Introduction
In South Africa and around the world, teaching and learning in a multilingual classroom environment involve navigating a complex array of challenges related to not just communication but cultural inclusion. While a critical examination of the potential roles of emerging technologies is imperative, sadly, limited attention is geared toward understanding their influence, effectiveness, challenges, development, and implementation in a multilingual setting. Yet, in diverse disciplines, AI tools such as but not limited to neural machine translation (NMT), real-time speech translation, multilingual chatbots, and adaptive learning platforms are being explored to possibly improve and support multilingual education. This is because, such tools have the capability in addressing not just communication barriers but making it possible for inclusive learning environments in various multilingual contexts. Though there is increasing need for AI-powered technologies to address multilingual teaching and learning challenges, a critical examination of their definite influence, limitations, as well as the biases such technologies introduce is also becoming a concern. Therefore, equipping students and teachers by integrating emerging and AI-powered technologies may offer transformative tools that will enable them to teach and learn in today’s globalized, culturally and linguistically diverse educational landscape. Anchored upon the foreground, this special issue examines AI-driven and emerging technologies for multilingual classrooms, addressing communication barriers and cultural inclusion. The focus includes the efficacy of emerging or AI-driven technologies in multilingual educational curricula, offering insights into their roles and potential.
This call for papers invites contributions that are critical, well researched, innovative, and reflective on the use of AI powered or emerging technologies. This entails delving into pedagogies, methodologies, opportunities, and complexities in multilingual classroom contexts using AI based technologies in HEI’s across diverse global contexts.
Papers should pertain to both the concerns of the special issue and the focus of the journal, the details of which appear below:
Aims and Scope
Critical Studies in Teaching and Learning is a peer-reviewed journal that publishes scholarly articles and essays that make marked contributions to the scholarship of teaching and learning in higher (university) education. The Journal aims to provide a stimulating and challenging forum for contributors to describe, theorise and reflect on their higher education teaching and learning practice and is particularly interested in contributions that have relevance to the South African educational context. Areas in which research is invited include the following:
1 Using AI-driven and Emerging Technologies for Interactive and Inclusive Multilingual Education
- Evaluating the effectiveness of AI-powered or emerging technologies for language instruction.
- Potential of gamification and educational simulations in multilingual classrooms.
- Utilizing extended reality (XR) machine learning, neural machine translation (NMT), real-time speech translation, multilingual chatbots, speech recognition and synthesis, and cross-lingual information retrieval and others for interactive and inclusive learning.
- Personalizing multilingual education via AI-powered or emerging technologies.
- Influence of the Internet of Things (IoT) on interactive learning in multilingual classrooms.
2 Influence and Role of AI-Driven Adaptive Learning Platforms and Data-Driven Decision Making
- Assessing the influence of AI-driven adaptive learning platforms on multilingual teaching and learning strategies.
- Using data-driven decision making in multilingual education with AI and emerging technologies.
- Cloud-based learning management systems for multilingual education.
3 Supporting Diverse African Languages and Multilingual Education with AI Systems
- Using AI systems to support diverse African languages in education.
- Role of natural language processing (NLP) in facilitating multilingual education.
- Mobile learning technologies to support multilingual education.
4 Emerging AI-Powered Technologies for Assessment and Educational Curricula
- Integrating emerging technologies in higher education curricula.
- Emerging or AI-powered technologies as assessment tools for multilingual learners.
- Evaluating AI-powered assessment tools for multilingual learners.
5 Crucial AI Literacies in Multilingual Educational Contexts
- In multilingual settings, the theme seeks to explore the need for essential AI literacies that is found among educators and students. Fundamentally, it will address in what way users navigate and critically assess AI tools, with reference to those not tailored to local languages, and the probable biases such tools do perpetuate.
All submissions must have a clear issue or problem that is addressed and must make reference to the relevant literature. Where applicable methodology, results and evaluation of findings must be clearly discussed and related to the wider field. Submissions relating to local studies should make clear the applicability to a wider context and international readership. Please look carefully at the resources in the 'Authors' tab, and also under the 'Reviewers' tab, and consult recent issues under 'Archives' to get a sense of the work we tend to publish, and our guidelines.
Indexing
The journal is indexed (full text) with Sabinet and African Journals Online (AJOL). It is also included in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), WorldCat, Sherpa-Romeo, the Norwegian List (Level 1), SCOPUS and the DHET's list of accredited journals.
Open Access Policy
This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.
Copyright Policy
Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (SeeThe Effect of Open Access).
Licencing Policy
All journal content is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license 4.0. CC BY ND 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Number of articles envisioned -between 6 and 10 articles:
Word length: 6000 - 8000 words
Editorial criteria
The papers submitted to the special issue will be evaluated based on the following:
- A critical framing to meet the journal's aims and scope
- Multi/inter/transdisciplinary approaches.
- Relevance to South African and international readership
- Focus on the use of AI driven emerging technologies in teaching in multilingual classrooms.
- Teaching and learning
INTERESTED CONTRIBUTORS
Interested contributors are encouraged to submit their topics and abstracts to the Critical Studies in Teaching and Learning Journal Guest editors of this special edition,
- Prof Anass Bayaga (University of Western Cape)- abayaga@uwc.ac.za (correspondence)
- Associate Prof N.N. Mdzanga (Nelson Mandela University)- Mdzanga@mandela.ac.za
- Prof Rajendra Chetty (University of Western Cape)- rchetty@uwc.ac.za
The SUBJECT line of the email should read: “AI - Critical Studies in Teaching and Learning”
Abstract by... (Name of the corresponding author).
ABSTRACTS SUBMISSIONS SHOULD INCLUDE:
- A succinct title;
- An extended abstract (Maximum 750 words), addressing any of the themes aforementioned
- The focus and purpose of the study;
- Data sources/participants/respondents;
- The methodology and methods to be followed in the research;
- Exciting findings and implications expected, or which could be postulated as a hypothesis;
- Author/s name/s and Surname/s;
- Author/s institutional affiliation/s;
- Contact details.
TIME FRAMES: 01 OCTOBER 2024 – 05 MARCH 2026
Deadlines for submission of abstracts
- 01 NOVEMBER 2024: Call for submission of extended abstracts;
- 15 JANUARY 2025: Final submission of abstracts (extended deadline)
- 31 JANUARY 2025: ; Date for notification of acceptance
- 30 MARCH 2025: Final date for submission of full manuscripts;
- 15 JULY 2025: Feedback from peer review process;
- 30 SEPTEMBER - Second round of feedback in case papers have to go for resubmission (major revisions)
- 10 DECEMBER 2025: Final date for submission of revised manuscripts;
- 30 March 2026: Approximate publication date.
Please use Critical Studies in Teaching and Learning author guidelines at:
http://www.cristal.ac.za/index.php/cristal/about/submissions