All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players
This quote from William Shakespeare’s As You Like It (2.7.139–140) is perhaps the most well-known English-language comparison between the world and a theater stage, and between the people of the world and theater actors or players. This idea long predates Shakespeare and even the English language, however; much meaning has been made from this metaphor across diverse societies, cultures, systems, and contexts.
Why emphasize this now in our KOTESOL2024 conference theme, “Players on the World Stage: From EFL Classrooms to Global Lives”? To understand the activities that go on in our English as a foreign language (EFL) teaching contexts as somehow unreal or illusory might seem disrespectful or dismissive. But perhaps this metaphor is so persistent because it is subversive and thought-provoking: It calls into question our preconceptions about time and space, the relative size and importance of aspects or our lives and world, and where to perceive the boundaries around our activities. It also highlights a fluidity about the roles that people take on and "perform". For some, it might be discouraging to think of life’s important activities as ephemeral, but from another point of view, it could be empowering or exciting to envision the ways in which personal (and interpersonal) creativity, expression, and even playfulness and whimsy connect outwards to touch the affairs of the whole world. With this theme, we hope to center and celebrate all that is vital, humanizing, and powerful in EFL.
We hope that our theme will prove timely and relevant to presenters and attendees. As we enter 2024, many EFL teachers and professionals find ourselves confronting professional and personal turmoil. Post-pandemic, our physical classrooms might be understood as either vitally important or utterly disposable. We are confronted by surprising new technologies that might entirely transform our professional lives, or might prove to be mere toys. Our world seems somehow to usher us towards both hyper-connectedness and isolation. As teachers, learners, and professionals, the pathways ahead of us might be more confusing than ever. A contemporary reading of “players on the world stage,” informed by neoliberal and technocratic understandings of globalization, might perceive it as an arrogant or chauvinistic understanding of how to engage with the world. Surely, though, our tumultuous times have brought such paradigms into question. As well as allowing us to celebrate EFL, we hope this theme will encourage exploration, reflection, and interrogation of English learning and teaching, of the perceived goals and trajectories of EFL, and of the relationships between EFL and the world, with an eye to humanizing our profession and our classrooms and empowering the teachers and learners who inhabit them.
When it comes to conferences, people sometimes ask, “What’s in a theme?” The KOTESOL international conference is a vibrant, diverse, and inclusive event, open to all language education professionals at all career stages. If you have an idea for a submission in mind but feel unsure whether it suits our theme – first, we think it probably does, somehow, but we hope you will make a submission regardless, provided it has some relevance to language education. (You can find out more using these submission guidelines.)
Our openness also goes for attending the conference! We are a warm and welcoming organization made up of English language teachers and language education professionals of all types of schools, teaching levels, and contexts. We hope that this explanation of our theme has something to say to you, but even if it doesn't, we are planning a rewarding and invigorating professional development event that we feel confident will have something to offer you, and we hope you will join us. (Registration will open in early 2024!)
Bryan Hale
Chair, KOTESOL2024
