Ready for flipped foreign language teaching? Understanding K-12 teachers’ flipped language teaching readiness and its relationship with perceived anxiety and self-efficacy

In This Issue

In both the school environment and teacher education, sustainable development is usually linked to the natural and social sciences and is rarely incorporated into language education or encouraged as part of language teacher education. As more research is needed on the practical implementation of sustainable development in language teaching and language teacher education, this study elucidates Finnish pre-service language teachers’ perceptions of sustainability dimensions (i.e. ecological, economic, social, and cultural) and their role in language teaching. We used a questionnaire comprising open-ended and Likert-scale questions to examine pre-service language teachers’ perceptions of and attitudes towards themes under all sustainability dimensions, and their feeling about their ability to integrate them into their teaching. Pre-service teachers ( n = 26) recognized the importance of the social and cultural dimensions in language teaching and felt more capable of addressing personal environmental actions than global problems in the language classroom. Some pre-service teachers produced concrete practices linking sustainability issues with language teaching, but they were mostly teacher-centred. The pre-service teachers did not link equality as tightly to the cultural and social aspects of language teaching as they did in their personal lives. These findings help in developing language teaching and teacher education programmes toward the educational sustainable development goals. Moreover, the questionnaire can be used to analyse the consideration of sustainability themes in language teaching and language teacher education.

Teachers' Sense of Efficacy: An Important Factor in School Improvement

Teacher supervision plays a pivotal role in the improvement of education system and the way in which teachers and student teachers perceive it. Consequently language teacher supervisors can utilize appropriate supervisory models to keep teachers update and promote them professionally. The present study investigated the role of language teacher supervisors in student teachers and in-service teachers’ professional development in Iran. To have a representative sample, some 210 EFL teachers practicing in the secondary schools and a total of 215EFL student teachers studying English at some Iranian state and Azad universities participated in the study. A 43-item questionnaire regarding EFL teachers’ attitudes about the impact of supervisory practice on their professional development with a format of a 5-point Likert-type was distributed among them. Also, ten percent of the participants were interviewed. Then the frequencies related to each item were calculated and a Chi-Square was used. Subsequently, qualitative data were transcribed. The results indicated that in-service and pre-service teachers have the same perceptions towards the role of their supervisors in their professional development. However, according to the findings it was concluded that the models of language teacher supervision in language teacher education are different from the models practiced in in-service classes where mostly traditional models are common.

The study investigated the effect of virtual instructional tools on the learning outcomes of pre-service English language teachers in Nigerian Colleges of Education. The rationale of the study was hinged on the premise of virtual instructional adaptation in a post-OVID-19 era. The design for the study was a two- group pre-test post-test quasi-experimental design. The research design comprised pretest and post-test observations, treatment with virtual instruction and normal instruction in a non-virtual space. Using multistage sampling strategy, 100 samples were randomly selected from two Colleges of Education in Southwest Nigeria. The experimental and controls groups consisted of 50 samples each comprising 25 females and 25 males. The instruments for the study were validated achievement tests and marking guides including a test-retest reliability study with a reliability coefficient of 0.87 which was considered as moderately high for the reliability of the instruments. Two null hypotheses were raised and tested at 0.05 levels of significance using Two- Way ANOVA as statistical tools. The findings revealed that there was significant effect of virtual instructional tools on pre-service English language teachers’ learning outcomes using the pre-test mean scores and post-test mean scores. Also, the findings showed that there was significant gender effect of virtual instructional tools on the virtual learning outcomes of pre-service English language teachers’ communicative skills in English. Pedagogical implications of the findings in respect to virtual instructional tools in a post-COVID-19 era were highlighted and suggestions preferred towards enhancing pedagogical and communicative competencies of pre-service English teachers in Nigerian Colleges of Education.

The pandemic has brought online learning as the new norm in education, which invokes many issues, particularly in the quality of online education. The quality of teacher education is being questioned, particularly in imparting adequate Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK), which seems to be lacking in preparing teachers for sudden online learning. Though many studies were clustered around TPACK, there is still an unfilled gap in identifying whether the pre-service teachers are ready to teach online classes alongside their TPACK. Hence, this paper aims to determine (1) the level of TPACK and readiness and (2) the relationship between TPACK and readiness for English for Foreign Language (EFL) pre-service teachers in online learning during the pandemic. A survey was distributed to 197 EFL pre-service teachers with 35 items, in which the level of TPACK and readiness were analyzed descriptively with the mean score. The Pearson correlation examined the relationship between TPACK domains and readiness. The main findings showed that the level of TPACK and readiness of EFL pre-service teachers were high, particularly for Technological Knowledge (TK). However, the correlation results showed a weak positive correlation between TPACK domains and readiness. The highest correlation was between Technological Content Knowledge (TCK) and readiness, which is a new finding contributing to the body of knowledge. This paper implied that TPACK should also look into the online teaching readiness of pre-service teachers so that they are well equipped with the online pedagogical knowledge for effective teaching and learning.

As many EFL countries introduce digital textbooks and AI-based language education, the importance of enhancing pre-service language teachers’ Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) in language teacher education is increasingly being emphasized. This qualitative case study examined how 13 pre-service English teachers applied various elements of TPACK through their participation in a chatbot-integrated course designed to provide hands-on, design-based experience. Analysis of participants' weekly reflection journals revealed their evolving engagement with TPACK elements, Design Knowledge, and contextual considerations. As the semester progressed, the pre-service English teachers demonstrated enhanced TPACK contribution through their growing capacity to integrate technology in language instruction and deeper understanding of pedagogical implications. The preservice teachers were also able to better combine chatbot and language teaching and became more confident in situating themselves as effective English teachers through the course. The study provides a comprehensive TPACK-based framework for language teacher educators to evaluate and develop preservice teachers' technological, pedagogical, and content competencies in technology-enhanced instruction. These findings offer practical implications for language teacher educators seeking to incorporate TPACK-informed approaches in their course design and professional development programs.

Corpus technology (CT) as an effective technology for language learning is slowly being adopted by in-service language teachers. However, there is limited focus on pre-service language teachers, who first need to experience CT and gain a basic corpus literacy as learners. Therefore, this research aimed to demonstrate the learning benefits of CT to pre-service teacher and explore their intentions for future use of CT. A corpus pedagogy supported by constructivism, socio-cultural theory, and noticing hypothesis, was designed to help three-classes of pre-service ESL teachers in Chinese Hong Kong to improve citation skills using Parallel EAP Corpora. A mixed-method design was adopted by collecting data via tests, surveys, classroom interactions and interviews. The results revealed that the participants learned to use reporting verbs for citations, acquired adequate corpus literacy, positively evaluated the theory-supported pedagogy, and expressed strong intentions to use CT for learning vocabulary and academic writing, conducting research to complete course assignments, and facilitating future teaching. The findings highlight the significance of designing corpus-based learning activities through theory-supported pedagogy and reveal that introducing CT to pre-service ESL teachers who have multiple identities as language learners, novice researchers, critical thinkers, and future teachers, can have important pedagogical implications.

Rick Kern's (2024, this issue) critical engagement with the implications of technological advancements such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine translation in the postpandemic era should prompt many to reflect on the so-called "existential crisis" we face, both as language teachers and as human beings. Language teachers, like many other professionals (e.g., accountants and lawyers), may fear that they will be replaced by AI (e.g., Felix, 2020) while modern language education programs already face funding cuts in many contexts such as the United States and Australia (e.g., Gao & Zheng, 2019; Lanvers et al., 2018). For this reason, I completely agree with the premise that there is a need for language educators to identify the affordances and constraints presented by technological tools in language education. It is also critical to ascertain how we can draw on intellectual sources to help language teachers make informed use of technological tools to provide the best possible learning experience for language learners. At the same time, however, I wonder if the challenges that technological advancements present for language teachers may require more in-depth elaboration. Such an elaboration might help us better "articulate and communicate the value of language study" (Kern, 2024, this issue, p. XX) for the public and implement the pathways in language (teacher) education advanced by Kern. It should be noted that technological developments such as the rise of generative AI pose challenges for most professions. Generative AI tools have already been tested for their ability to replace humans in the fields of accountancy and law (e.g., Choi et al., 2021; Vasarhelyi et al., 2023), and language teachers may also feel their profession is at risk. A counterargument against "fearmongering" discourses about this technological development is the assertion that AI can replace human beings for the completion of individual tasks but cannot replace their jobs altogether. Indeed, professions such as teaching involve complex orchestration of multiple tasks (e.g., delivering content, facilitating thinking, and guiding and supporting learning), which is beyond the current capacity of generative AI tools. As an increasing number of tasks can be executed by these new technological means, however, the ways in which human beings are needed in these jobs are also likely to change. In the context of language learning and use, technologies such as machine translation may generate inaccurate texts, but they are sufficient for communication tasks that do not require high levels of precision. For instance, as a journal editor, I may need to look up a colleague in a Turkish university to find out whether their research background and expertise match a manuscript that needs to be reviewed. I would not be able to understand the content of this colleague's webpage on their university's staff directory, which would be in Turkish, if I did not use Google Translate in my Chrome browser. While it is possible that Google Translate would not accurately translate the entire website from Turkish into English, it would be adequate to help me to decide whether this colleague had sufficient expertise to review the manuscript. In a similar way, I imagine that hundreds of such day-to-day professional tasks do not require translations that are 100% accurate. For example, generative AI tools can help people to create texts such as letters of complaint or appreciation in different languages. Machine translation and generative AI tools can help people overcome language barriers without necessarily needing to learn new languages to complete these tasks. Most of these tasks involve the transactional use of language (i.e., the communication of information for exchange), a form of language use that has motivated many learners to learn languages in traditional classrooms. It should also be noted that machine translation and generative AI tools are undergoing further development and refinement. Kern's (2024, this issue, p. X) article suggests that generative AI tools such as ChatGPT are "harmful to a social understanding of knowledge and learning" because they do not make the sources of knowledge explicit, have "no notion of empirical truth," and "no conception of a theoretical frame" (Peters et al., 2023, pp. 14−15), and cannot apply ethical principles in the course of reasoning. Moreover, generative AI tools tend to appear to be "uncritically affirmative" (Peters et al., 2023, pp. 14−15). In my view, these issues cannot be fixed through continuous technological developments, but it is likely that generative AI tools will function as if they have appropriate understandings of empirical truth and use theoretical frameworks when presenting views on particular issues. They may also appear to have balanced views on different topics and to use ethical principles when elaborating upon these views. As an applied linguist, I cannot evaluate how well generative AI tools are "learning" and what they are capable of in terms of functionality in the future. However, it is very likely that the community of language teachers faces a crisis, as the rise of generative AI tools will lead to a worldwide diminishing of the scale of language education. Opportunities to learn languages will likely be reserved for those aiming for an expert level of proficiency and competence that enables them to outperform and manage machine translation and generative AI tools in language use; or those who are intrinsically motivated to learn languages. Will this create a world in which people are categorized into those who have the resources and expertise to manage technological tools, and those who depend on such tools? The growing inequity as a result of this knowledge gap is beyond the scope of this response, but the crisis engulfing language education has important ramifications for language teachers, which I shall now rely on Chinese cultural wisdom to discuss. The dialectical idea of "crisis" in the Chinese language "危机 wei ji" means both "danger [危 wei]" and "opportunity [机 ji]" (Wang, 2014). In the spirit of Kern's (2024, this issue) article, the crisis here presents an opportunity for language educators to rethink the values involved in the study of language and how these values can be articulated and realized. Such critical reflections and conversations will help reenergize language education with new understandings and commitments. It is my contention that the changes that must take place in language education have been well presented in Kern's (2024) article. For this reason, I will focus on the critical question of how we can "articulate and communicate the value of language study" to the public to develop a clear agenda for language teacher education moving forward. My first response regarding the value of language study against the backdrop of technological developments is that language learning needs to be promoted as a fundamentally humanistic endeavor. Many tasks involving the transactional use of language can be performed with improved functionality by rapidly evolving machine translation and generative AI tools. Although generative AI tools may appear to be increasingly humanlike when interacting with us, our deep, intrinsic needs—such as a sense of belonging, identity aspirations, and desirable attributes associated with speaking languages other than our own (such as "coolness," creativity, etc.)—cannot be satisfied by these tools. The value of language study lies in the human life journeys that language teachers undertake together with learners. I recall what my English language teacher used to say many years ago: You can live multiple lives if you learn to speak multiple languages. Nevertheless, I understand that we must develop a much more persuasive message if we are to persuade the public to value language studies. Let us shift our attention to other professions where automation can replace human beings, but human beings still play a critical role. For example, autopilot technology is already quite well developed in the aviation industry. We now have the technology to pilot a plane from takeoff to landing, yet we still rely on human pilots to operate planes. The obvious reason is that we do not want human beings to lose the essential skills and capacity required to operate increasingly sophisticated modern aircraft in complex situations. If we fully rely on automatic instruments to fly the plane, pilots may not have the opportunity to operate these planes themselves. Reliance on human pilots for the operation of aircraft helps ensure that the world still has reliable pilots if technology fails. We also want to remain the "masters" of technological tools. The same reasoning can be applied in defense of language study: It can be argued that language makes us human, and language use is an essential characteristic of our humanity. If we rely on technological tools for human interaction, we will have fewer opportunities to develop critical skills, competence, and practices for cross-cultural communication and mutual understanding. Which tasks can be replaced by technological tools that can perform them more efficiently than human beings? Which tasks can be replaced by technological tools but should be retained by human beings as essential skills? Which tasks cannot be performed entirely with technological tools but can be approached by using these tools to facilitate the growth of our skills, knowledge, competencies, attributes, and dispositions? A lack of rigorous answers to these questions will undermine the efforts of language educators to respond to the challenges posed by technological developments. Robust responses to these questions will help language teachers identify where they stand in relation to technological developments and the need for effective pedagogy. For example, generative AI tools may help us remove grammatical infelicities in our written language and improve the quality of our writing as users of English as an additional language. It is perfectly reasonable for us to use these tools to help us write texts in languages other than our own. However, this does not mean that learners should also give up learning the skills needed to notice and appropriate target language forms. Another example involves the use of technologies that may help learners to spend less time drilling and practicing their linguistic knowledge. This does not mean that learners do not need to develop the capacity and disposition needed to monitor and reflect upon their language development, either. In this way, language education researchers may now need to identify a repertoire of essential skills, knowledge, competencies, attributes, and dispositions that human beings should retain as language users, regardless of whether technological tools can replace human beings in the completion of many tasks connected to language use. For instance, language learners want to be heard and listened to, while language teachers also want to promote language learners' acquisition of linguistic knowledge and skills, as well as fostering their personal growth in teaching. In order to achieve such aspirations, language teachers and learners need to work together to find the most effective ways to develop language learners into agentic and lifelong learners who are capable of creating learning opportunities for themselves—learners who are resilient, persevering, and highly motivated; who can regulate their learning processes, and believe in their own capacity to take control of language learning (Larsen-Freeman et al., 2021). Indeed, the use of technological tools such as generative AI can give language teachers the time and opportunity to focus on the development of the list of essential skills, knowledge, competencies, attributes, and dispositions that may otherwise receive insufficient attention. The effort to identify this list of qualities addresses the critical question language educators must answer to the public regarding the value of language study. Further research is required to demonstrate the value of the essential skills, knowledge, competencies, attributes, and dispositions language learners can develop through their learning process. For instance, language learners' perception of self-efficacy, which relates to their beliefs about what they can learn and how they can manage their learning process, is essential for their development through learning both subject content and languages. While learners may develop a positive perception of self-efficacy through language learning, this can also be promoted in other arenas, such as learning mathematics or participating in sports. For this reason, I suggest that language teachers focus on the variety of skills, knowledge, competencies, attributes, and dispositions that are unique to the learning of languages, rather than more generic counterparts. As an example, intercultural communicative competence is a highly desirable attribute that language learners can develop through learning languages. At this point, it is not clear whether future technological tools will be capable of detecting and appropriately responding to subtle cultural nuances in the context of intercultural communication, but this is a valuable, essential skill for human beings to retain (e.g., Gao & Yang, 2023). When language teachers possess a list of what can be best learned through language education, we can achieve a clear articulation of the value of language study for the public. Language teachers also need this list to clarify the roles that they must perform in this brave new world. In my perspective, the shifting responses to the roles of language teachers by generative AI tools presented in Kern's (2024, this issue) article are at once deeply comforting and concerning. The article indicates that generative AI tools are learning how to respond based on the available language data at their disposal, which suggests that we are still refining our thoughts on this critical question. I can imagine that their responses will become increasingly sophisticated as language educators' engagement with this critical question deepens. At present, these responses highlight the role that teachers have in providing emotional support to language learners in terms of motivation, confidence, and engagement. Additionally, human teachers are responsive to individual language learners' needs, preferences, and styles when monitoring, regulating, and facilitating language learners' learning processes. Human teachers promote language learners' critical reflections on values and norms to develop a better sense of self and belonging toward community building. Human teachers are also believed to facilitate language learners' development of knowledge, skills, and dispositions for adaptive and creative responses in real-world environments. However, these represent patterns of responses that human beings have been producing to the question as captured and identified by the AI tools. As such, they likely reflect our limited understanding of what technological tools are capable of at present, and how they may evolve into in the future. While these responses are valuable, I also wonder if they partly reflect the wishful thinking of language educators. As generative AI tools are further refined in terms of their functionality, I imagine that these tools can perform the aforementioned tasks that have been ascribed to human teachers so far. These tools may appear to behave as if they were language teachers who attempt to provide emotional and human support to language learners; offer feedback responsive to language learners' needs, preferences, and styles; facilitate their critical skills of reflection and reflexion; and enable language learners with knowledge and skills to promote their adaptability and creativity. The fundamental difference between generative AI tools and human teachers is found at the fact that these are not essential qualities of AI tools but rather represent their behavioral functions. Importantly, these are qualities that human teachers cannot afford to lose. As a result, language teacher education programs should reorient themselves to focus on the development of these essential qualities that language teachers must offer as human teachers (Gao, 2019). While the changes induced by technological developments do not fundamentally change the roles that language teachers play in education, they do indicate that language teachers must prepare for the shifting priorities in their professional practice. Consequently, language teacher education programs must also adjust their pedagogical priorities so that they can better prepare language teachers for the need to adapt their teaching practice to the new world to come. Language teacher education programs help language teachers to develop a critical awareness of technological affordances and constraints so that they can be clear about the mission they undertake as human teachers: They need to develop the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that are essential for human beings to maintain. Without these essential attributes, humans may be unable to claim ourselves as human agents in control of our own life and existence. The humanistic aspects of language education should become more prominent as human language teachers focus on the satisfaction of language learners' intrinsic and integrative needs, while technological tools address the instrumental needs of language learners. Language teacher education programs may need to focus on developing language teachers' adequate understandings of technological tools so that they use these tools effectively in collaboration with language learners to facilitate their personal growth (Tao & Gao, 2022). Effective use of these tools will create time and space for the development of the skills, knowledge, competencies, attributes, and dispositions that have not been well addressed in traditional language classrooms, in which the main tasks of learning and teaching relate to linguistic knowledge. Language teacher education programs prepare preservice language teachers who need to teach languages other than their own for using technological tools to help develop and refine their knowledge of these languages. Pedagogical priorities will shift toward the learning and teaching of language-related outcomes, including intercultural communication, as well as nonlinguistic outcomes such as perseverance, adaptability, and creativity. Teaching can also focus on the growth of inner resources such as agency, so that learners have opportunities to develop these crucial inner resources (Larsen-Freeman, 2019). For example, teachers might use learner-oriented feedback to allow language learners to choose the aspects of their learning that they would like to receive feedback on and how they would like feedback to be given to them. As technology increasingly replaces human beings in the performance of a variety of tasks, it is critical for language educators to reorient our focus toward developing the essential skills, knowledge, competencies, attributes, and dispositions that make us human through learning languages. For me, the crisis brought about by technological developments presents an opportunity for language educators to revive the fundamentally humanistic cause of language education—that is, to promote critical cultural and human understandings and to bring people together so that we can respond to the existential crises facing the human race, such as climate change and war. Open access publishing facilitated by University of New South Wales, as part of the Wiley - University of New South Wales agreement via the Council of Australian University Librarians.

In an increasingly digitalized world, pre-service and in-service teachers need subject-specific didactic competencies to be able to plan their lessons appropriately and use their knowledge to promote digital competencies among students. Building on competency models such as the Technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) framework, this article explores the extent to which specific digital competencies relevant to pre-service teachers can be developed through project work in a pedagogical makerspace and examines the extent to which contextual factors such as technological self-efficacy, motivation and technology acceptance influence the development of pre-service teachers’ TPACK and their intention to use digital media. To this end, 495 pre-service science teachers from both intervention and control groups completed a pre-post digital questionnaire before and after the intervention. The data were used for structural equation modeling. The results show that the level of TPACK before the intervention is an important predictor of TPACK after project work. Furthermore, TPACK before the intervention positively influences pre-service teachers’ intention to use digital media in the future. Also, the perceived usefulness for professional use and the intention to use information and communication technologies (ICT) are strongly influenced by TPACK. Consequently, it appears significant to enable a low-threshold entry point at the beginning of the study to provide a solid foundation upon which more advanced TPACK can be built. Motivation and technology acceptance are strongly correlated. Therefore, teacher training should focus on motivation and acceptance of technology.

Bu çalışma öğretmen adaylarının yansıtmalı öğretmenlik uygulamasına yönelik algılarını geliştirmeyi hedeflemiştir. Hizmet öncesi öğretmen adaylarının alanlarında nasıl uygulayacaklarını öğrendiklerinde yansıtmalı öğretmenliği alışkanlık haline getirdikleri varsayılmaktadır. Bu nedenle çalışma, İngilizce öğretmen adaylarının yansıtmalı öğretmenliği kendi alanlarında ne kadar başarılı uyguladıklarını ve yansıtmalı öğretmenliğin ne kadar yararlı olduğunu araştırmaktadır. Çalışma bir devlet üniversitesinde İngilizce Öğretmenliği bölümünde öğrenim gören 30 öğretmen adaylarıyla yürütülmüştür. Katılımcılardan akademik yılın bir dönemi boyunca alan uygulamasındansonra yansıtmalı öğretmenlikle ilgili rapor göndermeleri ve akran gözlem formlarını doldurmaları istenmiştir. Veriler, Odeh, Kurt and Atamtürk (2010) tarafından hazırlanan bir anket aracıyla toplanmıştır. Anket, katılımcıların haftalık yazdıkları yansıtmalı öğretmenlik uygulamasına yönelik raporları ve akran gözlem raporlarını değerlendirmesine rehberlik etmektedir. Çalışma, öğretmen adaylarının ‘sınıf içi uygulama sırasında yansıtma’ ya da ‘uygulama sonrası yansıtma’ yapabilme eğilimlerini göstermektedir. Veri analizi, katılımcıların ankette yer alan maddelerdeki eylemleri yapabilme sıklıklarını ortaya koymuştur. Çalışma sonuçları öğretmen adaylarının sınıf içi uygulaması sırasında karşılaştıkları durumlarla ilgili karar vermede zorlandıklarını göstermektedir. Fakat, etkili bir şekilde yönlendirildiklerinde, katılımcıların ders sonrası öğretmenlik uygulamasıyla ilgili yansıtma yapabildiklerini ve sınıf içi performanslarını değerlendirebildiklerini göstermektedir.

Language teacher educators train pre-service teachers in numerous theories and pedagogical practices of language learning and language teaching. They expect that their student teachers will translate this conceptual and practical knowledge into action during their practicum. However, in the process of determining pre-service teachers’ readiness for the field experience and the profession in general, methods classes measure only their conceptual knowledge and omit looking at their student teachers’ belief system about language teaching and learning. This belief system is a strong indicator of how the students organize their knowledge for application (Borg, 2003) and may help teacher educators gauge students’ read ness in the use of new pedagogies that these pre-service teachers may not have experienced before. Using two reflective essays and a piece of authentic assessment as instruments to gather data, as well as Jürgen Habermas’s theory on cognitive interests as a framework to explore the espoused beliefs of nine pre-service language teachers at the end of a methodscourse, this qualitative study addressed the following questions: What levels of cognitive interests do the nine pre-service world language and ESL teachers exhibit prior to student teaching? To what extent do the students’ levels of cognitive interests change during the methods course called Teaching a Second Language? What are the most common cognitive interests regarding such areas of teaching performance, such as methodology and assessment among the participants? The results show that the nine pre-service teachers held mostly technicaland some practical cognitive interests at the beginning of the semester. In the end, most of the participants held practical interests, and three out of the nine pre-service teachers held elementary emancipatory beliefs. One pedagogical recommendation is to include experiences in the training of pre-service teachers that promote emancipatory beliefs that could support teachers in their pursuit of transforming challenging social conditions while examining and adopting new pedagogies.

This article explores the use of blogs for pre-service language teacher education in two national settings, the UK (University of Cambridge) and the US (University of South Florida). Taking two approaches to blogging and to learning through blogging (one based on self-reflection and a constructivist approach and one based on social and collaborative learning and a sociocultural approach), the research examines how pre-service language teachers both use and understand the affordances of blogs for their professional development. Data were collected from the participants' blog entries during their eight/nine month courses and from individual interviews conducted and analysed inductively. Some distinct themes emerged from the two settings. In the UK setting, there was deep analytical reflection on professional development, on professional identity and on change, with the participants perceiving the benefits of the blog to be the distance it provides from events and the cathartic effects of writing. In the US setting, findings suggest that the blog was used as a space for joint sharing of resources and ideas, and for co-constructive learning. Participants noted the affordances to be sharing information, developing professionalism and collaborative learning. While the approach to blogging was different in the two settings, the engagement in both was dialogic; the blogs functioned as a ‘thinking device’ that enhanced professional development. Their use may transfer from pre-service teachers' learning to their teaching.

The study aimed to assess the language pre-service teachers' teaching engagement and experiences on ChatGPT used in academic writing as an input to instructional strategies. The research focused on the language preservice teachers' teaching engagement and experiences on ChatGPT use in academic writing input to instructional strategies. The respondents of the study were the language preservice teachers. Also, the respondents assessed the level of language pre-service teachers' teaching engagement on the use of ChatGPT in academic writing in terms of active participation, use of technology, classroom management, and lesson planning and preparation; and the level of language pre-service teachers' teaching experiences on the use of ChatGPT in academic writing in terms of lesson planning support, resource generation, assessment creation, and classroom management scenarios. The researcher used the non-probability sampling utilizing the purposive sampling technique in determining the respondents of the study. Moreover, the researcher utilized a modified instrument. Then, the data gathered were calculated, analyzed, and interpreted using the appropriate statistical tools. The findings revealed that the active involvement, technology utilization, classroom management, lesson planning and preparation were all high among language preservice teachers using ChatGPT to teach academic writing. In lesson planning, resource design, assessment creation, and classroom management, language pre-service teachers were well experienced in teaching academic writing using ChatGPT. Pre-service teachers' instructional engagement and experiences in teaching academic writing using ChatGPT are significantly correlated. As an outcome of the findings and the conclusions, the following recommendations were enumerated: Teachers may develop lesson plans that incorporate ChatGPT activities, such as guided writing exercises and peer review sessions, to foster active engagement. Teachers may demonstrate how to ethically and effectively incorporate ChatGPT into academic writing practices, emphasizing critical evaluation of AI-generated content. Teachers may tailor ChatGPT activities to accommodate diverse learner needs, including support for language learners, students with different skill levels, and those requiring additional scaffolding. School Administrators may offer training sessions for preservice and in-service teachers on best practices for integrating ChatGPT into language instruction and academic writing. School administrators may establish clear policies and guidelines to promote responsible AI usage, protecting student data and promoting academic integrity. Students may utilize ChatGPT as a brainstorming partner, writing coach, and feedback provider to enhance your understanding and skills in academic writing.

Digital Language Teaching 5.0, a new language teaching paradigm that applies the digital pedagogies and technologies of the fifth Industrial Revolution (Industry 5.0), is expected to transform the English language teaching and learning landscape soon, as the world continuously seeks innovative solutions to the educational challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. As a new concept, it draws inquiries and discussions on how it will influence language curriculum, instruction and assessment in the post-pandemic digital age, what technologies and practices will be adopted in schools to align with its purposes, and what competencies pre-service and in-service language teachers will need to be able to actualize it in their own contexts. This paper aims to address the foregoing issues by discussing relevant concepts, trends and practices. It begins by providing a brief background about Education 4.0, its key features, technologies and trends as applied in English language teaching. It then proceeds to the discussion of Education 5.0 and Digital Language Teaching 5.0 with their distinct features, purposes, technologies and practices. Lastly, it explores the skills and competencies under Digital Language Teaching 5.0 and discusses how pre-service and in-service language teachers can develop and enhance such competencies through various formal and alternative language teacher development activities. It concludes with insights on some issues raised and recommendations for successful implementation.