L2 Journal: An Open Access Refereed Journal for World Language Educators

In this issue, we are pleased to include four contributions on a topic that is currently the object of heated debates in Germany and that we feel should be of interest to our readers – the concept of Bildung, or general education, in an era of globalization.  Two of these contributions are authored by two German doctoral students in Applied Linguistics who visited the Berkeley Language Center during the academic year 2013-2014: Irene Heidt, from the Hellenic American University in Athens, Greece, and Julia Campos, from the University of Munich. While at UC Berkeley, Irene and Julia participated in a graduate student reading group on neoliberalism in language education (see L2Journal Special Issue 2015), and they researched in depth the history and the current debates surrounding the quintessentially German concept of Bildung this quintessentially German concept. The two papers that appear in this issue are the result of their research. I decided to invite two German senior scholars in Applied Linguistics to write a response to each of these papers. Prof. Dr. Adelheid Hu, from the University of Luxemburg, responded to Irene Heidt, and Prof. Dr. Jörg Roche, from the University of Munich, responded to Julia Campos.  This unusual pairing of a young and a more senior scholar, for which I was inspired by my colleague Prof. Jabari Mahiri from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education, will give our readers a multifaceted perspective on this complex topic. We hope you find it fruitful for your own research and practice.