Managing Editor’s Message

Abstract

Managing Editor’s Message Jennifer Brady Six of the essays in this September issue (104.3) of Hispania take a deep dive into shared best practices in world language teaching. In their two essays, Deanna H. Mihaly, and Leah Kemp and Liana Stepanyan distill cultural empathy and creativity from the well-known five Cs: Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities (The National Standards 2015). Kimberly Morris and Rose Marie Brougham build off of the standards too by recognizing that language and cultural proficiency is intertwined with social responsibility and human connection. Mark Darhower and Dawn Smith-Sherwood’s essay also spotlights interpersonal connection, but this time as a bridge for language and literature courses, and they suggest that Integrated Performance Assessments (IPAs) be included in literature courses to aid in measuring communication. Rachel Showstack et al. discuss outcomes of the Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) framework (ACTFL 2017), which naturally builds off of the world language learning standards as a guide for meaningful and appropriate intercultural exchange. These essays prove that the teaching and learning languages standards can be applied in a variety of contexts from a variety of distinct approaches. The 2015 World-Readiness Standards for Learning Languages offers not only the five C goal areas, which are applicable at all levels of world language instruction, but also highlight three modes of communication (interpretive, interpersonal, presentational). Collaboration among over 15 professional organizations produced the 2015 World-Readiness Standards for Learning Languages, “a roadmap to guide learners to develop competence to communicate effectively and interact with cultural competence to participate in multilingual communities at home and around the world” (“A Collaborative Project”). The six aforementioned essays in this current issue of Hispania, I believe, encourage us to define more deeply and more intentionally the five Cs. What will we uncover when we explore the corners and edges of the five Cs? Where is there room for expansion and growth in our courses and programs? Empathy, resiliency, and social justice, for instance, are implicitly threaded across the five Cs, but not explicitly included. How can we, as educators of Portuguese and Spanish, spotlight these essential learning and teaching goals as we continue to guide students to reach and excel at the standards? Are there modifications to curriculum that we can make? What sort of experiential learning can we facilitate for students? Here is the take-home question that I want to ask: after the public health crisis and racial injustices of the recent years, what can we do as educators to make the learning of Portuguese and Spanish languages and cultures the approach by which students practice empathy, resiliency, and social justice? Is now not the perfect time to make these three objectives foundational pillars of our national standards for world language learning? This current issue also marks the final section of the Transformative Pedagogy in K–20 Portuguese and Spanish Classrooms. I am very grateful to our guest editorial team of Rachel Mamiya Hernandez (University of Hawai’i Mānoa), Comfort Pratt (Texas Tech University), and Martha Vásquez (San Antonio School District) for their insightful comments, time, and dedication to the project. Please read their introduction to the special feature in the pages ahead. We received 23 submissions for the second round. The guest editors and I evaluated the anonymous submissions. Then the four of us met to discuss the many outstanding essays. After some difficult [End Page 327] decisions, we chose to accept seven essays for the second part of the feature, which you can read in this current issue. I encourage you to read the essays from first section of the feature again (March 2021; 104.1) and to share the entire series (104.1 and 104.3) with your colleagues and networks. We truly hope that the special feature will spark many dynamic conversations that will continue to help to shape best practices in language learning and teaching for years to come. In addition to our book/media review section, curated by the talented Domnita Dumitrescu, five additional research articles make up this September issue. Pablo Camus and Mehak Advani present a task-based approach that enriches students’ participation in study abroad programs. Ana M. Fern...