The annual conference organised by the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL) is one of the largest in the world. In this article, George Wilson, Head of English and School Education at the British Council in France, shares his reflections on this year’s conference, which took place in sunny Edinburgh in April 2025.
Attending IATEFL is an enormous privilege and, above all, a wonderful opportunity to learn and share with colleagues and experts from around the globe. This year's conference was no exception and I would like to share just a few of my thoughts about the four days I spent in Edinburgh, Scotland in April 2025.
A global community.
What struck me most during the event was just how international this international association really is. Jumping from one session to another means a dizzying tour of the world’s continents. I had the privilege of hearing stories from countries as diverse as Argentina, India, Ukraine, Malaysia and Chile. While contexts differ widely from one country to another, the themes of the conference show just how much common ground exists between teachers around the world. Harry Waters touched on some of these in his closing plenary, considering questions linked to climate change and the empowerment of younger generations. Such sessions reminded me that English Language Teaching (ELT), like all forms of education, has a responsibility to support learners’ holistic development and to further common goals of peace, inclusion and equality.
Education under attack.
Unfortunately, this message is particularly resonant at present and the conference programme gave voices to teachers working in war zones and refugee camps around the world. I was particularly moved by a presentation by Valeria Tsap and Iryna Vozna, two school leaders from Ukraine. They shared their experiences of keeping their schools open in a war zone and how they have had to overcome a terrifying number of obstacles ranging from power cuts to air-raid sirens, rethinking the design of their premises, providing counselling and support to staff, and finding ingenious techniques to keep the internet functioning for their online classes. In the past, I have delivered training to teachers on supporting vulnerable adults and I would often talk about the kinds of questions teachers might avoid in the classroom so as not to trigger memories or feelings of trauma. What struck me most during this session was just how long that list of questions has become in the Ukrainian context. Talk of home, family, work and friendship all risk triggering trauma responses in a context in which nothing can be taken for granted any longer. The talk was both sad and inspiring, and it moved many in the audience to tears.
Multilingual practices: an instinctive approach to language learning.
I chose to attend several sessions during the conference on the themes of translanguaging and multilingual practices in the ELT classroom. The number of talks on these topics reflected the growing recognition of the importance of engaging learners’ various languages within the learning process. After all, it makes perfect sense to encourage learners to use languages with which they are familiar to scaffold the production and comprehension of languages they are learning. Moreover, this emphasis on translanguaging is a welcome recognition that the strategic blending of languages in communication is itself a valid and skilful means of communication. In my time as a teacher and a teacher trainer, this has been one of the biggest shifts I have witnessed, allowing us to move away from English-only classrooms that sometimes feel artificial and embrace what seems to me to be a more natural and instinctive approach to language learning. I look forward now to seeing multilingual practices become an increasingly mainstream notion on teacher-training courses.
