World language teachers' reported practices of integrating ChatGPT into instruction: A positioning analysis

This mixed methods case study investigates the inclusion of students with disabilities in middle school and high school World Language classes in the United States. In particular, the aims of this study are to determine the attitudes of middle school and high school World Language teachers in Iowa regarding teaching students with disabilities as well as to determine what training and support they reported receiving to teach students with disabilities. The study uses a concurrent parallel mixed methods design with two sources of data, surveys of 41 Iowa World Language teachers and semi-structured interviews with eight of the survey participants regarding their attitudes toward inclusion, Special Education training, and Special Education support. The survey data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics and the interview data were analyzed using thematic analysis. The two sets of findings were combined after data analysis to explain: Iowa World Language teachers’ attitudes toward teaching students with disabilities, factors related to differences in World Language teachers’ attitudes toward teaching students with disabilities, World Language teachers’ pre-service and in-service training to teach students with disabilities, and the level of support World Language teachers received when teaching students with disabilities. Findings suggested that middle school and high school World Language teachers in Iowa had positive attitudes toward the inclusion of students of disabilities in their classes, but they felt there were weaknesses in the training and support they received to teach students with disabilities. Several factors were found to relate to the participants’ attitudes toward teaching students with disabilities, including their perceptions of the usefulness of their pre-service and in-service training, the level of administrative support, and the structure of the WL program. Throughout the interviews, teachers spoke of the benefits of hands-on, World Language-specific training and support for the successful inclusion of students with disabilities. World Language teachers in the study who felt they received the training and support they needed tended to report consistent communication between World Language and Special Education teachers, seeking out training and support, and building relationships with others in the school community. The conclusion includes implications for teacher education programs, school administrators, and World Language teachers in addition to suggestions of areas for future research regarding inclusion in the World Language classroom.

“It wasn't going to happen until I made it happen”: World language teacher agency for multilingual advocacy

Critical pedagogical work hinges upon teachers’ critical consciousness about students’ identities that constitute ‘diversity’ and how they are situated within systems of oppression and privilege. In this study, survey data were collected from practicing world language teachers’ (WLTs) to explore their beliefs about the extent to which dimensions of students’ identities played a role in their language teaching practices. Additionally, these data captured their beliefs about the extent to which teachers, administrators, curriculum developers, and schools should be responsible for addressing identity dimensions, such as ethnoracial status, gender, socioeconomic status, and faith. Results from cluster analyses indicated that teachers’ orientations varied systematically: a first belief orientation locates neither teachers nor schools as responsible, and that student ‘diversity’ may be irrelevant to education; a second orientation locates both teachers and schools as having shared responsibility, but that some identities might be irrelevant to teaching and learning; a third orientation wherein teachers viewed some identity dimensions as more relevant to their teaching practices than others, suggesting that, although teachers may be critically conscious about identity, that consciousness may not translate to critical pedagogical practices; and a last orientation that suggests critically conscious language teachers who also endorse learner-centered teaching practices. Findings from this study illuminate new theoretical and conceptual spaces about WLTs’ sense of responsibility and advocacy for both students and the ways they position their classrooms as sites of critical pedagogies. These findings have implications for teacher leaders and teacher educators as they work to build teacher capacities for engaging in critical pedagogies that examine systems of oppression and privilege in language classrooms.

Reviewed by: Transforming World Language Teaching and Teacher Education for Equity and Justice: Pushing Boundaries in US Contexts ed. by Beth Wassell and Cassandra Glynn Diana Ruggiero Wassell, Beth, and Cassandra Glynn, editors. Transforming World Language Teaching and Teacher Education for Equity and Justice: Pushing Boundaries in US Contexts. Multilingual Matters, 2022. Pp. 202. ISBN 978-1-78892-650-8. In Transforming World Language Teaching and Teacher Education, editors Beth Wassell and Cassandra Glynn alongside contributing authors to this edited volume illuminate the ways in which educators are working toward greater social equity and justice in the world language classroom. In the process, they also critically reflect on how the structural and institutional dynamics of the field as well as their own respective backgrounds are complicit in upholding and perpetuating systemic injustice and inequity in world language education. Consciously drawing on a diverse range of perspectives from scholars on the margins of the field, many of them first-time authors, the chapters provide a snapshot of world language education in a state of transformation as scholars rethink the assumptions that inform how educators think about and approach world language teaching today. Introspective, critical, and bold in its honest assessment of and efforts to reform world language education, this book and its conclusions are both timely and relevant for a field in need of such critical reassessment and transformation. The volume consists of ten chapters, including an introduction, and is divided into two main sections. The introduction provides the premise for and approach to the book as well as a brief synopsis of the book’s contents relative to the major arguments. The remainder of the chapters are divided into two equal parts, the first part addressing systemic challenges to equity and social justice in world language programs as well as responses to them by educators, presenting theoretical frameworks and curricular models based on authors experiences and [End Page 164] research along the way. The second part similarly addresses more directly ways in which world language educators on the margins of world language education are addressing curricular reform. For instance, Dorie Conlon Perugini and Manuela Wagner present a model for integrating and foregrounding intercultural citizenship in world language education as a way of moving beyond a focus on vocabulary and grammar and engaging issues of social justice in the classroom. Similarly, Mary Curan and Joan Clifford in their respective chapters discuss the significance of community engagement in redressing issues of social justice in world education; Curran through a presentation of her pre-service Urban Social Justice Teacher Education Program at Rutgers University, and Clifford through the presentation of a curricular model that blends community-based language learning and global health to likewise enact greater equity and social justice in the world language curriculum. Though there are many books and edited volumes now calling for change and transformation in world language education, this book is unique in its call for and focus on critical self-reflection. Indeed, as a framing device for the book’s contents and approach, Wassell and Glynn use the tropes of “calling out” and “calling in.” By “calling out,” they mean looking at how educators themselves may be complicit in the process of maintaining and perpetuating systemic racism and social inequities in the classroom. This could include biases and unquestioned standards and norms in teaching world languages stemming from one’s own privilege (stemming from gender, race, ethnicity, etc.). By “calling in” they mean similarly reflecting on the ways in which the field itself is likewise complicit in perpetuating systemic racism, social inequity, and injustice. This includes an assessment of the field as a whole as well as the curriculum, standards, and approaches at the local, state, and national levels of world language teaching. While this level of critical self-reflection is not new in the field, Wassell and Glynn remind us that a positive first step in redressing these problems begins with recognizing that there is indeed a problem and that we, as educators trained within a field founded and situated within a specific historical context worth examining for its shortcomings, have much to rethink in order to and as we move forward. While the book presents...

Content-based instruction (CBI) is a pedagogical approach used in the second/other language classroom that commits to addressing both language- and content-learning objectives. Scholars have found that, particularly in the planning stages, teachers struggle with achieving that balance (Donato, 2016; Lyster, 2007). This study examines world language (WL) teachers’ planning for CBI via these research questions: (1) When experienced teachers from traditional WL classroom contexts design CBI unit plans, what do these plans reveal about the pathways they take towards CBI in a traditional WL settings? (2) What broader challenges and opportunities related to using CBI in the traditional WL context are revealed? The data sources in this qualitative lesson analysis study are 36 unit plans developed as the final project for a graduate-level course on CBI in one US institution. The three investigators examined the content–language dichotomy and the academic content-cultural content dichotomy in each lesson and identified patterns. The findings reveal that teachers often chose content that was more cultural than academic in nature, and they were challenged by several aspects of relating the language and content objectives. Implications for researchers, teacher educators, and teachers present a broader discussion of CBI as a viable curricular option in WL classrooms.

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore five world language teachers’ beliefs about their students, their attributions about student enrollment, and their reported teaching practices. Findings represent a continuum of critical practice in that three teachers appeared to espouse deficit thinking and stereotypes about students of color, and color-evasiveness or colorblindness as an approach to teaching. Two teachers appeared to espouse beliefs that may be more representative of inclusive classrooms, and these teachers reported advocacy work for certain student groups and efforts to develop students’ critical consciousness in their classrooms. Findings are contextualized via critical lenses, and implications for language teacher education and policy are discussed.

Recent research has begun to explore the concept of world language teacher leadership and how it can be developed. Given that pre-service teacher education is already an established space for teacher development, more research is needed to understand how teacher leadership can be proactively supported in future world language teachers. This qualitative study sought to understand how world language teacher educators perceive the role of teacher leadership in their programs and what actions they take to cultivate leadership in pre-service teachers within those programs. Data were collected in the form of semi-structured interviews with 14 world language teacher educators across 5 regions in the United States. Findings show that, although teacher leadership was not a prioritized program goal for most participants, all had found unique ways to integrate teacher leadership development into their courses, curricula, and student experiences. Implications for world language teacher education programs are discussed.

PurposeThis study aims to examine the impact of intercultural learning and collaboration on two English as a world language teachers from South Korea and Taiwan within a virtual professional development program, emphasizing their evolving understanding of culture and interculturality and its implications for practice.Design/methodology/approachUtilizing qualitative research design, this study incorporates three sources of data: written reflections, online meetings and semistructured interviews. Data is examined through the cultural perspectives framework (Hall, Covarrubias and Kirschbaum, 2022) to analyze how teachers (re)frame culture and interculturality in English language teaching, specifically through the lens of interpretive, critical and socio-scientific perspectives.FindingsThe findings reveal that engaging in facilitated professional intercultural learning and collaboration enhances teachers’ perspectives and practices regarding cultural complexities in language classrooms. The study highlights the importance of reflective practice, collaborative professional learning and the adoption of multiple cultural perspectives.Originality/valueThis research enriches the field of intercultural education by advocating for a structured approach to teacher learning in bridging the gap between theory and practice. It uniquely applies Hall et al.’s (2022) ICS framework to analyze how teachers (re)frame culture and interculturality in English language teaching. The originality is in the in-depth analysis of the intricate dynamics of teacher learning and the transformative potential of intercultural collaboration.

In this study, The Consensual Assessment Technique is used to measure the creativity of 100 teaching artifacts from world language classrooms. These teaching artifacts were self-selected by K-12 world language teachers and categorized as creative or uncreative. The first set of artifacts was collected prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, in spring of 2019; the second set of artifacts was collected during the COVID-19 pandemic, in the winter of 2020, after several months of online teaching. The two sets of artifacts were randomly mixed and content experts rated the creativity of the 100 total artifacts. High levels of inter-rater reliability were obtained. Results indicated that creativity was not impacted by the move to online instruction during the pandemic and that use of target language (e.g. Spanish, French) may have a role to play in creativity.

This edited book expands the current scholarship on teaching world languages for social justice and equity in K-12 and postsecondary contexts in the US. The chapters address how world language teachers approach social justice in their teaching, and how teacher educators prepare teachers to teach for social justice in the language classroom.

This edited book expands the current scholarship on teaching world languages for social justice and equity in K-12 and postsecondary contexts in the US. The chapters address how world language teachers approach social justice in their teaching, and how teacher educators prepare teachers to teach for social justice in the language classroom.

Recruiting qualified world language (WL) educators is a continuing challenge in the United States. Limited research has been conducted on attracting potential teacher candidates. Furthermore, recruitment materials are unavailable in target languages, making it difficult for existing WL teachers, as critical advocates for the profession, to incorporate recruitment into their instruction. This study discusses the findings from the implementation of an adapted teacher recruitment curriculum created for secondary students in Early College Experience (ECE) Spanish courses. Using data from pre‐ and post‐intervention surveys, responses to writing prompts, and post‐intervention focus groups, we found that the curriculum contributed to a slight increase in student interest in becoming WL educators, as well as interest in continuing language study beyond high school. However, several teaching‐related student concerns also surfaced, most notably salary and target language ability. We discuss implications for general and WL teacher recruitment, including the importance of targeting potential WL educators in their language classrooms.

Language teachers’ resilience, or their socially-mediated capacity to adapt to adverse conditions and thrive, has garnered attention amidst evolving challenges to language education and bilingual teachers in diverse spaces. Taking an ecological-collective perspective towards language teacher resilience, this qualitative case study examined the experiences of two early career Spanish world language teachers in the United States, paying particular attention to the personal and contextual resources they leveraged for their resilience during and after their transition into teaching. Through a series of semi-structured interviews, three themes were identified representing the varied purposes for which the Spanish teachers mobilised resources for their resilience at different times: planning for resilience in advance during the job search, maintaining resilience amidst initial struggles, and reestablishing resilience. Findings show that the types of resources used by the early career world language teachers shifted over time and based on need, the most salient of which included their knowledge of their teaching context, their agency and persistence, support and autonomy from their school administrators, and connections with networks of other language teachers. Implications for teacher education programmes, language teacher resilience, and future research are discussed.

Previous research has examined world language classroom‐based assessment practices as well as the impact of the Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century (National Standards in Foreign Language Education Project, 1999) on practice. However, the extent to which K–12 teachers’ assessment practices reflect national and state standards has not been made clear. This article presents a multiple case study examining how the classroom‐based assessments used by four secondary world language teachers provided insight into students’ progress toward achieving the competencies that are specified by Ohio's Learning Standards for 9–12 World Language Programs and the five goal areas as they were described in the 1999 version of the nationally accepted standards framework. Qualitative analysis of assessment artifacts and interview transcripts showed that assessments principally targeted presentational writing and interpretive reading and that some assessments did not directly align with any of the goals or standards. Findings provide continuing evidence to support the results of the Standards Impact Survey (ACTFL, 2011) and have implications for world language teachers’ professional development needs and the role of standards in world language education.

The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages and the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation standards (2013) for teacher candidates guide planning for instruction but lack specificity regarding teaching methodologies and the selection of curricular materials. This qualitative case study examined four early-career world language teachers’ agency as they worked to contextualize language instruction during their first and second years of classroom teaching. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews at three points during the school years (middle, end, and start of the second year), and interview transcripts were analysed through the lens of language teacher agency. The findings show that the early-career teachers enacted agency through creating personalized curricula based on their students’ perceived needs. Furthermore, the teachers’ capacities to act were enabled by means of the autonomy they negotiated in their school contexts. The implications of this research highlight how educator preparation programs and school administrations can provide targeted supports for developing agentic world language teachers.