Seminar I SLA Pedagogy Legitimation Code Theory and AI

Second Language Acquisition (SLA) pedagogy has undergone significant turns over the past five decades. The recent flourishing of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the widespread accessibility of platforms, such as ChatGPT, Bard, Copilot, and others, have heralded another turn in teaching and learning. However, this proliferation of AI coincides with a renewed interest in the human-to-human collaborative construction of knowledge in the classroom. The manner in which teachers and educators unpack and categorize knowledge during interactions with students profoundly impacts the learning process, necessitating a deeper understanding of this dynamic. In pursuit of this, Maton’s Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) has garnered attention within educational research, including SLA and linguistics.

This talk will outline the challenges associated with AI in the educational context, as well as the theoretical and technical underpinnings of an ongoing research project aimed at integrating AI into the application of LCT in language teaching and teacher training. The multifaceted nature of LCT will be explored, with potential conceptualizations for use with machine learning and AI algorithms. Furthermore, the synergistic combination of AI and LCT will be explored as a potential catalyst for enhancing SLA pedagogy.