Why the Futures of Language Education Must Be Examined

Abstract

Why do you teach languages? If you ask a group of language teachers, the answers will often be future-oriented. We teach foreign languages to the students so that they can access opportunities, travel to other countries, participate in various communities and build lives beyond the present moment. However, in orienting language teaching toward the future, we rarely pause to contemplate on how specific images of the future come to shape what language teaching will become. This first special issue of Language Teaching Futures provides a space to slow down and reflect on the interplay between human futures and language education. It proceeds from the recognition that futures are not neutral backdrops to pedagogical activities and educational practices, but powerful imaginaries that organize priorities, distribute values, identify desirable scenarios, and shape who language learners might become. At a moment marked by climate and geopolitical uncertainty, technological innovation, environmental crisis and linguistic inequality, futures involved in language learning and teaching matter more than any time before. Exploring those futures, critically, ethically, and imaginatively, is not speculative indulgence but a necessary and pedagogical task. This journal is founded to support that work.

References

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Conflict of Interest: The author declares no conflict of interests.

Funding: The authors received no fund for wiritng this editorial.

Data Avalability: Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.

Generative AI Use: The author did not use generative AI for wiritng this editorial.

Author Contribution: Nourollah Zarrinabadi: Writing, Recources.