Introduction to responses to Lantolf, Poehner, and Rieker's (2025) “Crisis! Commentary on 'synergies' in second language acquisition and teaching (SLA/T) and how the field may advance” (a response to Atkinson, Michel, and Ribeiro (Eds.) (2025) <i>MLJ

Finding synergetic cooperation in any area of human life would seem to be important in a world where crises are multiplying, leading to more and more discord and horror. That was part of the motivation underlying (what we called) the Synergies Project. Bringing 17 scholars together from around the world—each with their own well-developed way of researching second language acquisition and teaching (SLA/T)—was challenging, but it presented a rare opportunity to look more widely, think more broadly, and interact more cooperatively regarding SLA/T than most of us usually do. This project thus provided a powerful antidote to the inclination to believe that one holds the truth in one's hands, or at least that one's own SLA/T approach is somehow automatically “better” or “more accurate” than others. We had no doubt that while we each might know some part of what we called “the SLA/T Elephant” (Atkinson et al., 2025b), none of us had a full grasp of SLA/T as a complex human phenomenon of the first order. Thus, our project was based on the conviction that we could learn more about our complex object of study both individually and as a field if we put our heads together. We knew that the result would not fit together neatly like a rubric's cube or jigsaw puzzle, but that it would provide a path for the cooperative exploration of the intricacies of what we study, and therefore for widening and deepening our shared understanding. The project reported on in the guest-edited issue had multiple origins. However, the animating spark was Marije's invitation to Dwight to speak at a session of AILA 2021 on a topic of shared interest—alignment—but from vastly different perspectives (Atkinson et al., 2007; Kim & Michel, 2023). This genuinely ecumenical invitation led Dwight to visit Europe in 2022 to meet Marije and her colleague Wander Lowie in Groningen, Simona Pekarek Doehler and her colleagues and students in Neuchâtel, and Scott Thornbury and the University of Barcelona faculty and students in Barcelona. These meetings resulted in a proposal for an AAAL colloquium entitled “Toward Commensurability in Complexity: Diverse Approaches to SLA/T in Dialogue,” co-organized by us and featuring about half of the guest-edited issue's eventual co-authors. MLJ editor Marta Antón then invited us to submit a proposal for a guest-edited issue. After expanding our group to 17 scholars, including Amable Custodio Ribeiro as co-editor—and after a year of communicating mostly by email—we held a 2-day in-person meeting following AAAL 2024, supported by the National Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations (NFMLTA). It was at this meeting that the project jelled and the guest-edited issue started to come together. In graduate school, Dwight had been struck by the exclusivity and “schoolishness” of theoretical approaches to SLA, as manifested particularly in the “SLA Theory Wars” (Atkinson & Taylor, 2026) of the 1990s. These “wars” were waged over the claim that there should be one or a small number of grand theories of SLA, to which all other approaches would submit. Dwight's personal response was to organize three AAAL colloquia, produce an edited volume (Atkinson, 2011), and co-organize—along with Jim Lantolf—a colloquium at Penn State, which eventuated in the Douglas Fir Group (2016). The Douglas Fir Group (2016) offered a single 15-author statement on where the authors thought SLA studies were heading in the 21st century, and what we thought were the major issues. It was highly exploratory and collaborative. As a first attempt, however, those efforts were limited: All authors were based in North America; most were very well-established; and age, racioethnic, linguistic, and theoretical diversity was lacking. The Synergies Project was therefore partly an attempt to cover some of the same ecumenical ground as the Douglas Fir Group (2016) but with a wider range of contributors. The main aim, as we envisioned it, was to bring a variety of views into constructive interaction—to see what we shared and could take further together on that basis—rather than to play the more typical academic “doubting game” (Elbow, 1973; Larsen-Freeman, 2000 for SLA). As a group, we operated on the shared conviction that if we thought together, wrote together, and (most of all) met face-to-face and talked together, we could do something different and possibly useful for the field, in addition to broadening our own understandings. Like any exploratory effort, limitations remain: A co-aim of the project—to attain the widest possible diversity of views and background—was more challenging than expected; this part of the project remains unfinished. We have nonetheless made a start, and our shared product—the guest-edited issue—now exists for whatever purposes it will be put to by the SLA/T profession. We thank Lantolf et al. (2025) for getting the ball rolling. Developing shared values and broad perspectives represents neither a crisis in SLA/T studies nor an ideal solution. Rather, it represents the basis for what can and should be the permanent work of humanity: cooperative activity, of which learning and teaching—including of additional languages—are fundamental parts, leading to our increasing humanization. The responses in this section do not shy away from dialectic expression of differences, but they do so in a spirit of cooperative construction of a shared enterprise, and they seek to include whoever may join in building the SLA/T field in the future. That is, in the spirit of Lantolf (1996), “Let all the flowers bloom!” (title); or, in our words, let the synergistic project continue! The authors declare no conflicts of interest.