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This paper reports on a study that investigated Australian pre-service teachers' (PSTs) experiences in mobility programs undertaken in Santiago, Chile. Through the methodological lens of sense-making, our analysis aims to further current understandings of international teaching practicums and to examine how discursively (re)produced binary categories of cultural Self and Other continue to shape intercultural encounters. Our research suggests that there is a need to support PSTs in finding new ways to engage more deeply with the complexity of their experiences overseas, and their expanding sense of identity. This complexity might be explored further through a more critical interrogation of neo-colonial discourses that continue to frame the objectives of global mobility programs. The paper concludes by arguing that a conscious disruption of such inherent discourses is key in ensuring that international teaching practicums actually provide the transformative shifts in personal and professional experiences they are intended to generate.

This paper discusses key themes of the 15th biennial conference of the Association for Language Awareness (2020), with a focus on increasing digital engagement in language education. The COVID-19 pandemic occasioned an abrupt transition to emergency remote language teaching and learning (ERLTL) worldwide. The ALA 2020 conference was also affected by this transition; originally planned as a located conference in Geelong, Australia, it was eventually held online, a first in ALA's conference history. The current paper engages with contemporary debates of language teaching and learning in two ways. Firstly, it traces recent discussions by presenting key findings from five papers given at the conference, and secondly, via a scoping review of literature focusing on critical lessons from the pandemic regarding language teaching and learning. The review captures recent research from the Australasian region. Key debates identified in the literature include the needs of teachers and learners during the transition to online learning, and how student engagement was affected. The literatures highlight that both educators and students have been developing new practices in teaching and learning resulting from the shift to online and blended modes, which may continue to shape language education and new pedagogies in the future. The 15th Conference of the Association for Language Awareness (ALA) was hosted online in late 2020 from Melbourne, Australia after the global pandemic had disrupted travel. In this paper, we present five papers from the conference and a literature review. The conference theme addressed how language teaching and learning are changing because of digital practices. The papers included focus on two main themes. The first theme relates to current beliefs and perceptions of educators about languages and language teaching. A second theme considers how the development of language awareness can be supported in the classroom, and with digital tools. The scoping review of literature contributes to these debates by examining findings from recent studies investigating the effects of the pandemic on language teaching and learning. This research snapshot focuses on the Australasian region where the conference was remotely hosted and where the authors of the current paper live and work. The Australasian region is also considered as one of the regions where the strictest lockdowns in the world were imposed, with far-reaching effects on teaching, learning, and research. We conclude with implications of the changes for language teaching and learning after the pandemic, and for the development of critical language awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]