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LEAD: Learn – Experiment – Apply – Develop

Dear readers,

Welcome to the June 2026 issue of The Pilgrims Teacher Trainer Journal. We are always looking to be innovative, and I believe in this issue we have definitely achieved this. As well as our usual evidenced-informed articles and reviews.

Please click on the image below to access the June 2026 issue of the Pilgrims Teacher Trainer Journal

I was delighted to be able to facilitate the panel discussion on Saturday 16^th May: “Using AI in the humanistic language classroom” with our wonderful panelists – Işıl Boy, Nik Peachey and Jamie Keddie. The recording of the full panel discussion can be accessed in the lead article and can be directly accessed here Panel discussion on Using Ai in the humanistic language classroom alongside an introduction from me and an interesting summary by Joe Dale who attended the session – partly constructed with the “support” of AI! Our discussion was varied and wide ranging and at times appropriately controversial with quite different views expressed by Işıl, Nik and Jamie – though we are all agreed that the human aspect and our personal relationships will always be central in our approach to teaching and learning. AI is obviously here to stay in education and will become more and more part of our reality. Perhaps we can say we need to focus on “recentring education in the age of AI” and understand positively what that means. Please do watch the panel discussion.

We are delighted to be able to promote the work of the SoftEnglish approach to supporting structured, logic-based reading. We have an interview with Daniella de Winter explaining her approach, and on the SoftEnglish website you can see the range of resources they offer. As Daniella says, “Reading can be taught logically and every brain can be taught to read.” 

The Pilgrims Teacher Trainer Journal remains free to access for everyone though I am sure you understand producing the journal to the highest standards involves significant resourceswill be pleased to promote and sponsor your products should you wish to do so with an advert or advertorial. You can find information on how to do so in this issue of the journal or contact phil.dexter@pilrimsttj.com directly. We are offering very competitive rates.

As usual, our contributions reflect global realities – in this issue, contributors are from Argentina, Cyprus, Israel, Italy, Lebanon, Spain, Scotland and Turkey.  

We continue with our two serialised contributions: by Penny Ur – in this issue on “Playing (and) games in English language teaching” and by Sandra Piai concluding her personal reflections on an incredible learning journey. In this issue, we include “The hearts of the classroom” by Teresa Bestwick – an interactive article based on her talk at the TESOL Spain conference in Seville in March on how we can thrive in teaching and learning. Janet Ayoub discusses a reflective practice account of mentoring for e-moderation in teacher education and Nick Baguley writes about the “Subtle art of post observation feedback”.

In this issue we have two reviews – one by Lidia Casalini reviewing Stories of Mentoring – Teacher Research produced by the MenTRnet network and another by Fraser Bewick reviewing the British Council Partnership Schools publication Action Research for schools 2025 –26: Global stories of school improvement.

In The Pilgrims Teacher Trainer Journal, we continue our existing collaboration with the British Council Teacher Educator Network through the British Council teacher educator newsletter British Council Teacher Educator Newsletter May 2026. We also continue to collaborate with the MenTRnet network https://mentrnet.net/ as we give voice to teacher educators across the world. Please see also a link to the MenTRnet research website https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/al/research/ Many of these voices are new, young (and more mature) teacher educators who may not have had access to publishing before. We continue to link with the Munich Teachers Association Newsletter Munich English Language Teachers Association Newsletter, the TESOL Spain Journal https://www.tesol-spain.org/en/news/9/the-tesol-spain-journal.html  and MATSDA Materials Development Association https://www.matsda.org/

As always, we continue to support and promote our sister magazine Humanising Language Teaching  https://www.hltmag.co.uk/may26/

We are now planning our teacher training courses in Segovia, Spain in the week of 13^th July 2026. Our current information is available on the Pilgrims website https://www.pilgrims.co.uk/teacher-training-courses/pilgrims-in-segovia We are delighted to be able to welcome teachers from the Castilla y Leon regional education department. We still have places on the courses, and we would love to have you join us. Please do contact us especially if your school as access to Erasmus + funding.

HOT NEWS:

Pilgrims Teacher Training is organising an online conference on 10^th and 11^th October – information can be found in this issue and on our website https://www.pilgrims.co.uk/teacher-training-courses

We hope you continue to enjoy The Pilgrims Teacher Trainer Journal and our contribution to encouraging the best of good practice in teacher education. As always, we would be delighted to receive feedback on any of the articles which you can send to me at the email address below and we would love to receive contributions – articles, interviews, book and resources reviews from teacher educators globally. A brief description of the guidelines for writers can be found on the website. If you think that you might be able to offer even a small financial contribution in supporting the journal, this would be much appreciated and you can do so in the contributions section of the teacher trainer website. 

For more detailed information on anything regarding The Pilgrims Teacher Trainer Journal, contact Phil Dexter phil.dexter@pilgrimsttj.com

Phil: phil.dexter@pilgrimsttj.com

We would love to receive contributions – articles, interviews, book and resources reviews from teacher educators globally. A brief description of the guidelines for writers can be found on the website. For more detailed information contact Phil: phil.dexter@pilgrimsttj.com

A brief description of the guidelines for writers can be found on the website. For more detailed information contact Phil: phil.dexter@pilgrimsttj.com. Our Teacher Trainer Journal is very much a public face of Pilgrims in promoting excellence in education.

The journal continues to be intended to be YOUR VOICE in reflecting and sharing global ideas on teacher education. In doing this, sometimes an article may seem to be a little controversial and though we strive for everything to be evidence-informed, this also means there may be strong personal views on a topic. We believe that The Pilgrims Teacher Trainer Journal should be a space for this. And, of course, we welcome debate and would very much welcome any responses to articles that we publish.

phil.dexter@pilgrimsttj.com