Cogent Education

Language Tutoring in the Platform Age

Cogent Education is pleased to welcome you to submit your research to the Article Collection "Language Tutoring in the Platform Age".

Language tutoring is a prevalent phenomenon around the world. Driven by advances in digital technology and growing demand for flexible, personalized learning opportunities, an increasing proportion of language tutoring takes place in platform-mediated contexts, such as social media platforms and online tutoring platforms, as well as via a rapidly growing range of AI-enabled apps. This rapidly expanding ecosystem plays an undeniably important role in the language learning trajectories of millions of learners around the world. Yet, despite the prevalence of online language tutoring, academic scholarship on language education has directed surprisingly little attention towards the phenomenon. As a result, it is unclear how online language tutoring differs from both offline language tutoring and traditional classroom contexts. In particular, the political-economic and social dimensions of language tutoring have only recently begun to capture sustained scholarly attention. These raise broader questions about labour, inequality, commercialization and the professionalism in language learning that extend beyond purely educational concerns. This special issue addresses this gap in the literature via a purposefully multiperspectival focus on the topic of online language tutoring.

Globally, the online language tutoring industry is worth billions of dollars. Tens of millions of individuals worldwide learn online as private tutors and hundreds of thousands of individuals work online as language tutors. Online language tutoring is thus an important issue for not only learners but for tutors as well, whose livelihoods depend on online tutoring. As platformization and artificial intelligence continue to accelerate, it is inevitable that online language tutoring will grow in scope and intensity. Therefore, it is vital for scholars to theorize the sociopolitical, economic, and pedagogical implications of online tutoring. For example, online tutoring has introduced new business models and platform affordances that challenge existing assumptions about both the form and purpose of language education. Thus, research is urgently needed to address the positive and negative implications of online tutoring for all stakeholders in language education.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:
● Students’ motivations for using online tutoring and their preferences for particular tutors, platforms and instructional modalities
● Online tutors’ socioeconomic conditions, including issues of precarity
● Equity and the potential for online tutoring to exacerbate or ameliorate inequality among learners
● Power dynamics and the political-economic consequences of online tutoring
● The implications of online tutoring for students’ development of stereotypes and intercultural competencies
● Mapping the online tutoring ecosystem
● The pedagogical challenges and opportunities presented by online tutoring
● Online language tutoring and learners’ (and teachers’) identities
● Comparative studies of online tutoring across linguistic, cultural, national and educational contexts
● Methodological and theoretical innovations for researching online language tutoring and digitally mediated language education

Meet the Guest Advisors

Dr. Nate Ming Curran is an Assistant Professor at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He conducts research at the intersection of media studies and applied linguistics. His research interests include platformization of language education, branding, and intercultural communication

Dr. Kevin Wai Ho Yung is an Associate Professor at the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, The Education University of Hong Kong. He is currently a Senior Editor of the Language Education Section of Cogent Education. His research focuses on out-of-school language learning, learner motivation and agency and AI-enabled tutoring.

Dr. Ali Fuad Selvi is an Associate Professor of TESOL and Applied Linguistics in the MA TESOL Program in the English Department at the University of Alabama in the United States. His research interests include Global Englishes; sociopolitical aspects of English-medium instruction, issues related to (in)equity, professionalism, marginalization, and discrimination in TESOL; the platformized ELT ecosystem; and critical applied linguistics and language teacher education.

The Guest Advisors declare no conflict of interest regarding this work.