Issue 57

Welcome to issue 57 of the International House Journal of Education and Professional Development.

Slowly, it’s happening. The golden future promised by AI seems increasingly constructed of pyrite. While backlash seems too strong a word for the reaction against technology that many societies are seeing, now would appear as good a time as any to focus on the most important part of any classroom – the humans that it contains. Hence this issue’s special feature – Only Human.

The topic has hit home in a big way, encouraging more submissions than any other special feature to date. We have a motivational piece by the Olympic gold medallist Theresa Zabell, an AI-critical piece by Jeremy Harmer, and an update of Dogme ELT for the AI age by Martin Sketchley. Elsewhere, Mark Johnston and John Ayers each look at the humans in the classroom, whatever shape that human might take.

As strong as our special feature is, it is not the whole story – if, like myself, you are about to embark on a new academic year, there are many articles here that will give you something to take straight into the classroom, besides a more open and humanistic perspective, that is. Katherine Dorpman and Amy Gowers both present a series of highly useful activities, Farnaz Memari provides some timely advice on how to deal with PARSNIPs in a more open and productive way, and Kenneth Shand suggests that if all the world’s a stage, why not the classroom too?

I’ll finish with my usual exhortation – if you like what you see here and would like to contribute to the next issue, submissions are already open through the usual route!