and silenced are seen and heard. More often than not, however, issues such as neurodiversity and racism are swept under the proverbial rug because discussing these issues in the language classroom may upset teachers and learners. In my presentation, I will argue that it is our ethical responsibility to engage productively with discomforting issues in the language classroom through enacting what Porto and Zembylas (2024) have conceived of as pedagogies of discomfort. Specifically, I will illustrate how technology can be mobilized to aid in this vitally important endeavor, as we think of new ways to enlarge the CALL research agenda.