I am proud and happy to announce that Juup Stelma and I have just published a book chapter, entitled Intentionality & Complex Systems Theory in Language Education. The chapter appears in New Directions in Language Learning Psychology, a collection edited by Christina Gkonou, Dietmar Tatzl and Sarah Mercer and published in the Springer Second Language Learning and Teaching series.
If you scroll all the way down to the end of this post, you will find a link for downloading the chapter. Before you get there, you may want to read a short summary, below.
Contents of this post
What is this chapter about?
In the chapter, we suggest that many activities in language teaching and learning might be easier to understand if we look into the forces that drive and sustain them. These forces, which we call intentionalities, are roughly akin to the ‘purposes’ of each activity, the reasons that make teachers and students behave together in particular ways.
We also point out that teaching and learning usually emerge from the co-activity of several intertwined intentionalities. Rather than looking into each intentionality separately, we therefore suggest that it may be helpful to try to understand them through a complexity lens, because this allows us to see their combined effect.
Juup and I support our theoretical argument by drawing on data from our doctoral theses. Juup describes how a group of learners in Norway got increasingly enthusiastic about a set of role-playing tasks and engaged in ever more elaborate theatrics. What drove this activity, he argues, was a ‘performance intentionality’, and he discusses how it came into being and how it eventually faltered. In my part of the chapter, I talk about how teaching and learning in an evening language school in Greece was driven by what I call a ‘competition intentionality’, which emerged from the interaction with the state school system.
Why is this important?
When we think about second language teaching and learning, we are sometimes frustrated by two unhelpful misconceptions. The first misconception, which I have termed the predictive fallacy, is that it should be possible to associate outcomes with specific causes – or intentionalities, to use the terminology of this chapter. That is to say, we might assume that things happen in a classroom because someone (a student, a teacher, a policy maker) influenced them with their decision-making. The perspective that we put forward in Intentionality & Complex Systems Theory in Language Education highlights the interconnectivity of decisions, at many different levels, and offers a more nuanced account of how activity emerges.
The second misconception, which appears in some strands of complexity thinking, is that language teaching and learning are so unpredictable that anything might happen. Such accounts downplay the role of individual responsibility, and may render opaque the underlying processes that sustain or hinder change in an educational setting. In this chapter, we show how a complex system can still show identifiable traces of intentional activity, and this can help us to develop a deeper understanding of what shapes lessons, classes, and schools.
Download the chapter
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What does “intentionality” mean in this chapter?
The chapter uses intentionality to describe the purposes, motives, and orientations that drive activity in language teaching and learning. These intentionalities are not treated as isolated intentions of individuals, but as interconnected forces emerging across classrooms, institutions, and policy contexts.
Why is complexity theory important for understanding language education?
Complexity theory helps explain how multiple influences interact dynamically in educational settings. Instead of reducing classroom outcomes to single causes, it allows researchers and practitioners to examine how teaching and learning emerge from the interaction of many interconnected factors.
What examples are discussed in the chapter?
The chapter draws on doctoral research conducted in Norway and Greece. One example examines learners’ increasing engagement in theatrical role-play activities, while the other explores how competitive pressures shaped teaching and learning practices in a Greek evening language school.
Summary
- The chapter explores how classroom activity emerges from interconnected motives, decisions, and institutional pressures.
- Drawing on case studies from Norway and Greece, we examine “performance intentionality” in role-play tasks and “competition intentionality” in private language education.
- The discussion challenges two common misconceptions in language education research: that outcomes can be traced to single causes (“predictive fallacy”), and that educational systems are so unpredictable that intentional human action becomes analytically irrelevant.
Reference
For those of you who find this kind of information useful, the full bibliographical reference is:
- Kostoulas, A., & Stelma, J. (2016). Intentionality and complex systems theory: A new direction for language learning psychology. In C. Gkonou, D. Tatzl, & S. Mercer (Eds.). New directions in language learning psychology (pp. 7-24). Springer.
About me
Achilleas Kostoulas is an applied linguist and language teacher educator at the Department of Primary Education, University of Thessaly, Greece. He holds a PhD and an MA in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages from the University of Manchester, UK and a BA in English Studies from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece.
His research explores a wide range of issues connected with language (teacher) education, including language contact and plurilingualism, linguistic identities and ideologies, language policy and didactics, often using a Complex Dynamic Systems Theory to tease out connections between them. Some of his work includes the research monograph The Intentional Dynamics of TESOL (2021, De Gruyter; with Juup Stelma) and the edited volume Doctoral Study and Getting Published (2025, Emerald; with Richard Fay), as well as numerous other publications.
Achilleas currently contributes to several projects that bring together his long-standing interests in language education, teacher development, and the social dimensions of language learning. As the coordinator of the expert team of AI Lang (Artificial Intelligence in Language Education), an initiative of the European Centre for Modern Languages of the Council of Europe, is active in developing principles and resources to help educators make informed, pedagogically grounded use of AI in their teaching. He also leads the University of Thessaly team of ReaLiTea (Research Literacy of Teachers), a project that supports language teachers to engage with, and contribute to, educational research. Alongside these, he contributes to LocalLing (Revitalisation of Linguistic Diversity and Cultural Heritage), a Horizon-funded initiative for the preservation of heritage and minority languages globally.
In addition to the above, Achilleas is the (co)editor-in-chief of the European Journal of Education and Language Review, and welcomes contributions that explore the dynamic intersections between language, education, and society.
About this post
This blog is a space for slow, reflective thinking about applied linguistics, language education, professional development, and the role of technology in language teaching and learning. Transparency about process, tools, and authorship is part of that commitment.
- I wrote this post on 17th December 2015. I updated it on 11th May 2025, when I added a summary and FAQ section.
- When revising this post, I used artificial intelligence to support copy-editing and Search Engine Optimisation. I wrote the text, and retain responsibility for analytical thinking, authorial decisions and wording.
- The views expressed here are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of the University of Thessaly or any other entity with which I am affiliated.
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