Title: Children’s English Learning
in Global Contexts: Assumptions and Challenges
Presenter: Professor Yuko Goto Butler, Graduate School
of Education, University of Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
Time: Feb 12, 2026 2pm (UK time)
Abstract: As English is recognized as a powerful lingua franca, there is a global trend of increasingly younger children learning English. Two major motivations can be identified behind this enthusiasm for English learning among children (defined here as those up to age 12 learning an additional language in an instructional setting) and the strong parental support often referred to as “parentocracy.” These motivations include: (a) a neoliberal ideology that assumes English proficiency leads to social and economic success for individuals and nations, and (b) the belief that “the younger, the better.” While the formal education system aims, in part, to provide all children with the opportunity to learn this influential language, such policies often lead to unintended consequences—namely, the widening of disparities in the quality of English education and levels of English attainment based on children’s socioeconomic and regional backgrounds. In this talk, I will analyze the assumptions and complexities surrounding early English education for children from a global perspective.
Yuko Goto Butler is Professor of Educational Linguistics at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also the director of the Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) program at Penn. Her research interests have primarily focused on improving additional language education for young learners in response to the diverse needs of an increasingly globalized and digitalized world. Her work has centered on identifying effective teaching and learning strategies, as well as assessment methods, that account for the linguistic and cultural contexts in which instruction occurs.
