How students with dyslexia are positioned by their language teachers and what roles teachers assume when working with this group of students have rarely been investigated. In this study, using positioning theory as a theoretical framework and collecting data by means of an in-depth semi-structured interview and lesson observations, which were subsequently coded, we enquired about the positioning of 10 in-service Croatian primary and secondary school teachers. We wanted to know how teacher participants positioned students with dyslexia and how they positioned themselves towards this group of students. The analysis revealed that participants expressed positive attitudes, whereas their positioning was diverse. Participants positioned themselves as caring teachers and teachers of all learners. By recognising various learner needs, they created an inclusive learning environment by adapting teaching approaches and providing accommodations. However, this caring resulted in emotion labour, with both emotional costs and rewards. These results imply that teaching students with dyslexia may be challenging, and we hope that discussing teacher positioning in this context can help educators better understand teacher agency when working with students with SpLDs.

Motivation to learn a second and foreign language has been researched for several decades, initially employing the socio-educational model, and later the multi-dimensional model of motivational factors. The authors investigated the motivation of 279 non-English major students at University of Slavonski Brod (UNISB) in Croatia in learning English as a foreign language, with an aim to distinguish how an online learning experience caused by the COVID-19 pandemic shaped their extrinsic and intrinsic motives. They applied the five-component motivational system, consisting of motives related to future self-guides, instrumentality driven motives and previous learning experience. The analysis of the collected data showed that the intended effort to learn a target language, which gained more relevance as a motivational component than before COVID-19, varied between pre-pandemic and post-pandemic research findings. The motivational dimension of online learning showed no change in the importance of motivation connected to participants’ feeling of duties, obligations, and responsibilities, but it did show a stronger correlation with motives that support learning. Further analysis also revealed a significant positive effect of online learning during secondary schooling with both instrumentality driven motives, and online learning during tertiary education with all the motivational dimensions except intended effort.

Inattention and hyperactivity/impulsivity that feature Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) may be challenging in the classroom setting. However, little is known about language teachers’ self-efficacy and the approaches they would employ to deal with context-specific ADHD-like behaviours. Therefore, this mixed-method study used the vignette methodology to investigate the self-reported efficacy and teaching approaches of 62 pre-service English language teachers from Japan, Poland, Turkey, and Ukraine in managing ADHD-like behaviours in six hypothetical classroom scenarios. By comparing diverse educational and cultural contexts, the study aimed to identify convergences and divergences in coping with these behaviours to promote evidence-based approaches in inclusive language teaching. Data were gathered using an online questionnaire with both open- and closed-ended questions on a Likert-type scale. The findings indicate that participants feel moderately confident in managing ADHD-like behaviours; however, some statistically significant country-related differences were observed. A number of similar teaching approaches were identified across the sample, but prominent country-specific differences in approaching specific ADHD-like behaviours were present. The approaches used by participants align with evidence-based recommendations for teaching students with ADHD to some extent. The discussed implications of the study inform pre-service teachers’ education and call for approaches that are more universal in design and language-skill-development-oriented.