Abstract
Language education is no longer well served by linear and reductionist models of teaching and learning. As theoretical perspectives continue to evolve, it has become increasingly clear that we cannot treat language classrooms as stable and predictable environments or learners as uniform recipients of instruction. Instead, they must be understood as complex and context-sensitive systems. This shift is not just theoretical; it carries significant implications for how we conceptualize language teaching, learning, and research in applied linguistics.
The 25 articles in this issue jointly advance a compelling argument that existing frameworks in language education must account for variability, interaction, and the socially embedded nature of learning. These studies do more than extend prior research; they also highlight that language teaching cannot be adequately explained through isolated variables or constructs but must instead be examined through relational and emergent processes.
A prominent thread in this issue concerns teacher cognition and professional development. The studies in this area strongly suggest a shift away from viewing cognition as an isolated and internal construct toward understanding it as an evolving and adaptive system. Salman and Inbar-Lourie’s study of English language teachers’ beliefs about future readiness provides a useful point of departure. Their study foregrounds teachers’ beliefs as “precursor beliefs to willingness,” highlighting how adaptability, digital literacy, and interdisciplinary collaboration influence pedagogical readiness for the 21st century. From this perspective, willingness is not a fixed trait but a state that arises from the alignment between teachers’ beliefs and the evolving demands of their professional environments. A similar emphasis is evident in Zhu et al.’s study, where teacher educator cognition develops within a collaborative CLIL program conceptualized as an activity system. Their findings show that these programs can help teacher educators develop their thinking in different ways, depending on their roles and their views on teaching and policy. At the level of classroom practice, Tachaiyaphum et al. highlight this adaptive nature of language-driven content and language integrated learning (CLIL) instruction. They show that teachers flexibly deploy a range of language modification strategies in response to learner needs and content demands. Xu’s study further illustrates this process by documenting shifts from a skill-based to a social-practice perspective on reading among Chinese higher vocational college teachers. The study suggests that professional learning can foster more holistic approaches with implications for students’ critical and global awareness.
Building on the broader concern with how teacher cognition develops, both Weng’s ethnographic case study and Yuan et al.’s classroom-based inquiry highlight complementary aspects of this process. Weng’s ethnographic case study adds an important dimension by foregrounding the role of identity in these processes. The graduate teaching assistant’s shifting positioning, as a considerate English as a second language (ESL) teacher, a knowledgeable researcher, and at times a limited writing instructor, illustrates how cognition, identity, and agency are co-constructed and continuously negotiated. What this study makes particularly clear is that teacher development involves not only changes in what teachers know or believe but also in how they understand themselves within specific instructional contexts. Yuan et al.’s inquiry further extends this line of work by examining how preservice language teachers engage in a lesson study project centered on the framework of big ideas. Their findings show that participation in lesson study supported the development of critical thinking (CT) through both conceptual scaffolding and collaborative inquiry.
Several contributions in this issue focus on learner motivation and communicative engagement. What becomes evident across these studies is that learners’ willingness to act, engage, and communicate is continuously influenced by the interaction of affective, cognitive, and contextual factors unfolding over time. Zhou’s exploration of willingness to communicate (WTC) in a Chinese as a foreign language classroom reveals how interactional patterns and contextual factors guide communicative behavior over time. The identification of “pro-talk” and “against-talk” states usefully captures how learners move in and out of participation, suggesting that WTC is highly affected by specific classroom conditions. A similar perspective is adopted by Bielak and Mystkowska-Wiertelak, who examine motivational development through a retrodictive qualitative modeling approach. Their findings show that motivation changes slowly over time but also varies in different ways for each learner, sometimes staying stable and sometimes fluctuating. They also show that a sense of control is important, as it can lead to changes when feedback and learning goals are aligned.
In this issue, special attention has also been given to the role of affect in language learning. From the studies in this area, it is evident that affect is not only reactive but also productive, contributing to the creation of learning environments that support ongoing participation and investment. The importance of these processes is highlighted, for example, in the study by Fattahi et al., which shows the powerful role of emotion in affecting learners’ engagement and communicative willingness. Their findings suggest that negative emotions, particularly boredom, can exert a disproportionately strong effect, at times overshadowing positive experiences. This points to the importance of considering how affective conditions constrain or enable engagement within specific learning contexts, especially in digitally mediated settings. Printer’s longitudinal study offers a complementary perspective by highlighting the role of positive emotions. Through the use of co-created storytelling, the study shows how enjoyment, interest, and a sense of relatedness can foster intrinsic motivation and sustained engagement over time.
This issue of the journal also advances our understanding of engagement as a multidimensional construct embedded within complex social environments. Kołsut and Szumilas combine physiological and self-report measures to reveal variation in learner engagement across task types, with higher levels of cognitive, emotional, and social engagement observed during productive tasks compared to receptive tasks. Huang’s analysis further examines the relationship between emotional engagement and writing performance in relation to teacher–student relationships. The findings indicate that positive teacher–student relationships are associated with higher levels of emotional engagement, which in turn relate to improved writing performance at the student level. Together, these contributions reinforce the view that engagement is not merely behavioral but also relational and affective, emerging through interaction within specific learning contexts.
Pedagogical and instructional design constitute another cornerstone of this issue. Studies in this area demonstrate that instructional effectiveness cannot be reduced to method comparisons alone, as learning outcomes depend on the interaction of pedagogical approaches with specific tasks, learner needs, and contextual conditions. For instance, Kim et al. show that while both traditional and task-based instruction can support pragmatic development, task-based instruction more effectively promotes the development of complex pragmatic forms, especially in the short term. Han demonstrates that problem-based English language learning can enhance students’ self-directed learning readiness, particularly in areas such as time, strategy, and assignment management, suggesting that specific instructional designs may affect different dimensions of the learning process in different ways. Zhang’s study further challenges method-based accounts. By examining cross-national digital storytelling, the study reconceptualizes biliteracy as an assemblage of humans, languages, media, and material resources. The study highlights how meaning-making arises through interactions among these elements. Ahn and Chi examine language teachers’ adaptation to post-COVID-19 classrooms, showing how teachers exercised agency by integrating technology, redesigning pedagogy, and expanding their professional roles in response to shifting educational conditions.
Language development in this issue is consistently framed as an emergent, usage-based process, where linguistic knowledge develops through interaction with task demands, input conditions, and learner characteristics rather than through linear accumulation of rules. One line of evidence for this perspective comes from Youn’s examination of discourse markers across pragmatic performance levels and task types. The study shows that both the functions and predictive value of discourse markers vary depending on interactional demands. It suggests that these linguistic features are not stable indicators of proficiency but are instead context-dependent resources that gain meaning within specific interactional settings.
A similar developmental gradient is observed in Arslangul’s investigation of referent introduction in L2 Chinese narratives. The study demonstrates clear differences across proficiency levels in how learners construct syntactic patterns and organize discourse, moving from reliance on canonical word order at lower levels to more cohesive and integrated discourse organization at higher levels. From a lexical perspective, development is also shown to be affected by instructional conditions that interact with learner proficiency. Kang et al. demonstrate that post-reading word-focused activities significantly enhance vocabulary uptake from reading, with particularly strong effects for higher-intermediate learners. Notably, these gains occur regardless of forewarning about the upcoming activity, indicating that vocabulary learning is influenced more by task engagement and processing conditions than by learner anticipation alone. Finally, Yenkimaleki and van Heuven’s longitudinal study extends this line of pedagogical inquiry into the domain of oral fluency development in EFL contexts. Focusing on the effect of structured pedagogical intervention, including fluency strategy training such as repetition, memorization, and retelling of spoken input, their study demonstrates that targeted instructional support can significantly enhance learners’ speech fluency over time.
Assessment and feedback practices are also critically examined and reframed as socially mediated processes influenced by interactions among learners, teachers, tasks, and evaluative tools rather than as purely technical procedures. Hua’s study of pronunciation assessment finds broadly comparable effectiveness across peer, self, and teacher assessment while revealing differences in reliability and learner preference, with teacher assessment remaining the most trusted. This suggests that effectiveness cannot be understood independently of learners’ perceptions and the social positioning of evaluators. Tabari et al. show that written corrective feedback and think-aloud protocols support different aspects of processing, and they can have varying effects across linguistic dimensions, indicating that feedback uptake involves multiple pathways influenced by task demands and attention. Kim’s investigation of peer feedback in Japanese EFL contexts highlights how proficiency differences influence the form of feedback and learners’ participation, with clear contrasts between high- and low-proficiency students in both feedback type and perceptions of the process.
Issues of representation and ideology in language education are also examined as products of broader sociocultural systems, where teaching materials and beliefs both reflect and reproduce power relations and interpretive frameworks. Koster et al. analyzes Dutch language textbooks and identifies systematic underrepresentation and stereotypical portrayals of people of colour. Their study highlights Eurocentric biases and limited linguistic diversity. It sugggests that textbook content is not neutral but instead reflects institutionalized patterns of representation embedded within broader educational and sociopolitical structures. Alzaanin examines EFL learners’ and instructors’ attributions of success and failure through a complexity-informed lens. The study reveals systematic differences in how learners and teachers explain academic outcomes, with lecturers tending to attribute success and failure more to pedagogical factors and students more to internal dispositions and external constraints. These patterns reflect emergent attributional systems affected by self-serving biases and ecological contexts.
Viewed together, the studies in this issue support an understanding of language education as a complex evolving system and highlight several interconnected theoretical and methodological developments.
First, they reflect a clear shift toward complexity-oriented perspectives that conceptualize language learning as complex, emergent, and context-sensitive. From this perspective, variability and change are not treated as noise but as intrinsic to development, reinforcing the need for longitudinal and fine-grained approaches that can capture learning over time.
Second, cognition is increasingly understood as situated within social, institutional, and material contexts rather than as a stable, individual property. This perspective highlights how teacher cognition and identity are continuously constructed through interaction with learners, colleagues, and institutional practices.
Third, affect and motivation are central dimensions of language learning. Emotions are shown to play a crucial role in influencing engagement and participation, with both positive and negative affect contributing to learning processes in important ways.
Fourth, assessment and feedback are understood as socially mediated and interpretive processes, influenced by relationships, perceptions, and interactional contexts rather than being purely technical or objective practices.
Fifth, issues of representation, ideology, and power are shown to be embedded in language education systems, with materials, practices, and beliefs both reflecting and reproducing broader sociocultural structures.
Finally, this issue demonstrates considerable methodological diversity, including mixed methods, longitudinal designs, experimental approaches, and fine-grained qualitative analyses. This breadth not only strengthens the field but also encourages continued progress toward greater coherence and methodological synergy.
We hope readers find this collection not only strong research but also sources of ideas that help them rethink their own work and teaching. As the field continues to evolve, these articles offer useful insights for building approaches to language teaching and education that are more inclusive and forward-looking.