The idea about a series of recurring scientific conferences Children and Languages Today was brought about in 2001, motivated by the need to bring together researchers tightly involved in acquisition, learning and teaching of the Croatian language and foreign languages to learners at lower primary level. At the time Croatian academic community was short of a conference that would be truly dedicated to critical thinking and exchange of research findings, outcomes and experience in these particular study areas. As it turned out, Children and Languages Today served as an incentive for other conferences and meetings in Croatia that would continue to promote research in the fields of first and second language acquisition of young learners.
The Children and Languages Today conferences to date have been fostering critical examination of the following themes about language and young learners’ education: children and the learning of Croatian and foreign languages (2001); Croatian language teacher and foreign language teacher (2002); children and multilingualism (2003); evaluation and self-evaluation in Croatian and foreign language instruction to young learners (2004); native and local in Croatian language instruction and interculturalism in foreign language instruction (2005); children and text (2007); children and media (2011), first and second language literacy development (2017); children and linguistic identity (2019); reading in contemporary contexts (2021). The eight books of conference proceedings and an edited book have had substantial effect in the scientific and educational community and are still in demand. We are thankful to conference participants hitherto, i.e. article contributors, for their submissions, as well as editors for their tireless engagement.
At the moment we are organising 11th Children and Languages Today conference focusing on Language (of the) Textbooks, that will be held on 12-13 October 2023.