Current Issue

Volume 40

Editors-in-Chief: Diana Lalata and Hoa Pham

Editors’ Note (PDF), Diana Lalata and Hoa Pham

Educational Linguistics and Social Justice (PDF), Nancy Hornberger

Decolonizing IB Education: Integrating Multiliteracies and Cultural Responsiveness in Pakistani Classrooms (PDF), Sahar Basit

The Secret Life of International PhD Students’ Use of ChatGPT: Identity and (Dis)empowerment Impacts (PDF), Seyyedeh Mobina Hosseini and Erin Kearney

One Question, Two Outcomes: A Comparative Study of Student Modality and IRE Contingencies in Virtual Classrooms (PDF), Nada Khan

Educational Translanguaging in the Digital Age: Translanguaging with Referential Humor, Memes, and Slang to Build a Multiliterate Classroom Community (PDF), Vedantini Lakshminarayanan

Orthographic vs. Picture Flashcard Inputs (PDF), Elly Susanty Rachman

Beyond Translanguaging: Toward a Theory of (Trans)bordering in Language Education (PDF), Gengqi Xiao

Editors' Note (PDF)

Educational Linguistics and Social Justice (PDF)

Nancy Hornberger

From the vantage point of more than 50 years of Educational Linguistics research and practice, this article explores the field as not only problem-oriented but also solution-oriented, change-oriented, and indeed social justice-oriented. Seven broad themes speak to Educational Linguistics’ fundamental concerns with language, teaching, and learning: language development and communicative repertoire; language teaching/teacher education, translanguaging and language awareness; language, discourse analysis and multilingual assessment; language diversity and challenging inequality; language policy and decolonizing education; language ecology, revitalization and reclamation; and language, identity and social justice. Underpinned by acute awareness of the ways language is too often used to sustain social discrimination, Educational Linguistics has brought to these themes not an impartial analytical lens, but an engaged outlook that bends toward social justice.

Publication Date: 7-15-26
Date Available: 7-31-26
Date Issued: 7-31-26
Copyright: 2026

Decolonizing IB Education: Integrating Multiliteracies and Cultural Responsiveness in Pakistani Classrooms (PDF)

Sahar Basit

This paper presents a practice-oriented professional development (PD) guidebook for International Baccalaureate (IB) educators in Pakistan working in Englishdominant schools with multilingual students. Grounded in decolonial and culturally sustaining approaches, and informed by multiliteracies and translanguaging scholarship, the guidebook translates theory into usable classroom tools, facilitation moves, and session plans across three modules: Foundations of Multiliteracies, Culturally Responsive and Decolonial Teaching, and Reimagining Assessment and Student Agency. Two questions frame the project: How can this PD guidebook provide a broad instructional framework for IB teachers in Pakistan to design decolonial multiliteracies instruction? What specific, context-responsive tools and reflective routines support the enactment of these approaches in English-dominant classrooms? Drawing on research and classroom-based reflection, the guidebook emphasizes feasible entry points for teachers, including multimodal task design, translanguaging routines, and expanded approaches to assessment that affirm student identity and community knowledge. The paper also illustrates how these commitments can be enacted through classroom practice.

Publication Date: 7-15-26
Date Available: 7-31-26
Date Issued: 7-31-26
Copyright: 2026

The Secret Life of International PhD Students’ Use of ChatGPT: Identity and (Dis)empowerment Impacts (PDF)

Seyyedeh Mobina Hosseini and Erin Kearney

The introduction of ChatGPT into higher education (HE) has eased academic burdens, particularly for international students, making workloads more manageable. However, this tool acts as a double-edged sword, providing valuable academic support while also posing drawbacks. Although AI-powered technologies are widely viewed as beneficial, their influence on students’ identity remains underexplored. Drawing on grounded theory interviews with 15 international PhD students in the United States, the study revealed five themes on academic support and four on identity and (dis)empowerment. From the analysis, an AI-Powered Fugitive Learning Model emerged, illustrating ambivalent, often hidden use. The findings highlight the need to reframe academic policies to reduce stigma around AI use.

Publication Date: 7-15-26
Date Available: 7-31-26
Date Issued: 7-31-26
Copyright: 2026

One Question, Two Outcomes: A Comparative Study of Student Modality and IRE Contingencies in Virtual Classrooms (PDF)

Nada Khan

This comparative study examines two different groups of high school students who encountered the same lesson, question, and facilitator at separate times on Zoom, and considers why a single transitional question prompt in the same lesson produced such different interactional and pedagogical outcomes, and importantly, how these differences unfold through talk. Using conversation analysis and two Zoom session recordings, the paper explores how Initiation- Response- Evaluation (IRE) sequences in such question-prompting is contingent on each turn taken by instructors and learners, and how student modality choice (microphone vs. chat) interacts with this sequential organization to shape the trajectory of the pedagogical activity. The analysis highlights how each turn is contingent on the one before it—not only the third by the second, but also the second by the first—and how this interpretive chaining can shift what is ultimately taught and learned.

Publication Date: 7-15-26
Date Available: 7-31-26
Date Issued: 7-31-26
Copyright: 2026

Educational Translanguaging in the Digital Age: Translanguaging with Referential Humor, Memes, and Slang to Build a Multiliterate Classroom Community (PDF)

Vedantini Lakshminarayanan

This paper uses research in educational linguistics to assert that, by embracing slang and referential humor in class dialogue, K-12 teachers can strengthen and facilitate socialization into the classroom community. The review aims to repurpose theoretical frameworks concerning language pedagogy to discuss translanguaging in the context of dialect shifts and digital referencing, as a communicative approach that strengthens student-teacher as well as peer-to-peer connection, while cultivating students’ multiliteracies. Built on an assemblage of theoretical concepts such as translanguaging (García & Li Wei, 2014, as cited in Vogel & García, 2017), academic discourse socialization (Duff, 2010), and funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992), the literature review and following analysis position slang and referential humor as legitimate and productive features of teachers’ and students’ linguistic repertoires. Finally, this paper proposes a pedagogy that values students’ communicative identities, which are strongly linked to their digital use, and discourages resistance to expressions of online membership in classroom discourse. By drawing on research pertaining to language education, this paper makes a case for the application of selected communicative approaches and frameworks like translanguaging pedagogy, academic discourse socialization, funds of knowledge, and multiliteracies, across grade-school learning contexts, offering an outlook on classroom language use that considers communicative features beyond literacy and language acquisition. Publication Date: 7-15-26
Date Available: 7-31-26
Date Issued: 7-31-26
Copyright: 2026

Orthographic vs. Picture Flashcard Inputs (PDF)

Elly Susanty Rachman

This study investigates the effectiveness of orthographic versus picture flashcard input on English vocabulary learning among Grade 5 students in a Japanese public elementary school in a small city in eastern Japan (N = 47). Although visual aids are widely used in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms, relatively few studies have directly compared orthographic and pictorial inputs on young learners, particularly in the Japanese elementary school context. To address this gap, a counterbalanced treatment design was employed using two lessons from a government- authorized textbook. Vocabulary learning was assessed through measures of meaning recognition test requiring students to match pictured items with their corresponding written English forms, thereby measuring receptive form-meaning knowledge. Previous studies have reported significant benefit of picture flashcards for beginner-level EFL learners. However, the findings of the present study did not demonstrate a statistically significant advantage of pictorial input over orthographic input in terms of students’ meaning-recognition performance. Within the limits of a receptive recognition measure, both input modalities yielded comparable outcomes.

Publication Date: 7-15-26
Date Available: 7-31-26
Date Issued: 7-31-26
Copyright: 2026

Beyond Translanguaging: Toward a Theory of (Trans)bordering in Language Education (PDF)

Gengqi Xiao

In this conceptual essay, I reflect on the development of translanguaging research over the past decades, highlighting its theoretical advancement and pedagogical shortcomings. Much research has examined how teachers and students strategically use their semiotic repertoires for meaning-making, engagement, power shifting, and collaborative learning. However, if human language practices are inherently characterized by translanguaging, what do we gain from this framework beyond its theoretical innovation? In other words, what can language teachers learn from it if they are intrinsically engaged in such practices all the time? To answer this question, I propose a concept I term (trans)bordering, arguing that languaging is a semiotic process in which individuals create, negotiate, and transcend boundaries that define acceptable practices, identities, and modes of communication. I demonstrate how teachers can implement (trans)bordering in language classrooms and beyond.

Publication Date: 7-15-26
Date Available: 7-31-26
Date Issued: 7-31-26
Copyright: 2026