Le numérique – vecteur d’inclusion ou d’exclusion dans l’enseignement-apprentissage des langues? (Alsic 2026)

Date: 10-Jun-2026 - 12-Jun-2026
Location: Paris, France
Contact: Eva Schaeffer-Lacroix
Contact Email: [email protected]
Meeting URL: https://alsic-2026.sciencesconf.org/

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics
Subject Language(s): French (fra)

Submission Deadline: 19-Oct-2025

Ce colloque international vise à rassembler des personnes du monde de la recherche intéressées par le rôle du numérique dans le cadre de l’enseignement-apprentissage des langues. Il porte plus précisément sur les usages effectifs et potentiels d’applications numériques, en donnant un éclairage particulier aux opportunités qu’elles offrent (inclusion de divers types de publics, accessibilité et flexibilité des apprentissages, etc.). Il est également prévu d’explorer les limites d’applications numériques (exclusion de certains publics pour des questions d’interface, de coût, d’âge, d’un niveau restreint de littératie numérique ; effets non désirés sur les apprentissages). Quelles pratiques inclusives faisant appel au numérique sont déjà mises en place dans l’enseignement-apprentissage des langues et quels sont leurs apports ? Comment identifier les situations d’exclusion dans ce domaine et par quels moyens y remédier ? Enfin, comment la didactique des langues s’empare-t-elle des questions de l’écart entre d’une part la généralisation des usages du numérique (en particulier des applications de type intelligence artificielle) dans toutes les sphères de la vie et, d’autre part, l’exclusion de certains publics du fait de leur éloignement de la représentation prototypique des usagers?

Digital Technologies: Vectors of Inclusion or Exclusion in Language Teaching and Learning? (Alsic 2026)

This international conference, affiliated with the Alsic journal, is the second in a series that began with Agi-lang (Alsic 2024) in June 2024 at the University of Grenoble Alpes. Coordinated by Anthippi Potolia and Eva Schaeffer-Lacroix, the Alsic 2026 event is supported by the research department of the Inspé de Paris, by the research unit STIH (Sens Texte Informatique Histoire) of the Sorbonne University, and by the research laboratory UMR SFL (Structures Formelles du Langage), affiliated with Paris 8 University & the CNRS.

Date: 10-12 June 2026
Location: Inspé de Paris, 10 rue Molitor, 75016 Paris
Submission deadline: 19 October 2025
Conference website: https://alsic-2026.sciencesconf.org/

Call for Papers:
The international conference Digital Technologies: Vectors of Inclusion or Exclusion in Language Teaching and Learning? (Alsic 2026) aims to bring together researchers interested in the role of digital technologies in language teaching and learning as a means of inclusion or as a factor of exclusion. The event invites reflection on the actual and potential uses of digital technologies, highlighting the opportunities they offer – such as increased accessibility, flexibility, and adaptation to diverse learner needs – while also examining the barriers they may produce: exclusion related to interface design, cost, age, low digital literacy, unintended negative effects on learning, etc. This event seeks to foster a reflective and reasoned perspective – or a “view from afar” (Lévi-Strauss, 1983) – on the use of digital technologies in language education, with particular attention to questions of equity, social justice, and equal access to learning opportunities.

In the age-old dialogue between sapiens and their tools (Debray, 1991), digital technologies are often viewed as levers for innovation, motivation, collaboration and openness to others (Amadieu & Tricot, 2014; Roussel & Gaonac’h, 2017). However, they can exacerbate certain forms of exclusion, depending on the educational policies in place, the contexts of (non-)access and the skills required (Warschauer, 2003; Plantard, 2016; Selwyn, 2016). Such exclusion does not affect only so-called “specific” groups (people with disabilities, with little or no literacy, etc.), but also those for whom the use of digital technologies in teaching and learning – particularly in language education – is imposed without prior reflection or appropriate training, as a norm that is taken for granted and left unexamined and unchallenged. Without a comprehensive, human-centered approach, reflexivity (Soubrié, 2016), and techno- semio-pedagogical competence or training (Guichon, 2012; Cappellini & Combe, 2017), the effective uses of digital technologies in language teaching and learning will remain the preserve of the so-called “inheritors,” as in so many other fields (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1964; Fluckiger, 2019). Admittedly, these observations are not new, and a number of solutions are emerging. Nevertheless, over the past 25 years, while the semiotic manifestations of digital technology (the web, social media, educational technology, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, etc.) and the forms of their pedagogical integration or informal use (distance learning, telecollaboration, blended learning, HyFlex learning, online learner communities, mainstream social media, messaging apps, serious games, etc.) have followed one another, questions and doubts regarding practices persist and are multiplying. As Jeanneret pointed out as early as 2000, the same tool can prove to be a pharmakos – a term from Ancient Greek meaning both remedy and poison, depending on how it is used, the frameworks in which it is embedded, the critical lens through which it is viewed, and the imaginaries with which it is associated (Debray, 1991). This is why a growing body of research on digital technologies focuses not only on its impact on language acquisition, but also on the development of transferable skills. Examples of the latter include interculturality (Potolia & Derivry-Plard, 2023), autonomy (Cappellini, 2019; Nissen, 2022), citizenship (Caws et al., 2021; Cappellini et al., 2023), literacy, and social justice (Gleason & Suvorov, 2019; Soubrié et al., 2021). The digital divide, once thought of primarily in terms of access to equipment, now also manifests through disparities in use (Plantard & Le Mentec, 2013). Many individuals, although technically proficient, are not always “equipped” for responsible, critical, and secure use of digital technologies for learning. From this perspective, inclusion and exclusion must be viewed as two sides of the same coin. Behind the apparent neutrality of digital technologies lie political, social and educational choices which, by favoring certain learner profiles, can marginalize others. Therefore, it is not so much the technologies themselves that include or exclude, but rather the ways in which they are used, the conditions under which they are implemented, the frameworks that structure them, and the intentions that guide them.

In light of these initial considerations, this conference aims to:
- shed light on inclusive digital practices already in use in language teaching and learning, and analyze their effects on learning;
- identify situations of exclusion caused or reinforced by the use of digital technologies, and consider ways to address them;
- explore how language education – a discipline that is fundamentally human-centered, pluralistic, and open – can take into account the tension between, on the one hand, the standardization of digital practices and, on the other hand, the marginalization of learners who fall outside the prescribed models of “competent and autonomous users”;
- pause and reflect on certain past and/or foreign concepts, and to reinvent them with the renewed and distanced perspective of the first quarter of the 21st century, through the lens of language education.

As Foucault noted in 1966, "Utopias afford consolation: although they have no real locality there is nevertheless a fantastic, untroubled region in which they are able to unfold; they open up cities with vast avenues, superbly planted gardens, countries where life is easy, even though the road to them is chimerical. Heterotopias are disturbing, probably because they secretly undermine language, because they make it impossible to name this and that, because they shatter or tangle common names, because they destroy ‘syntax’ in advance, and not only the syntax with which we construct sentences but also that less apparent syntax which causes words and things (next to and also opposite one another) to ‘hold together’ (Foucault, 1966/2002, p. xix) [English edition: Foucault, M. (2002). The order of things: An archeology of the human sciences. Routledge. ISBN: 0415267366]

We hope that this conference will be one of the 'supposed' heterotopias that no longer cause concern, because we have taken the time to approach them in a thoughtful and detached manner, exchanging the illusion of utopia for the confidence of knowledge.

Contact: Eva Schaeffer-Lacroix and Anthippi Potolia
Contact Email: [email protected]