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RELANZA - Redefining language education: SDGs and innovative teaching strategies

By Dra. Mercedes Querol-Julián (AESLA/BAAL)

How can language education contribute to building more sustainable, inclusive and socially responsible societies? RELANZA project (Redefining language education: SDGs and innovative teaching strategies) was created to explore this question. Funded by Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR, Spain) and coordinated by Mercedes Querol-Julián, the project has been developed by the PRODIGI (Personal and Professional Development through Digital Genres) research group in collaboration with the BAAL Language Curriculum SIG. Bringing together scholars from Spain and the United Kingdom, it involves researchers from UNIR, Universitat Jaume I, The University of Edinburgh and the University of Strathclyde, with dissemination support from Instituto Cervantes and FAAPI (Federación Argentina de Asociaciones de Profesores de Inglés).

Rather than treating sustainability as an additional topic to be incorporated into language lessons, RELANZA invites educators to reconsider the broader purposes of language education. The project highlights the potential of language learning to foster critical citizenship, intercultural understanding, equity and social responsibility, while aligning with the goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda, particularly SDG 4: Quality Education.

A distinctive aspect of the project is its emphasis on linguistic diversity as a sustainability issue. RELANZA argues that languages represent different ways of understanding and engaging with the world and that language education can play a vital role in promoting more inclusive and equitable educational practices. From this perspective, sustainability is viewed as a guiding principle for curriculum design, teacher education and classroom practice.

To support educators in different contexts and languages, RELANZA has produced a range of open-access resources in English and Spanish. These include a podcast series featuring international experts, practical guides accompanying each episode, and interactive online materials designed to encourage reflection and adaptation to local educational realities. Together, these resources aim to bridge research and practice while providing concrete opportunities for professional learning.

The six podcast episodes feature interviews conducted by Darío Banegas with leading scholars on themes shaping contemporary language education:

• Digitalisation in the language curriculum (Fernando Trujillo Sáez)
• Artificial intelligence in the language curriculum (Victor Lim)
• Multimodal literacy in the language curriculum (Noelia Ruiz-Madrid)
• Internationalisation in the language curriculum (Emma Dafouz)
• Sustainable development in the language curriculum (Paul Meighan)
• Social justice in the language curriculum (Deniz Ortaçtepe Hart)

An innovative aspect of the project is its use of AI-assisted voice cloning and dubbing technologies, combined with extensive human review and post-production of the podcast. Through this approach, RELANZA explores how emerging technologies can support wider access to educational knowledge while maintaining ethical standards and human oversight.

The project’s activities have extended beyond the podcast itself, the practical guide and the interactive online materials. Launch webinars held in November 2025 brought together participants from different educational settings to discuss artificial intelligence and language education (“Language teaching in the GenAI-age: The professional GenAI competence framework” by Benjamim Moorhouse, and “Hacia un uso crítico de la IA en el aprendizaje de lenguas“ by Pascual Pérez Paredes), while the closing webinars in June 2026 focused particularly on social justice, a topic that attracted strong interest among RELANZA followers (“Teaching for social justice: Critical literacy and language teaching materials” by Deniz Ortaçtepe Hart, “Enseñanza de lenguas y justicia social: Reflexiones y propuestas” by Mara Fuertes Gutiérrez). In addition, a series of newsletters has documented insights emerging from the interviews and events, helping to sustain dialogue around the project's central themes.

Beyond its educational resources, RELANZA has contributed to broader public discussions on the role of AI in knowledge dissemination. The article “La IA ahora puede hablar con tu voz, pero ¿sigue siendo tu mensaje?” reflects on the project's use of GenAI voice-cloning technologies, examining both their potential and their limitations. Based on testimonies from project participants and the technician involved in the production process, the article considers questions of authenticity, accessibility and responsible AI use.

By combining research, technology and practitioner-oriented resources, RELANZA contributes to ongoing discussions about the future of language education. Its work demonstrates how language curricula can engage with pressing global concerns while supporting more reflective, inclusive and socially responsive educational practices.

More information and all project resources are available at: https://relanza.net/en/ and https://zenodo.org/communities/relanza/

Language Rights in the Age of AI: Why This Moment Matters

This year marks thirty years since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights (UDLR) in Barcelona in 1996. Looking back, the Declaration was remarkably visionary in recognizing that language rights are inseparable from human rights, cultural diversity, democratic participation, and social justice. Thirty years later, however, the world has changed in ways that could scarcely have been imagined in 1996.

Artificial intelligence now mediates communication, education, information access, and knowledge production on a global scale. While these technologies offer unprecedented opportunities for connection and learning, they also raise profound questions about linguistic diversity and equity. Which languages are represented in AI systems? Which varieties of language are considered legitimate? Whose knowledge becomes visible and searchable? Which communities remain marginalized or invisible?

AI systems do not create knowledge in a vacuum. They learn from the texts, images, and data that humans have produced, selected, and made available. As a result, they can reproduce existing inequalities, amplifying dominant languages, perspectives, and narratives while rendering others less visible. In this sense, AI may contribute to what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie famously called "the danger of a single story"—the tendency for one narrative to become so dominant that alternative experiences, knowledges, and ways of seeing the world are overlooked or erased. If AI systems are trained primarily on a narrow range of linguistic and cultural sources, they risk mirroring and magnifying historical biases rather than expanding opportunities for diversity and inclusion.

For AILA, these concerns resonate strongly with our commitments to multilingualism, linguistic diversity, social inclusion, and JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion). They also connect directly with ongoing global conversations about the future of education beyond 2030 and the role of language in achieving sustainable and equitable development.

The initiative to update the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights therefore arrives at a particularly important moment. It offers an opportunity not only to revisit the challenges identified in 1996 but also to address new realities created by globalization, migration, digital communication, and artificial intelligence.

As applied linguists, we have a responsibility to contribute to these discussions. Our field has long examined how language intersects with power, identity, education, and social participation. The renewal of the Declaration invites us to bring this expertise into broader public conversations about the future we wish to build.

In a world increasingly shaped by algorithms, linguistic diversity is not simply a cultural resource to be preserved. It is a condition for epistemic diversity, democratic participation, and human flourishing.

The challenge before us is not only to protect languages. It is to ensure that the future remains multilingual, inclusive, and open to multiple ways of knowing, communicating, and existing in this world.