Microaggressions and intercultural competence in the Spanish classroom

Microaggressions are subtle offensive mechanisms that can be intentional or unintentional (Pierce, 1970). For the past 50 years, researchers have documented their damaging effects on peoples’ mental and physical health. In this report, we focus on microaggressions in the Spanish classroom and with Latino/Latinx/Hispanic students, including their damaging effects within the context of changing demographics in the United States, how they impact our language classrooms, and how they can be mitigated through language curricula that promote intercultural citizenship. Also, we share strategies and suggestions to counter microaggressions in the language classroom, grounded in the assumption that to support socially just learning environments, educators must create a healthy atmosphere where all students feel safe, respected, and validated, and are held to high academic and civic standards. We believe that language teachers are uniquely positioned to create learning environments that model intercultural perspectives and foster the necessary openness to analyze and understand different perspectives as students advance their intercultural competence

Incorporating Knowledge of Students Systematically into TPACK-based Instruction: An Illustration

How might teachers’ knowledge of students’ specific learning needs and preferences be incorporated into their TPACK, and subsequently into their practice? How can this knowledge help teachers to select and employ particular technologies in specific ways that can accommodate students’ differing learning requirements? Building upon previous work that supports teachers’ TPACK-based instructional planning with taxonomies of learning activity types in nine different curriculum areas, we developed a taxonomy of teaching strategies, each supported by recommended digital technologies, that are specific to particular learners’ needs. In this first TPACK-based teaching strategies taxonomy, the needs of English Language Learners (ELLs) are addressed. The new taxonomy is designed to be used in concert with one or more curriculum-based learning activity types taxonomies, scaffolding the development and use of teachers’ TPACK while they are planning curriculum-based, well-differentiated instruction

Lessons Learned from a Collaborative Self-Study in International Teacher Education: Visiones, Preguntas, y Desafíos

International experience is a critical part of any efforts at internationalizing the teacher education curriculum (Cushner & Mahon, 2002). Professional teacher preparation standards (NCATE, INTASC) have made clear that teachers, particularly those teaching foreign language and social studies, need to have international experiences. These experiences need to be extended to higher education faculty as well given that their experiences have the potential to influence both the pedagogy and curriculum of teacher education experiences. Indeed, it is folly to ask teacher education faculty to promote an international teacher education without having experienced and studied international education any more than we would ask teachers to teach second language learners without any substantial background or experience with these learners and expect them to do quality work. The internationalization of teacher education has not only involved USA faculty and students traveling to study/work abroad. It implies hosting international faculty and students who come to the USA as well as engaging with the international tenured and tenured track faculty who work at many teacher education programs for scholarly as well as pedagogical purposes

Grounded Technology Integration: Instructional Planning Using Curriculum-Based Activity Type Taxonomies

Technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpck or tpack) – the highly practical professional educational knowledge that enables and supports technology integration – is comprised of teachers’ concurrent and interdependent curriculum content, general pedagogy, and technological understanding. Teachers’ planning – which expresses teachers’ professional knowledge (including tpack) in pragmatic ways -- is situated, contextually sensitive, routinized, and activity-based. To assist with technology integration, therefore, we suggest using what is understood from research about teachers’ knowledge and instructional planning to form an approach to curriculum-based technology integration that is predicated upon teachers combining technologically supported learning activity types selected from content-keyed activity type taxonomies. In this article, we describe this approach to curriculum-based technology integration, illustrating it with overviews of and examples from six curriculum-based learning activity types taxonomies that have been developed to date. We invite our readers to vet and use these materials, which are available on the activity types Wiki (http://activitytypes.wmwikis.net/)

Al servicio de la justicia social: conocimientos, destrezas y actitudes para los "nuevos tiempos"

<p>El propósito de este artículo es propiciar el diálogo y despertar el interés de los educadores, los administradores, y de aquellas personas involucradas directa o indirectamente con el ámbito educativo sobre los problemas que enfrenta la educación en la actualidad. Específicamente nos referimos a los ataques continuos que recibe la educación pública y los desafíos que presenta la preparación de docentes para enseñar en los “nuevos tiempos.” Para lograr nuestro propósito, proponemos un modelo teórico que se vale del uso de cuatro plataformas: (a) pedagogía, currículum y evaluaciones; (b) investigaciones educacionales; (c) profesionalización de la docencia; y (d) cambios sociales. Estas plataformas nos sirven de punto de partida para explicar los conocimientos, las destrezas y las actitudes que todo docente debe poseer en su bagaje profesional. Puesto que este modelo está centrado en la importancia de la educación equitativa y la considera su piedra fundamental discutimos algunos conceptos clave de la educación multicultural, contrastamos los enfoques pedagógicos tradicionales con otros más contemporáneos, y proponemos direcciones a seguir con respecto a ambos temas para de esta manera llegar a explicar lo que significa e implica cada plataforma.También le damos una gran consideración a las relaciones que existen entre estas cuatro plataformas y cómo se delinean los conocimientos, destrezas y actitudes que emergen de dichos vínculos.</p><p>Para facilitar la visualización y un mejor entendimiento del modelo que proponemos damos ejemplos de programas y proyectos que están siendo implementados con mucho éxito en distintas instituciones estadounidenses. Dado el importante papel que juega la psicología dentro de este contexto, mencionamos áreas de esta disciplina que pueden ayudarnos a ser mejores abogados de la educación equitativa y más activos patrocinadores de la justicia social.</p><p>Concluimos con recomendaciones para los lectores que estén genuinamente interesados en asumir el compromiso que implica abogar por la educación equitativa y la justicia social.</p&gt

Al servicio de la justicia social: conocimientos, destrezas y actitudes para los "nuevos tiempos"

El propósito de este artículo es propiciar el diálogo y despertar el interés de los educadores, los administradores, y de aquellas personas involucradas directa o indirectamente con el ámbito educativo sobre los problemas que enfrenta la educación en la actualidad. Específicamente nos referimos a los ataques continuos que recibe la educación pública y los desafíos que presenta la preparación de docentes para enseñar en los “nuevos tiempos.” Para lograr nuestro propósito, proponemos un modelo teórico que se vale del uso de cuatro plataformas: (a) pedagogía, currículum y evaluaciones; (b) investigaciones educacionales; (c) profesionalización de la docencia; y (d) cambios sociales. Estas plataformas nos sirven de punto de partida para explicar los conocimientos, las destrezas y las actitudes que todo docente debe poseer en su bagaje profesional. Puesto que este modelo está centrado en la importancia de la educación equitativa y la considera su piedra fundamental discutimos algunos conceptos clave de la educación multicultural, contrastamos los enfoques pedagógicos tradicionales con otros más contemporáneos, y proponemos direcciones a seguir con respecto a ambos temas para de esta manera llegar a explicar lo que significa e implica cada plataforma.También le damos una gran consideración a las relaciones que existen entre estas cuatro plataformas y cómo se delinean los conocimientos, destrezas y actitudes que emergen de dichos vínculos.Para facilitar la visualización y un mejor entendimiento del modelo que proponemos damos ejemplos de programas y proyectos que están siendo implementados con mucho éxito en distintas instituciones estadounidenses. Dado el importante papel que juega la psicología dentro de este contexto, mencionamos áreas de esta disciplina que pueden ayudarnos a ser mejores abogados de la educación equitativa y más activos patrocinadores de la justicia social.Concluimos con recomendaciones para los lectores que estén genuinamente interesados en asumir el compromiso que implica abogar por la educación equitativa y la justicia social

Integrating technology into the foreign language teacher education curriculum: A phenomenological study

The purpose of this study was to explore and document the process pre-service foreign language teachers pass through as they learn to integrate new technologies into the foreign languages curriculum. This study, grounded within the phenomenological tradition, aimed to learn from participants\u27 perspectives what is it like to learn to integrate new technologies as well as the effect of using WebCT as complementary learning environment while taking their foreign language methods course. The data collection was conducted during the Fall 2001 semester in Major Midwestern University. Data collection sources included (a) interviews with participants and their cooperating teachers, (b) class observations, (c) questionnaires and inventories, and (d) course assignments. Data analysis was an ongoing process that occurred during and after the data collection phase of this study. The most important patterns found in this study were the interface among issues such as (a) reasons to become a foreign language teacher, (b) belief pertaining foreign language teaching and pedagogical applications of new technologies, and (c) pedagogical and subject matter knowledge. Both participants exhibited substantial differences in the way they made decisions to integrate new technologies in their developing teaching practices. These decisions were the result of the interactions of participants\u27 belief systems, previous experiences, and subject matter and pedagogical knowledge. The findings also point to participants\u27 reasons to become foreign language teachers as important factors in the learning process to integrate new technologies into the foreign language curriculum. In addition, according to participants\u27 perspectives, WebCT provided them with a structured and efficient supplementary learning environment while learning how to be foreign language teachers and to integrate new technologies into their developing professional practice

Raising our collective level of teaching and learning: The development of a certified peer observation process

Our university developed a certified peer observation process (CPO) with the idea of creating a community of learners where we learn from each other. Trained peer observers can help to reduce the level of subjectivity and bias so common in peer reviews of teaching to provide a more valuable, informed, evidence-based review. We will highlight the training process for CPOs and our continued efforts to calibrate among CPOs. This interactive workshop will discuss the overall CPO process, including training, our pre-observation conversations, the classroom or online observation, the post-observation conversations, the informal follow-up visit and implications for impacting the SoTL