TRANSFORMATIVE ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING (TELT™) A Human Flourishing Framework From Self to Society

Children and adolescents are growing up amid intersecting pressures on mental health, emotional wellbeing, social connection, identity, attention, relationships and their sense of the future. The World Health Organization estimates that one in seven 10–19-year-olds globally experiences a mental health condition, while international education research increasingly links social and emotional capabilities with wellbeing, learning, relationships and participation. At the same time, 2024 recorded 61 active state-based armed conflicts, the highest number recorded since 1946. These realities do not mean that schools can solve mental-health or societal crises. They do, however, renew an ancient educational question: what are we educating human beings for? This conceptual paper proposes Transformative English Language Teaching (TELT™) as an application of transformative education and human flourishing through the distinctive affordances of English as an international language. TELT synthesises and expands established insights from humanistic, experiential, sociocultural, social-emotional and transformative traditions and organises them into an eight-dimensional Human Flourishing Architecture: Self-Worth, Wellbeing, Identity, Values & Virtues, Life & Human Skills, Connection, Agency, and Global Citizenship & Purpose. Proposed by Zougli (2026), the architecture moves recursively from Self to Society through the developmental logic: I matter → I care → I become → I choose → I can → I connect → I act → I contribute. TELT does not replace linguistic objectives or position teachers as therapists. It proposes that rigorous English language learning can also create conditions for reflection, meaning, connection, agency and responsible contribution.