Connecting Worlds: Technology and Language Learning
Thoughts and Discussions on the Future of Language Teaching and Learning with Technology
Daniel Cassany
Christian Ollivier
Esperanza Román-Mendoza
Thoughts and Discussions on the Future of Language Teaching and Learning with Technology
Daniel Cassany
Christian Ollivier
Esperanza Román-Mendoza
Thoughts and Discussions on the Future of Language Teaching and Learning with Technology
Daniel Cassany
Christelle Combe
Esperanza Román-Mendoza
Editors: Fernando Trujillo, Agustín Garmendia, Manuela Lara
Project Manager: Pilar Puyana
Editorial Development: Pablo Garrido, Maria Jesús Abilleira, Pilar Puyana
Cover Design: Laurianne López
Layout: Laurianne López, Pablo Garrido
Proofreading: Pilar Puyana
Credits: p. 6 courtesy of Daniel Cassany; p. 12 courtesy of Christian Ollivier; p. 18 courtesy of Esperanza Román-Mendoza
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© Los autores y Difusión, S.L. Barcelona 2022
North American Edition: 2024
SKU: 8436016735926
Dear Reader,
At Klett World Languages, we share a profound passion for the transformative power of languages, and we are thrilled to connect with you on a subject that is both timely and vital—Technology and Language Learning.
In the face of the "digital tsunami" brought on by the rapid advancements in artificial intelligence and the dramatic changes brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, all stakeholders in the education sector—administrations, schools, teachers, students, families, publishers, and more—must take a moment to step back from the chaos. This pause allows us to understand the breadth of these changes, assess their impact, and, most importantly, reflect on the future of language teaching and the role of technology and AI within it. This reflection is crucial because the sweeping digital wave has abruptly altered our practices. While we've admirably adapted, we may not have had enough time to consider if the emerging models align with our goals as educators.
We are honored to have the invaluable guidance of Fernando Trujillo, PhD and Senior Lecturer at the University of Granada, who has rigorously and generously contributed to this work from various perspectives: helping set its objectives and format, delving into the bibliography of the three participants, and coordinating the project. These specialists come from diverse sectors of education and language teaching (foreign, second, native, and heritage languages). Their extensive backgrounds as researchers and educators bring diverse, complementary, and essential perspectives to their articles.
This work aims to foster reflection and dialogue. Each article encapsulates the vision of each specialist on technology-mediated language teaching, and we encourage readers to share their thoughts with us on social media or by emailing editorial@klettwl.com
Thank you for joining us in this important conversation. Together, we can embrace the opportunities that technology presents and work toward a future where language education thrives.
We extend our heartfelt thanks to these contributors and wish you an insightful reading experience. We hope that after reading, you feel inspired to reflect and join the conversation. We are listening.
Warmest regards,
The Team at Klett World Languages
Daniel Cassany is a philologist and PhD in Educational Sciences, as well as a researcher in discourse analysis at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona). He has published more than 15 monographs on language teaching, reading and writing, such as Describir el escribir (1988), La cocina de la escritura (1996), Laboratorio lector (2019) and El arte de dar clase (según un lingüista) (2021), in addition to some 100 scientific articles and more than 50 chapters. He has been a visiting professor at institutions in more than 30 countries in Europe, the Americas, and Asia, and has collaborated with the ministries of education in Catalonia, Galicia, the Basque Country, Spain, Argentina, Chile, and Mexico. He specializes in literacy from different perspectives (critical analysis, professional discourse, education) and his current interests focus on technology-mediated language teaching and learning. He has directed 17 doctoral theses and 6 competitive research projects.
Daniel Cassany
How has language teaching changed in light of recent technological dissemination? What roles and functions do teachers and publishers need to adopt in this changing context? The first thing I would say is that this is a Copernican change, a true revolution... We have never seen a similar metamorphosis, and it appears that we have not yet reached the end zone. I feel like we are halfway through a road movie, one with an open ending... The uncertainty comes not so much from technological advances, which are more or less foreseeable, but from their social acceptance and the impact they may have on the business model or social organization, which depends on factors beyond technology and education.
If we proceed in order, technology: 1) has articulated new modes of language teaching; 2) has created leisure applications for language learning, equidistant from the classroom, gaming, and social networking; 3) has expanded the potentialities of informal learning and thereby changed the interrelationship between what happens inside and outside the classroom; 4) has created powerful linguistic resources to support daily communication, of open, constant (24 hours, 365 days) and widespread (anywhere in the world) use; and 5), as a consequence of these changes, has redefined the role of the language teacher. Talk about a party! Let's take it one step at a time.
First, we have witnessed the advent of educational modalities that were unthinkable just a few years ago. There are hardly any fully face-to-face courses or physical classrooms left that do not include any digital add-ons. Distance learning, with thick books and phone calls, or with television programs, has become obsolete. Everyday education has incorporated email, chats, instant messaging, forums, websites, social profiles and wikis, which are unlikely to disappear. The classroom has been filled with
screens (projector, laptop, cell phone) that take on different functions and complement each other. Textbook publishers have become digital content publishers and have replaced typographers, printers, and layout editors with computer engineers, video creators, and data analysts. While they continue to print books, they open platforms for every language, fully online courses for particular audiences, and multi-functional multimodal materials to complement any course.
Today we can choose between a face-to-face course (with a platform), synchronous (in real time online), asynchronous (in deferred time online), blended (combining the three previous modes) and hybrid (with online and face-to-face students at the same time). Among the digital courses we find private classes, specialized and closed courses offered by each institution, and massive courses (MOOCS) open to the world with tens of thousands of followers. The digital nature of the course itself varies dramatically, from a sophisticated alternative virtual universe, with avatars for teacher and students, to a simple collection of PDFs. Even classrooms or courses within the same institution, on its single platform, present notable differences between them, depending on the resources included by each instructor, reflecting his or her teaching style and methodological choices.
And this is one of the first consequences of this revolution: technology widens the playing field, disperses prior educational offerings, and widens the gap between the most sophisticated and the humble. The best courses, backed by a good use of technology, increase in quality even more; mediocre courses, which incorporate technology in order not to miss the innovation bandwagon, are left even further behind in the queue.
Among this great diversity, I know few teachers—and learners—who prefer to stay at home, having classes from behind the screen and always managing resources with a keyboard and mouse. Most of us prefer face-to-face, non-computer-mediated education, although we do not renounce having a little room in the cloud, be it a Moodle classroom, Classroom or something else, to organize materials, connect with all the students—and be able to check their photo to remember who's who—and supervise automatic follow-up tracking with attendance and participation graphs. Of course, digital modalities will be useful for learners who live in places with limited in-person offerings or far away from the speaking community, and globalization is a boon for them.
Synchronous learning will remain as the great educational discovery of COVID-19 isolation. It has become the preferred option for several situations: meetings with students, coordination meetings between teachers, and emergency resolution. It has also led to a sudden aging of distance learning, which has been anchored in asynchronous systems. Nowadays, who wants to learn a language without live online sessions? Very few... In the second year of social distancing, when schools were more prepared, I asked my students if they preferred to have a course with me in synchronous
or asynchronous mode, and they all chose the first option, despite being subject to a strict timetable and the fact that some in the Americas had to get up very early to keep up with the classes.
But, in spite of everything, in-person sessions continue to be the most important ones for teachers and students, the ones that solidify a course, the ones that yield the most learning. For all these reasons, I believe that in the future mixed courses will be the most common, with a core of in-person classes, a consultation platform for afterschool hours and some synchronous support sessions. It will be more complicated to manage but much more effective.
Second, numerous apps and platforms have emerged (Duolingo, Busuu, Babbel, Elsa, etc.) providing complete courses of the most widely spoken languages, with short and simple lessons, and offering basic free features as well as more advanced paid ones. They offer pre-designed tasks, instant correction, automated tutoring, some learning progression, multimodal interfaces, and amusing mini-games. You can have fun while learning tidbits of vocabulary, pronunciation or grammar, translating and playing games on your phone, all while waiting for your bus or your turn at the doctor.
They are fine! They are an interesting development. Thousands of young people have taken the plunge with them to learn distant languages. But it is not clear that they promote solid long-term learning, that they allow practice of major skills in realistic contexts, or that they can incorporate sociocultural aspects relevant to communication. They require motivation, perseverance, and self-monitoring. They may be useful for some disciplined users, but I don't see it for the majority... And there is always the uncertainty of what could happen next: for example, the famous Livemocha platform closed down suddenly in 2016 with tens of thousands of active users.
A third point is that technology has exponentially multiplied informal learning, the potential to learn on your own, without a teacher, textbook, fixed class schedules or exams or internationally recognized certificates. Today the internet offers "natural input" of the languages that deliver fan content that many people are passionate about: Japanese manga, Korean K-pop, Chinese manhua, etc. Thus, even if learning the language is not a priority, many young people watch series in the original version (perhaps with subtitles in a local language), listen to and dance salsa, sing reggaeton with karaoke apps that synchronize lyrics and music, play a video game with a foreign team or opponent, or compete in e-sports in a multimodal context that they know in detail and allow them to infer the meanings of messages.
Some studies document exemplary cases of skilled learners who become interested in a distant language due to being fans of a cultural product. They are autonomous learners, since they learn on their own; nomadic, since they migrate from one website to another, looking for what interests them; multimodal, since they learn from the graphic and specific contexts of their hobby; and cooperative, since they help each other with ethical internet use. They get to know each other through the network and
there they build their interest groups, clubs and related spaces that act as authentic language learning communities. Sometimes these informal activities run parallel to a conventional language course; sometimes they are the subject's only space for contact and learning.
It is not clear whether these informal learning opportunities are useful for all those who want and need to learn languages. On the one hand, it requires strong and continuous motivation, rooted in the personal desire to join a group (otaku, instagrammers, scanlators, gamers, tiktokers, etc.) and to create a fan identity. And there just aren't that many fans with this profile in the community. Not so long ago, if I asked a class of 50 college freshmen how many "fans" there were, only two or three students would raise their hands. On the other hand, research shows that fans who learn languages on their own have a high academic profile: they are university students, they speak several languages, they move around the web very well, they use unusual programs and resources. I don't think most students meet these requirements and can take advantage of these informal learning options.
Fourth, the digitization of traditional linguistic resources (bilingual dictionaries, grammar guides, spelling manuals) has generated much more powerful and useful equivalents (automatic translators, spell checkers, assisted editors, oralizers and transcribers, etc.). We access these resources from our cell phones and can solve everyday needs in a remarkable way: we look up the meaning of a term in a terminology database or a place name on virtual maps; we clearly pronounce an address to the navigation system; we translate the expression "a beer, please" into Dutch and the cell phone pronounces it for a waiter in Amsterdam; later we photograph the restaurant menu and translate it automatically, or we practice the pronunciation of a few words of thanks in the translation program.
In this same vein, generative AI has caused a seismic shift... ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini — or whatever comes next — are multiplying the functionalities of these tools. We are still amazed at how, in just a few seconds, they can plan a beginner's class, create an A1 level rubric for a role-playing game between a waiter and a customer, draft a B2 level essay using vocabulary on holistic living, prepare a cloze exercise, or generate a multiple-choice quiz about collocations with three distractors per question. Of course, you need to know how to give the appropriate prompts, and for that, you need to know terms like cloze, collocation, or distractor. You also have to be able to detect hallucinations (errors), which means we must be even more critical and smarter than before... It's not easy! But it saves us so much time! For everyone: teachers, editors, evaluators, content creators...
Currently, some students do use generative AI intelligently to learn: they converse with ChatGPT to practice their oral expression; they know how to ask the machine to explain in simple terms what they don't understand: why something is an error, what something means, etc. They have learned to trust these machines because they know
how to verify their artificial responses with more reliable external sources. They are the learners of the future, those who already know how to educate generative AI to work for them in an individualized and adaptive manner. There are still few students of this profile, but with our help as teachers, their numbers will increase in the future.
All these resources should find their way into the classroom in a natural way, to be used at the learner's convenience, without hindering the teacher's work. It makes no sense to exclude them from formal teaching. On the other hand, I believe that teachers and creators of material still have a lot of work ahead of us in transferring these resources to the classroom, in exploiting their possibilities for language teaching and learning, or in making their content didactic. As teachers, we are not so much interested in correcting texts, translating originals, or finding the correct expression as in developing protocols, typologies, and sets of exercises that allow students to take advantage of these resources to improve their language skills.
Finally, this avalanche of novelties brings about substantial changes in the teaching function. We are no longer just a linguistic model, the only native speaker that the learner can listen to, the person who holds the knowledge of the target language. We no longer work only with the textbook, with paper, cassette, and video. But I don't think we are going to disappear. Our profession will not become extinct in the short or long term, because the need for language learning continues to grow and, despite the proliferation of resources and technological sophistication, most learners cannot do it alone. They need our help.
However, our work will be very different. The proliferation of digital content significantly modifies our role. We have become content curators, mediators of this content with the students, and sociocultural facilitators, in order to introduce students to cultural products in the target language that may be of interest to them. Our task will resemble that of the family doctor who listens to the patient, chooses a treatment, explains how it should be administered, makes some general life recommendations and schedules a visit in a few days or weeks to check on their progress. We may have to specialize in one of the above-mentioned modalities: on-site or synchronous teaching, working with virtual reality or videos, tutoring students in a personalized way, etc. It is fascinating and intriguing, albeit labor intensive. I think we are fortunate to be able to work in something so ever changing and creative.
Christian Ollivier is a Professor of Language Sciences and Language Education at the University of La Réunion. His research focuses on language teaching approaches, multilingualism and its teaching methods (mainly in the field of intercomprehension), on tasks, and on the uses of digital technology for language teaching and learning. He has coordinated, and continues to coordinate, several projects on these topics, including the e-lang citizen project of the European Center for Modern Languages (on digital citizenship and language training) and the European Lingu@ num project, focused on teacher training in the design and implementation of online tasks.
Christian Ollivier
This text offers some pedagogical avenues for language teaching and learning that integrate the use of digital technologies, to be understood as a set of tools and resources available to the language learner. It is largely based on the work of the projects e-lang citizen, of the European Center for Modern Languages, and also of Lingu@num.
The first avenue has to do with the opening up of the language classroom that specialists have been talking about since the advent of the Internet and that was quickly viewed as an opportunity for learners to communicate with people outside the classroom. This openness has been achieved mainly through the implementation of "telecollaboration" projects and virtual exchanges (Belz, 2003; O'Dowd, 2018) that lead learners, wherever they are, to work on common projects or to meet people far away from them.
From a broader perspective, research over the past 20 years has focused on language learning through participation in open websites, what some refer to as digital wilds or affinity spaces (Lammers et al., 2012; Magnifico et al., 2018; Sauro and Zourou, 2019).
Researchers have shown that participation in fan fiction websites or in online games and the communication tools related to those games, to cite just two examples, has positive effects on learning the language used on these websites.
Researchers have highlighted several advantages. On these sites, learners act as users of the websites with the same rights as others or even as experts in these subjects. Their use of the language is meaningful, responds to communicative needs,
and genuinely serves to interact with others. Moreover, this participation allows learners—usually young people—to build their own identity in the target language, to engage with the language spoken by their peers—a variety that is not necessarily the one promoted by educational institutions—and to develop language competences in context. Most studies focus on the informal participation of learners in these "digital wilds." The question then arises as to how these assets can be leveraged in the context of teaching and learning.
However, limitations have also been identified by scholars. Both in the field of language didactics and outside it, some authors (e.g., Magnifico et al., 2018; Sockett and Toffoli, 2012) consider, among other things, that involving learners in participatory sites poses a risk of exposure and vulnerability or that students complete the tasks as school activities without taking into consideration the specificity of the communication on these websites.
These absolutely relevant misgivings, however, should not lead to dismissal of the opportunities and benefits entailed. Rather, it is an incentive to propose participation in a specific framework that allows for responding to the risks and constraints identified. This is what "real-world tasks" do (Ollivier and e-lang project, 2018; Ollivier and Puren, 2011): they allow learners to act as language users in authentic communicative situations and thus benefit from the advantages of participating in open pages, while providing guidance in the safe space of the classroom to prevent possible risks related to online postings.
Specifically, real-world tasks are tasks that learners perform on non-educational participatory websites, in which they act as all other users of those websites and mobilize their knowledge and competences in the target language and in the specific topics of those websites. For example, depending on the level of the learners, they can contribute to Wikipedia or publish information on Wikivoyage (an online collaborative travel guide) for tourists visiting their country, region, or city, post a recipe in a dedicated forum, share an opinion about a movie, comment on an online news article, etc.
These tasks are also grounded in the world of the classroom. The teacher—as well as the whole group—can provide support and expertise in the completion of the task. As in the case of target tasks, whose recipients are usually simulated, the teacher can propose one or more learning scenarios. To do so, teachers will put special emphasis on social interactions and their crucial importance for all human action and communication, enabling learners to develop a socio-interactional competence essential for (inter)action. In particular, they will draw students' attention to the need to learn about the social norms governing the chosen participatory website, to observe the practices of other users, the characteristics of planned posts, etc., as their compliance with the implicit and explicit social norms of the site and its users so that contributions can be received as appropriate.
Moreover, real-world tasks make it possible to work on digital citizenship (FrauMeigs et al., 2017; Ollivier et al., 2021; Ollivier and Jeanneau, 2023), one of the priority objectives of the Council of Europe and several countries around the world. Indeed, they can offer students the opportunity to participate in various communities and demonstrate their commitment to the transformation of society through civic, informed, safe, ethical, and responsible action. For example, making a hotel recommendation in a participatory travel guide or on a site such as Tripadvisor requires making decisions with a civic dimension: Should students choose an establishment belonging to a large chain or rather an eco-friendly accommodation? What impact can the information disseminated internationally have locally? Likewise, to contribute to a participatory website, it is necessary to seek and verify complementary information prior to publishing, or to post personal opinions rather than comments that have been copied and pasted from other websites. Therefore, the support offered by the teacher should also cover these essential aspects of digital citizenship.
The last aspect we will mention about the use of digital technologies in language teaching and learning is related to the development of autonomy and empowerment of the user (Ollivier, 2022). The use of digital technology, and in particular artificial intelligence tools, makes it possible to carry out activities in several languages that could not be done by mobilizing internal resources alone. For example, with little or no knowledge of a language it is possible to, thanks to AI-based machine translation, access numerous documents produced in that language. A spelling and grammar checker can help to identify and correct errors, a rephrasing tool can help to better understand a text, and so on. It all depends on one's ability to make appropriate use of these tools. For example, the suggestions of several spell and grammar checkers or the revisions provided by AI tools can be compared with each other and with the original text. The suggestions of automatic correctors should be chosen thoughtfully, and the proposed explanations should be consulted. Therefore, supporting learners on their way to becoming autonomous language users also means helping them to know how to use digital technologies to meet the challenges that their linguistic knowledge alone would not allow them to overcome.
This forces us to question the notion of linguistic competence and, therefore, the objectives of language teaching and learning, as well as assessment. Do we seek only the development and evaluation of the individual's language skills or also the autonomy of the user, including the informed and critical use of external resources (especially digital ones)? In this case, we believe it is necessary not to neglect the development of a critical view of the use of technology.
The learner should be aware of the repercussions of their use of digital resources in languages (which tools can tend to standardize), in their attitudes toward languages, in their motivation to learn them and, ultimately, in their relationship with others, which can be greatly affected by the means and tools of communication chosen.
Belz, J. A. (2003). From the special issue editor. Language Learning and Technology, 7(2), 2-5. http://llt.msu.edu/vol7num2/pdf/speced.pdf
Frau-Meigs, D., O’Neill, B., Soriani, A. & Tomé, V. (2017). Digital citizenship education. Overview and new perspectives. Council of Europe Publishing. https://rm.coe.int/prems187117-gbr-2511-digital-citizenship-literature-review-8432-web-1/168077bc6a
Lammers, J. C., Curwood, J. S., & Magnifico, A. M. (2012). Toward an affinity space methodology : Considerations for literacy research. English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 11(2), 44-58.
Magnifico, A. M., Lammers, J. C., & Fields, D. A. (2018). Affinity spaces, literacies and classrooms: Tensions and opportunities. Literacy, 52(3), 145-152. https://doi. org/10.1111/lit.12133
O’Dowd, R. (2018). From telecollaboration to virtual exchange: State-of-the-art and the role of UNICollaboration in moving forward. Journal of Virtual Exchange, 1. https:// doi.org/10.14705/rpnet.2018.jve
Ollivier, C. (2022). Empowerment: Contraintes socio-interactionnelles et stratégies. Recherches en didactique des langues et des cultures – Les Cahiers de l’Acedle https:// journals.openedition.org/rdlc/
Ollivier, C., & e-lang project team. (2018). Digital literacy and a socio-interactional approach for the teaching and learning of languages (C. Jeanneau, Transl.). Council of Europe Publishing. https://www.ecml.at/Portals/1/5MTP/Ollivier/e-lang%20EN.pdf
Ollivier, C., Jeanneau, C., Hamel, M.-J., & Caws, C. (2021). Citoyenneté numérique et didactique des langues, quels points de contacts ? Lidil. Revue de linguistique et de didactique des langues, 63. https://doi.org/10.4000/lidil.9204
Ollivier, C. & Projet e-lang. (2018). Littératie numérique et approche socio-interactionnelle pour l’enseignement-apprentissage des langues. Editions du Conseil de l’Europe. https:// www.ecml.at/Portals/1/5MTP/Ollivier/e-lang%20FR.pdf
Ollivier, C., Jeanneau, C., & e-lang citizen team. (2023). Developing digital citizenship and language competences (C. Caws, Trad.). Council of Europe. https://www.ecml.at/ Portals/1/documents/ECML-resources/e-lang-citizen-EN.pdf
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Sauro, S. & Zourou, K. (2019). What are the digital wilds? Language Learning and Technology, 23(1), 1-7. https://doi.org/10125/44666
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Esperanza Román-Mendoza holds a PhD in Spanish Language and General Linguistics and is Professor of Spanish Linguistics at George Mason University (USA). Her areas of specialization are e-learning, distance education, and teaching Spanish to heritage speakers in the United States from the perspective of critical pedagogy. She has published books and articles on different aspects of the incorporation of technology in teaching and teacher training and has participated in the preparation of digital and print teaching materials for Spanish, German, and US publishers.
Esperanza Román-Mendoza
We live in a technological world. Our entertainment, our travel, our access to information, our politics, and our economy have long depended on technology to function effectively. Indeed, to some extent, it could be argued that the economic wellbeing enjoyed by certain countries—or parts of their populations—depends on the quality of access they have to technology and how integrated it is into their societies. In the field of education, we face a similar situation, since for decades we have been witnessing the incessant introduction of digital technologies that promise to eradicate every ill of the educational system. However, this technological permeability, both in the field of education and beyond, carries with it the risk that citizens will become less and less aware of the extent to which technology influences their perception of the world and their confidence in having the ability to change it. Moreover, the conditions imposed by the global technology market and the companies behind it often pose an obstacle to identifying other fairer and less mercantilist ways of using technology for the benefit of society (Selwyn, 2014). Aware of these dangers, critical digital pedagogy aims, on the one hand, to raise awareness of and fight against the negative effects that technological ideologies have on education and, on the other hand, to facilitate technology to become an appropriate means to ensure that education shines a light on and acts against all kinds of social injustice.
Critical digital pedagogy is related to critical pedagogy, that is, a series of pedagogical trends inspired by the teachings of the Brazilian pedagogue Paulo Freire, which advocate that education should be a transformative act emanating from awareness of the oppressive conditions that exist in society. The critical pedagogy of Freire and
thinkers such as Lilia Bartolomé, Antonia Darder, Henry Giroux, belle hooks, Donaldo Macedo, and Peter McLaren constitutes an indispensable foundation for teachers who consider themselves innovative and committed to society (see, e.g., Darder, 2017; Freire and Macedo, 1998; Giroux, 2020; hooks, 2010; Macrine, 2020; and McLaren 2015). But, in general, critical pedagogy has been interpreted and used in a very partial way, since in the educational world it is not always considered appropriate to mix didactics and sociopolitics. Some teachers completely reject this "revolutionary" vision of education, while others doubt that their courses will be able to contribute to creating a more just society. To some extent, teachers have internalized, consciously or unconsciously, the discourse and practices of an educational system in which the only possible learning objectives must be those that can be assessed in a standardized way and whose results are assumed to manifest themselves homogeneously and simultaneously among all individuals following a given course. Teachers have accepted that school and university are places where students develop skills that will enable them to successfully perform their future role in the workforce and not so much places from which they can exercise their agency to analyze, understand, and improve the society of which they are already a part. Under this conception of the teaching and learning process, it is logical that the only role given to technology is that of an instrument to perpetuate traditional methodological practices, using its potential exclusively to perform certain tasks of the teaching and learning process in an automated manner, without reflecting on its biases or attempting to use it to achieve pedagogical goals whose impact on education and society may not be completely measurable. However, another type of technopedagogy is possible and indispensable. Given its eminently transformative character, critical digital pedagogy is concerned both with the ethical aspects of incorporating technology into the teaching and learning process and with promoting its implementation beyond a mere solutionist and short-term perspective (Stommel et al., 2020).
But how does critical digital pedagogy come to fruition in the field of second language (L2) and heritage language (HL) didactics? The options are wide ranging, although many aspects related to this discipline are often not perceived as problematic or worthy of transformation. Even if they are identified as such, it is sometimes not diplomatic or strategic to try to change them. For this reason, it is common to find critical technopedagogical proposals that do not go beyond the most basic and obvious, but not easy, methodological and content aspects, such as implementing technology to introduce new topics in class programs and textbooks, to make previously unrepresented voices visible, to respond to the needs of minority groups, such as heritage speakers of Spanish in the United States, or to highlight situations of social injustice in countries where the L2 or HL is spoken (King Ramírez et al., 2021). Most of these initiatives successfully undertake the awareness, visibility, and reflection phases of critical pedagogy, using various digital technologies, such as discussion forums, individual and classroom diaries, or collaborative annotated readings. However, they
do not succeed in carrying out the transformative action phase, either because they do not consider it a fundamental part of the learning process, or because the digital spaces and strategies for taking action usually require a greater socio-educational commitment and a fairly sophisticated critical digital competence.
However, technology facilitates the development of all components outlined in the model proposed by critical pedagogy. For teachers, digital spaces such as social networks and learning communities facilitate access to ways of understanding the object of study—language, linguistics and the methodology of teaching them— different from their own, making it possible to raise awareness of approaches that were not covered during their training period or that have evolved since training took place. Observing the pedagogical assumptions and discussing the methodological practices of people who teach in other learning ecosystems also favors reflection on one's own beliefs and opens the way to transformation. Likewise, the online presence of professionals from other fields facilitates interdisciplinary permeability, a basic requirement for understanding the complex world in which we live. The following list, which does not pretend to be exhaustive, includes some of the many issues worthy of reflection and action concerning classroom management, teacher and student motivation, the subject matter, materials, assessment of learning, and extracurricular and extramural opportunities for language learning (for a more exhaustive description of the need for a critical approach to these issues in the field of language teaching, see, e.g., García Guirao, 2021; Nieto, 2017; Reagan and Osborn, 2021; and Wassell and Glynn, 2022).
Classroom management
– Power relations within the classroom and the educational institution
– The influence of social status and cultural "capital" of teachers and students
– Teachers' and learners' beliefs about what it means to learn a language and how best to do it
– The use of L1 in the classroom and for communication with the student body
Teacher and student motivation
– Native and non-native teachers
– Conditions of the working and learning environment
– Evaluation of the teaching activity
The discipline of teaching Spanish as L2 and HL
– The importance of standardized and stigmatized varieties of the language and the relationship between them
– The centrality of communicative aspects as understood from the perspective of the standardized language
– The role of the standard and of the linguistic and curricular "authorities"
– The role of authentic Spanish
Materials
– The role of the textbook
– Addressing social justice issues
– The decolonization of the curriculum
– Representation of women, men, and non-binary people
– The presentation of L2 and HL cultures
Learning assessment
– Overemphasis on correctness and incorrectness
– The impact of grades on subsequent student performance
– The validity of standardized tests
Extracurricular and out-of-class activities
– The real scope of service-learning
– Unequal access to internships in professional settings and study abroad placements
The same digital spaces that allow us to observe methodological proposals and theoretical constructs other than our own can also be used to highlight and support voices, both of other teachers and of students and minority speakers, that have traditionally been marginalized from the academic discourse of the discipline and from the institutions and companies that regulate teaching and learning content. Using freely accessible publishing spaces and open educational resources to echo these marginalized conceptualizations is one way to increase their presence in the academic discourse and thus counteract the effects of the prevailing power structures in the discipline.
Finally, technology not only serves to raise awareness and visibility of all of the above, but can also be used as a tool for action. At the professional level, teachers can actively contribute to campaigns that, for example, aim to improve the employment situation within the profession or collaborate in the creation of teaching materials that are more inclusive. Teachers can also play an active role in denouncing discriminatory practices related to the language they teach, in addition to advocating for models of rational dialogue and setting an example of digital citizenship in their exchanges online.
From the students' perspective, the possibilities offered by digital spaces are practically the same as those described above for teachers. Technology allows them to discover the world and for the world to take their voices into account. But, to develop this potential, it is necessary that this notion of digital spaces as a terrain for awareness,
reflection, and action be promoted from the curricula and that these leave room for students to contribute with their ways of understanding and "occupying" the language and the digital world.
Needless to say, this way of engaging in the discipline and promoting the use of L2 or HL using the digital world as a window, showcase, and stage requires special attention to be paid to the ethical aspects behind the use of technology, something that, as mentioned above, is also the object of study and praxis of critical digital pedagogy. We must start with awareness of basic issues related to the accessibility, feasibility, and reliability of technological resources. For example, it is essential to analyze who benefits from the use of technology when it is implemented as a research tool or as a teaching aid and medium. It is also necessary to consider what barriers these tools present to the different population groups that should use them and why, rather than eliminating them, technology may increase them. These issues already existed when digital technology was limited to the use of computers that were not connected to each other. However, current global phenomena such as digital platformization and the datification of society, as well as the emergence of generative artificial intelligence and the use of algorithms that determine our online behavior, have multiplied the need to be more attentive to how the technification of society does not always lead to the improvement and democratization of the spheres it has helped to automate, including education (Román-Mendoza, 2018, 2023).
In short, critical digital pedagogy in language teaching is not only about finding new spaces that allow reflection on content related to social injustices, but also about applying an eagerness for transformation to all aspects of the discipline, without ever losing sight of digital ethics and contributions from other fields of knowledge in which critical pedagogy is applied. This is a gradual but continuous task, which cannot pretend to provide definitive or universal answers. Teachers, hand in hand with students, must use the technological component to identify and reflect on the causes and current state of society's problems caused by power structures and oppression, and to provide transformative answers through social commitment, debate, collaboration, research, and teaching and administrative practice. The task is challenging but beneficial. In the complicated world in which we live, understanding educational technology from this critical perspective is not simply a possibility, but a necessity.
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The following bibliographic references focus on the scientific production of authors related to technologies and second languages between the years 2015 and 2023.
DANIEL CASSANY
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It is clear that with the “digital tsunami” that language teaching and learning have been through—and are still experiencing—those of us in the education sector (administrators, schools, teachers, students, families, publishers, etc.) need to pause for a moment. We need to step back from the chaos to understand the full extent of these changes, evaluate their impact, and, most importantly, reflect on how we want language education to evolve and the role technology should play.
In this context, and recognizing the challenges of discussing the digitalization of education without resorting to clichés or stating the obvious, we have created a space to hear from three experts.