CALL FOR ABSTRACTS: AAUSC Volume 2017  (CLOSED)

Engaging the World: Social Pedagogies and Language Learning

Editors: Sébastien Dubreil (Carnegie Mellon University) and Steven L. Thorne (Portland State University – Rijksuniversiteit Groningen)

Series Editor: Stacey Katz Bourns (Northeastern University)

The editors of the 2017 AAUSC volume seek contributions on diverse approaches to second language (L2) learning as a fundamentally social–relational endeavor. Volume contributions will address pedagogical approaches that connect classroom instruction to the multifaceted contexts and challenges of language use beyond the classroom.

To address this topic, we draw inspiration from the framework of social pedagogies (Bass & Elmendorf, 2012) as applied to L2 contexts, a framework in which the learner is envisioned as a locuteur/acteur (speaker/social actor; Kern & Liddicoat, 2008). The emphasis on students as speakers/social actors acknowledges the relevance of conventional instructional foci, such as language forms and cultural facts. It is also more expansive as it builds on the idea that students are social agents who mobilize symbolic and linguistic resources and competencies to negotiate complex intercultural, transactional, and ideational contexts successfully. From this perspective, L2 learning, as well as multilingualism and multiculturalism, are de facto interpersonal and, thus, social phenomena. Framing L2 curricula through the lens of social pedagogies encourages the integration of content from the various courses that comprise a language program (at the elementary, intermediate, and advanced levels) with engagement in communicative contexts and communities relevant to students’ social and academic life-worlds.

We encourage contributions that situate opportunities for motivated, purposeful communicative (social) interaction as a central organizing principle of L2 study, with the goals of (1) enhancing opportunities for social action and community-based activities or other forms of civic engagement during university-level course work and (2) fostering learners’ critical thinking skills through participation in and analysis of social interactions. The overriding purpose of L2 study is, thus, to give students the translingual and transcultural tools to engage with, and contribute to, linguistically and culturally diverse communities in the future. Seen from this perspective, the L2 classroom becomes a porous site that brings together instructed L2 learning with intercultural interaction to amplify the potential of L2 education as a catalyst for personal, academic, professional, and societal transformation.

Suggested content areas for contributors include, but are not limited to:

Part 1:    Theoretical considerations for the implementation of social pedagogies

a.    Extending boundaries for course design and language curricula

b.    Innovative design for language program articulation

c.    Interface or integration of informal and formal learning (original ideas to create new bridges between language learning opportunities in classroom contexts, including language across the curriculum, and language learning opportunities in the wild)

d.    Social pedagogies, transcultural competence, and multilingualism (L2 pedagogies that prepare students to engage with communities in which relationships and transactions are conducted or cultivated in more than one language)

e.    Social pedagogies and the interface with critical pedagogy

f.     Social pedagogies and instructor professional development

Part 2:    The classroom and/in the world

a.    Social language learning experiences (e.g., social pedagogical practices in instructed settings, social reading, collaborative writing, project-based or problem-based models of language pedagogy)

b.    Global simulations, such as class-based simulation-driven curricular innovations

c.    Online intercultural exchange and telecollaboration (e.g., innovative intra- or inter-institutional exchange projects, transnational online intercultural exchange projects)

d.    Integrating heritage speakers in the language curriculum (e.g., projects that forge collaborations between curricula for heritage speakers and curricula for the general population; fostering relationships among heritage speakers, L2 students, and the communities surrounding them)

e.    Study abroad (e.g., learning opportunities that expand the boundaries of traditional programs by fostering student collaboration, engagement with the host community/culture beyond the classroom/campus/host family setting)

f.     Community-based learning (e.g., projects that foster engagement with communities as a means to construct effective language and culture learning trajectories)

g.    Experiential learning (language and culture learning opportunities that potentially involve collaborative interdisciplinary approaches through research-based or problem-based language teaching and learning)

Part 3:    Social/new media and social pedagogies in the language program

Projects may include the development of media and online literacy, the use of online environments (3D-rendered or other forms of online persistent spaces), and gaming and game-based learning.

a.    The use of social media

b.    Participation in online media discursive practices (e.g., newspapers, web documentaries)

c.    Virtual or online learning environments

d.    Engagement with fandom/fan-fiction communities

e.    Gaming (fully online or place-based augmented reality) or game-based learning

Format of contributions: We aim both to maintain the format of past AAUSC volumes and also to encourage diverse contribution formats. Consequently, we encourage full-length (approximately 6,000–8,000 words, all inclusive) conceptual/theoretical contributions and empirical studies (e.g., mixed methods, case studies, action research), as well as shorter contributions (approximately 4,000 words, all inclusive) detailing the design of pedagogical interventions that address theme(s) or projects relevant to the volume. Authors are encouraged to contextualize their contribution within appropriate theoretical and developmental frameworks, keeping in mind that the main audience for the volume includes language program directors, curriculum developers, and faculty focused on teacher professional development. Therefore, all contributions should address issues of language program direction, curriculum construction, and/or departmental articulation.

For questions about the volume and your potential contribution please contact the volume editors Sébastien Dubreil (sd@utk.edu) or Steve Thorne (sthorne@pdx.edu) to discuss your ideas. Submission deadline for 400-word abstracts is March 15, 2016. The deadline for manuscript submission is September 1, 2016. Feedback from the editors will be communicated by mid-December 2016.

See style sheet (APA format, 5th edition) in recent volumes of the AAUSC series (http://www.aausc.org/page-240027) or visit http://www.apastyle.org

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Call for papers: MLA 2016 (Austin TX) (CLOSED)

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS: AAUSC Volume 2016 (CLOSED)

The Interconnected Language Curriculum: Critical Transitions and Interfaces in Articulated K-16 Contexts

Editors: Johanna Watzinger-Tharp (University of Utah) and Per Urlaub (University of Texas at Austin)

Series Editor: Stacey Katz Bourns (Northeastern University)

Members of the foreign language professoriate, and especially applied linguists, have spent considerable energy in recent years tackling the antiquated two-tiered structure that separates "language" education at the lower levels from "content" instruction at the upper levels of many university language programs. Standards- and outcomes-based frameworks (e.g. the updated ACTFL Standards and the Common European Framework), models of integrated genre- and task-based curricula (e.g. at Georgetown, and, in development, at Emory), proposals for change (such as the 2007 MLA Report), and increasing pressure from various stakeholders to build enrollments and document measurable outcomes have motivated language departments to consider restructuring their undergraduate programs.

Focused on implementing their own curricular initiatives, language departments have paid relatively little attention to the training that students receive before arriving. Yet attending to the critical transitions from public schools, and sometimes via community colleges, to 4-year degree programs at colleges and universities is becoming increasingly important, since recent educational reforms have already altered students’ skill sets and their expectations and will continue to do so in the future. New student populations are unlikely to accept default placement into lower levels or to be satisfied with traditional curricula that consider upper level literature courses the pinnacle of language study. In order to provide today’s and future students with meaningful language learning experiences (and in order to encourage students to continue studying language at the university level), it would benefit post-secondary programs to align their curricula with significant changes in the educational landscape, including, for example, the ACTFL Performance Descriptors, the recently redesigned AP Course and Exam, the Common Core State Standards, and immersion education initiatives.

In addition, truly articulated programs must consider horizontal dimensions across the university. Successfully integrated language curricula not only manage critical transitions between educational levels, but they also connect with entities outside the language department. Interdisciplinary interfaces across the university are manifested, for example, in models for integrating language and academic content, most commonly known as Cultures and Languages Across the Curriculum (CLAC). They may also include interactions and collaborations with colleges of education for language departments that are involved in public school teacher preparation.

Scholars have certainly already addressed these critical interfaces, but mostly without linking them to pre-collegiate language study or to educational reforms such as those discussed above. The 2016 AAUSC volume will document and critically examine curricular development initiatives that can provide concrete guidance for managing both the critical transitions in a K-16 curriculum and the interfaces between language departments and other disciplinary and interdisciplinary academic units. The volume will explore, for example, how teacher education in language departments and in schools of education might address the relationship between the Common Core and the new ACTFL Standards. Similarly, we seek volume contributions that offer innovative proposals for meeting the needs of heritage and immersion students, who come to college ready for content-based, interdisciplinary courses at advanced levels (not unlike programs created for the language flagships).

Authors will be strongly encouraged to contextualize their contribution within a broad variety of theoretical frameworks of curriculum design, keeping in mind the main audience for the volume: language program directors/teacher trainers. While we expect some submissions to be case studies based on qualitative data, we will also seek manuscripts that provide quantitative assessments of program design and outcomes. In addition to language program directors, we envision this volume contributing to language departments as a whole and being of interest to faculty-at-large, chairs and administrators, and graduate students and teaching assistants. Since the volume is intended to stimulate dialogue across all educational levels, the audience may also include teachers, curriculum coordinators, and administrators in the public schools.  

Suggested content areas include but are not limited to:

Part 1: Critical Transitions: From Elementary/Secondary Education to Undergraduate Education

• Discourses of secondary and post-secondary language education
  
• The interaction of the Common Core State Standards and world language standards
  
• The impact of the AP course and exam redesign on college curricula
  
• Approaches to student placement in post-secondary programs
  
• Immersion education in elementary and secondary schools
  
• Competency and literacy goals in immersion education
  
• The integration of immersion students and heritage learners into collegiate programs
  
• The integration of community college/transfer students into 4-year degree programs
  
• The role of foreign language departments in public school teacher education  
  
• The role of open educational instructional materials for integrating secondary and post-secondary language education
  

Part 2: Interdisciplinary Interfaces: Language Learning Across the University

• Models for language study across the curriculum, e.g. CLAC (Cultures and Languages Across the Curriculum)
  
• The role of technology in facilitating language study across the curriculum
  
• Language study complementing international and global studies programs
  
• Language study in the professional schools
  
• The role of language centers
  
• Programmatic connections between colleges of education schools and language departments
  
• Perceptions and effects of institutional language requirements
  

 
For questions about the volume, please contact the volume editors at your earliest convenience at j.tharp@utah.edu or at urlaub@austin.utexas.edu to discuss your ideas. Submission deadline for one-page abstracts is March 15, 2015, and the deadline for full manuscripts is September 1, 2015.

See style sheet (APA format, 5th edition) in recent volumes of the AAUSC series (http://www.aausc.org/page-240027) or visit http://www.apastyle.org.

The ACFTL National Standards were recently revised and received a new title, World-Readiness Standards for Learning Languages.

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CALL FOR PAPERS: AAUSC Volume 2015 (CLOSED)
Integrating the Arts: Creative Thinking about FL Curricula and Language Program Direction

Editors:
 Lisa Parkes, Harvard University; Colleen Ryan, Indiana University

Series Editor:  Stacey Katz Bourns, Harvard University

Of all the challenges currently facing foreign language departments in North America, the greatest is also most central to our mission, namely: (re-)establishing a clear identity for languages within the humanities, and upholding the fundamental role of these in a liberal arts education. Positive outcomes of the “re-identification” process, necessitated by recent debates in the profession, include the expansion from a largely canonical literary curriculum to a cultural and interdisciplinary studies curriculum, and the more conscious relationship of languages and literatures to culture, theory, and pedagogy. With varying degrees of scope and success, the unidirectional language-then-literature curriculum has been reinvigorated and rerouted along a language-and-content continuum, ensuring a critical awareness of content from the very beginning and a critical awareness of language learning to the end. In so doing, faculty have reconsidered course goals and pedagogical approaches and very often the arts have played a central and crucial role in fostering significant changes.

Integrating the arts enables us to connect language to other cultural productions and semiotic spaces, such as theater, the fine arts, art history, architecture, music, sound, museum cultures, as well as literature. By embracing the notion of “texts” as socially, historically, and culturally situated practices, and of which the written text is but one product, we can situate the basic literacy of reading and writing within a broader field of visual, aural, and spatial signifying acts. Understood in this way, the arts can provide a source and stimulus for communicative exchanges, subjective responses, emotional experiences, and analysis. In other words, by interacting with (evaluating, interpreting, experiencing, embodying, and even producing) art in any one of its many forms, learners can understand culture as a process in which they are motivated to participate, develop aesthetic sensibilities, and deepen the cognitive, social, aesthetic, and subjective dimensions of language learning.

Revised foreign language curricula naturally necessitate fresh approaches to pre-service and in-service education for teachers.  While we might be able to assume that new instructors are well versed in various modalities of literacy today, we cannot assume that they know how to integrate their knowledge of or expertise in any of the arts with foreign language instruction.  Our teacher training programs therefore have the potential to be transformative sites, where the concept of foreign language literacy and literacies takes shape through effectively varied pedagogical approaches and practices. This volume will not only provide a concrete vision for materials, methods, learning goals, and outcomes assessment, but it will also provide direction for teacher training and long-term professional development that integrate the arts to supplement and enhance other modern approaches such as multi-literacies, communicative language teaching, and genre-based curricula.

This volume invites contributions from foreign language specialists who have successfully integrated one or more of the arts, as broadly intended, into their courses and curricula. From smaller-scale, single-course endeavors, to larger-scale curricular reconfigurations that integrate the arts consistently. Whether undertaken alone, in collaboration with faculty in other disciplines, or with practitioners in the community, these curricular innovations strike at the heart of what it means to learn a foreign language in institutions of higher learning. In particular, we welcome contributions that address any of these from the perspective of teacher training, professional development, and reflective teaching practices in any area(s) of arts integration.

• How can we best enlist TAs with interdisciplinary expertise, and what are the implications for TA training and professional development?
• How can Language Program Directors (LPDs), and especially LPDs with no background in the arts, integrate the arts into their programs? Which curricular models enable LPDs to best enhance their course and program learning goals?
• How should TAs be trained to teach within a curricular framework that integrates the arts?
• How can the arts contribute to a more coherent, integrated curriculum from ‘lower’-level to ‘upper’-level courses?
• How can engagement in the arts enhance language learning, cultural knowledge, and learner motivation?
• How does engagement in the arts support the principles of SLA?
• How can we assess the outcomes of artistic engagement in areas of linguistic development, cultural knowledge, learners’ self-knowledge, and creative and critical thinking?
• What is the place of the FL program in the broader context of an Arts and Humanities education, and more broadly within post-secondary academic institutions?

A.    Theoretical Considerations

·      Second language acquisition perspectives: affective, subjective, and/or aesthetic dispositions;

·      General learning perspectives: learner motivation and the notion of the ideal self;

·      Foreign language curricular perspectives.

B.    Empirical Studies: Learning Outcomes and Assessment

·      Language development and linguistic and/or cultural competency gains;

·      Development of cognitive, psychological, social, and interpersonal aspects of learning;

·      Development of creative thinking, critical thought, and other transferrable skills;

·      Development of the “multilingual subject”; the dynamics of self-awareness and identity as a learner of language and culture.

C.    Curricular Innovations and Best Practices              

·      Artistic input: creative approaches to student participation in the arts as an audience member or visitor (in order to increase cultural knowledge, to engage and elicit subjective responses through aesthetic appreciation and interpretation); museum visits; engagement of artistic professionals in the FL classroom;

·      Artistic output: the development of course or curricular models that incorporate the arts through direct student involvement, especially that which entails personal engagement in some form of creativity, such as performance, creative and reflective writing, digital media, or video production;

·      FL between/among the arts: a multi-modal approach to integrating the arts in FL instruction (in any combination of verbal, musical, or visual semiotic systems);

·      Self-reflective practices: the development of curricular elements (activities, assignments, or assessments) that recognize learner motivation as a process and incorporate the arts in order to cultivate the affective and subjective dimension of language learning;

·      Community outreach and community building: cross-disciplinary collaboration across the languages and/or across the disciplines within the college, such as, for example, team-teaching; and engagement of local artists or arts organizations outside the college (such as artistic directors, theatre practitioners, musicians) to enhance the curriculum.

D.   Professional Development, Language Program Direction, Broader Programmatic Considerations

·      Integrating the arts within communicative, post-communicative, literacy or literacies curricula and the implications of such for short- and long-term professional development;

·      The training of TAs in incorporating the arts in FL instruction (at any level);

·      Successful examples of arts integration through TA initiative, drawing on TA expertise in interdisciplinary study, or cross-collaboration among graduate TAs across the disciplines;

·       New visions/horizons for FL Programs, based on FL-arts integrated curriculum;

·       Foreign languages, the Arts and the Liberal Arts/Arts and Humanities Education.

For questions about the volume, please contact the volume editors at your earliest convenience at lparkes@fas.harvard.edu or at ryancm@indiana.edu. Submission deadline for one page abstracts is March 15, 2014 and the deadline for full manuscripts is September 1, 2014. See style sheet (APA format, 5th edition) in recent issues of the AAUSC series or visit http://www.apastyle.org.

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CALL FOR PAPERS: AAUSC Volume 2014 (CLOSED)
Innovation and Accountability in Foreign Language Program Evaluation

Editors:
John Norris, Georgetown University; Nicole Mills, Harvard University

Series Editor:
Stacey Katz Bourns, Harvard University

Despite rapid globalization within contemporary society and the seemingly obvious need for the study of foreign languages and cultures, numerous post-secondary institutions are decreasing their investment in language education by closing or restructuring foreign language (FL) programs. In response to the challenge of today’s economic climate, undergraduate recruitment to foreign language degrees has dwindled, graduate programs have disappeared, and institutions have restructured independent language departments into mega-departments of languages, literatures, and cultures. Departments have also moved to hire increasing numbers of part-time and non-tenure track faculty with contractual constraints, higher teaching loads, and lower pay scales to teach and coordinate FL courses. As a result of these kinds of societal and disciplinary movements, FL programs, along with other educational sectors, are facing the increased need to engage with heretofore peripheral forces like accountability and accreditation, to express and ensure their value through outcomes assessment, and to begin to think, innovate, and behave programmatically. Key to enacting these changes systematically and effectively is heightened awareness of the importance of program evaluation, not only as a means to demonstrate how and why foreign language study is a valuable pursuit in today’s world, but also as a heuristic via which sound improvements can be made, participants can learn, and educational relevance can be sought. Language program evaluation should enable departments and institutions to gain empirical information about the attainment of goals and outcomes, the program’s strengths and weaknesses, and a program’s congruence across the diverse areas of language learning and the complex structures of university departments. Furthermore, language program evaluation can assist language program directors (LPDs) and department chairs in demonstrating a program’s effectiveness to stakeholders like students, professors, and administrators, as well as encouraging the formulation of plans of action to enhance program achievements in the lower and upper levels of foreign language instruction.

This volume aims to provide language program directors and department chairs with contemporary approaches, tools, and recommendations for how to make the most of both internal and external evaluation as a means for identifying and acting on a program’s’ strengths and weaknesses, enabling congruence across institutional, departmental, and professional goals, and perhaps contributing to the survival of FL programs in higher education. The volume intends to address topics such as the integration of professional standards, university benchmarks, departmental goals, and outcomes assessment in language program evaluation; LPD, instructor, and graduate teaching assistant evaluation practices; and the evaluation of the development and perspectives of language learners’ within language programs.

Some of the questions to which this volume seeks to respond include:

• What are updated and innovative guidelines, methodologies, and frameworks in language program evaluation?
• What is the relationship between institutional and/or departmental goals and language program evaluation? How can we encourage accountability from within language programs?
• How can evaluation help to resolve tensions related to the disarticulated teaching of language and cultural content, ‘lower’ and ‘upper’ level courses, and curricular coherence?
• What are innovative instructor evaluation practices? What role do the language program director, departmental chair, and students play in the evaluation process of tenured and non-tenured faculty members?
• How can technology play a role in language program evaluation today?

Topics that might be addressed by contributors include:

1. Methodologies, guidelines, and frameworks in language program evaluation

a. Guidelines for the innovative design of language program evaluation
b. Evaluation of student learning outcomes
c. Instruments for language program evaluation
d. Heterogeneity of evaluation needs and approaches
e. Longitudinal evaluation of language programs
f. Making the most of program review processes

2. Relationship between national standards, institutional and departmental goals, outcomes assessment, and language program evaluation
a. Influence of Benchmarks and standards on language program evaluation
b. Accountability to institutional and departmental goals in language program evaluation
c. The influence of accreditation-mandated student learning outcomes assessment on language programs
d. Evaluation as a mechanism for language program innovation, improvement, and surviva

3. LPD, instructor, and TA evaluation practices
a. Instructor accountability and professional development
b. Innovative approaches to faculty, instructor, and TA evaluation
c. Assessment of teaching effectiveness
d. Evaluation of language program chairs, directors, and coordinators
e. Developing practitioners’ competencies in evaluatio

4.Technology-mediated language program evaluation
a. Innovative online approaches and instruments for language program evaluation
b. Evaluating technology-mediated language teaching and learning

For questions about the volume, please contact the volume editors at your earliest convenience at mills@fas.harvard.edu or at norrisj@georgetown.edu. Submission deadline for one page abstracts is March 15, 2013 and the deadline for full manuscripts is September 1, 2013. See style sheet (APA format, 5^th edition) in recent issues of the AAUSC series or visit http://www.apastyle.org.

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CALL FOR PAPERS: AAUSC Volume 2013 (CLOSED)
Individual Differences, L2 Development & Language Program Administration:  From Theory to Application

Editors:

Cristina Sanz, Georgetown University
Beatriz Lado, Lehman College, CUNY

Series Editor:

Stacey Katz Bourns, Harvard University

The democratization of schooling and greater access to higher education, together with the implementation of language requirements in colleges and universities across the United States, have led to a higher degree of diversity in language classrooms. We usually think of gender, ethnic, racial, or social diversity, but individual differences, including learning disabilities and special needs, also contribute to diversity and have an impact on assessment, placement, and curriculum. In their role as administrators and teacher educators, Language Program Directors (LPDs) seek to integrate current practices and research in applied linguistics into program design and administration, including assessment. To make individual differences a theoretically grounded integral component of their decision-making processes, LPDs need resources that provide them with cutting-edge primary and secondary research on the conceptualization, measurement, and consequences of individual differences on language development in the classroom.

This volume will provide LPDs with the means to transmit information to their instructors in effective ways so that the instructors develop a sophisticated understanding of individual differences, including learning disabilities, special needs, and strategies for dealing with diverse student populations. In addition, this volume will create a forum for reflections about and solutions to challenges related to diversity as it relates to individual differences.

We will divide the volume into three sections:

1. Constructs and measurements of individual differences. For example, for aptitude, and in terms of constructs and definitions, we are interested in how current models of working memory have replaced the broader construct of aptitude that was common in the 1980s and how they relate to L2 development.

Suggestions for Possible Chapters

• Critical assessment of current views of individual differences as they relate to adult L2 learning;
• Critical reviews of measures of individual differences for language learning;
• Current tests to screen students for learning disabilities, especially those that affect language learning or use, as implemented by university Academic Resource Centers: Are they useful tools for LPDs?

2. Empirical studies. Qualitative and/or quantitative, including case studies, on the role of individual differences. We are especially interested in studies that look at L2 development under various pedagogical conditions and contexts, be they traditional, on-line, hybrid, or study abroad. 

Suggestions for Possible Chapters

• Individual differences and context of language learning: traditional classes, computer-assisted learning environments, hybrid courses, and study abroad programs;
• Individual differences and pedagogical conditions: is teaching grammar explicitly equally beneficial across levels of motivation or aptitude, for example?
• Interactions between aptitude and other individual differences, such as motivation, age and cognitive maturity, or learning style;
• Studies on the cognitive consequences of learning a foreign language: does studying a FL enhance one’s aptitude to learn additional languages?
• L2/L3 development in deaf and blind students.

3. Practical connections. Translating concepts and assessment into curricular decisions. How do LPDs address individual differences? The place of individual differences in decisions about instructor training and curricular design. Suggestions for Possible Chapters

• The place of individual differences in TA education (e.g., workshops, methods courses);
• Teacher and student beliefs about individual differences, with special attention to aptitude;
• Differential role of individual differences in curriculum development of grammar-based, content-based, and task-based programs;
• Heritage language programs and individual differences;
• From bilingualism to multilingualism in language programs: the bilingual as the good language learner
• Examples of best practices: solutions to challenges posed by diversity as they relate to individual differences, including Foreign Language Learning Disability and learning impairments that affect college-level language students.

For questions about the volume, please contact the volume editors at your earliest convenience at sanzc@georgetown.edu or at beatriz.lado@lehman.cuny.edu. Submission deadline for one-page abstracts is March 15, 2012, and for full manuscripts, September 1, 2012. See style sheet (APA format, 5th ed.) in recent issues of the AAUSC series, or visit http://www.apastyle.org.

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CALL FOR PAPERS: AAUSC Volume 2012 (CLOSED)
Hybrid Language Teaching and Learning: Exploring Theoretical, Pedagogical and Curricular Issues

Editors:
Fernando Rubio, University of Utah
Joshua J. Thoms, Louisiana State University

Series Editor:
Stacey Katz Bourns, Harvard University

Hybrid language teaching and learning, also referred to as “blended learning,” has become an increasingly popularmodel for the delivery of foreign language (FL) courses at the college level in the United States. Several factors have contributed to the proliferation of hybrid models of instruction in various institutions. Some include a more thorough understanding of how computer-assisted language learning, when informed by second language acquisition theories, can facilitate learners’ abilities to access input and produce output more effectively in the second language (L2), notice and correct linguistic errors more efficiently, interact more easily with native speakers of the L2 to understand facets of the L2 culture better, among other benefits. Similarly, many FL textbooks now incorporate interactive online components that allow an instructor or FL program director to be more creative and flexible when planning a course and determining what can be taught in and outside of the classroom. Yet another factor that plays a role in the growing number of hybrid course offerings is the economy. Given the recent economic downturn, many institutions’ budgets have been cut, which has directly affected how FL programs (both large and small) deliver their courses. Administrators in many universities have suggested that FL programs adopt a hybrid/blended learning model to use resources more efficiently. While recent studies have investigated the effects of hybrid models of teaching and learning on students’ L2 linguistic competencies, much more work is needed to fully understand the various aspects related to the implementation of hybrid courses and their effect(s) on L2 learning.

Papers are therefore sought for the American Association of University Supervisors and Coordinators’ 2012 volume, entitled Hybrid Language Teaching and Learning: Exploring Theoretical, Pedagogical and Curricular Issues. Manuscripts that address the theoretical, pedagogical and/or curricular issues related to implementing and maintaining a hybrid FL course, along with empirical studies both quantitative and qualitative, that investigate the effects of hybrid FL courses on students’ L2 learning, are welcome. Possible chapter topics may include, but are not be limited to, the following:

• the development of curricular/course models of hybrid teaching and learning;
• the training of instructors and teaching assistants to teach FL hybrid courses effectively;
• the use of SLA theory and research in CALL to inform decisions about how content is delivered and used in an online environment;
• the use of web 2.0 tools to facilitate the delivery of FL hybrid courses;
  
• an investigation of the effects of FL hybrid courses on specific student learning outcomes (e.g., writing, reading, speaking, or listening proficiencies);
• the role/effect of computer literacy on L2 learning in a hybrid course environment;
• the delivery of FL hybrid courses from an instructor’s or teaching assistant’s point of view;
• the adaptation of traditional FL textbooks to fit into the hybrid model;
• the indirect effect of the online component on the face-to-face component of hybrid courses (e.g., how do hybrid courses force instructors to modify what they do in the classroom?);
• the economic and political factors that motivate the implementation of hybrid courses; assessment within the hybrid model

For questions about the volume, please contact the volume editors at your earliest convenience. Submission deadline for one-page abstracts is April 1, 2011, and for full manuscripts is September 1, 2011. See style sheet (APA format, 5th ed.) in recent issues of the AAUSC series, or visit http://www.apastyle.org.

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CALL FOR PAPERS: AAUSC Volume 2011 (CLOSED)
Educating the Future Foreign Language Professoriate for the 21st Century

Editors:
Heather Willis Allen, University of Miami
Hiram Maxim, Emory University

Series Editor:
Stacey Katz Bourns, Harvard University

Papers are sought for the American Association of University Supervisors and Coordinators’ 2011 volume. Entitled Educating the Future Foreign Language Professoriate for the 21st Century, this collection takes the 2007 MLA Report and its proposed changes as a point of departure and explores pedagogical and structural means and models for graduate student education in light of the significant changes the FL profession is and has been undergoing. Some of the questions to which this volume seeks to respond include:

• Which theoretical frameworks or approaches are consistent with the goals of FL learning called for in the MLA Report (i.e., “translingual and transcultural competence”)? Which pedagogical approaches, concepts, and techniques do graduate student teachers need to understand in order to instantiate this type of teaching?
• In light of the MLA Report’s call to “situate language study in cultural, historical, geographic, and cross-cultural frames,” what types of courses as well as professional development activities and / or materials can best help graduate student teachers understand the interrelationships between form and meaning and language and culture?
• What is the role of graduate teacher education in collegiate FL departments? How do the calls in the MLA Report for collaboration and changed governance affect teacher development practices? How can teacher education be conceptualized to facilitate the most effective socialization into the FL profession?

Topics that might be addressed by contributors include:

• Proposing new frameworks for FL teacher development (e.g., sociocultural theory, functional perspective, literacy-oriented approaches, etc.)
• Developing graduate student instructors’ understanding of the place and role of the different language modalities in language education
• Developing graduate student instructors’ ability to comprehend, analyze, and teach cultural narratives
• Envisioning teacher education beyond the standard “methods” course
• Overcoming the division between language and literature teachers, i.e., developing language-based literature teachers and literature-based language teachers
• Implementing systems for graduate student teacher supervision and observation grounded in SLA theory and research
• Assessing graduate student teacher performance
• Developing graduate students’ advanced language abilities

Additionally, we are interested in empirically based qualitative and quantitative research that addresses the efficacy of teacher development and supervision practices or explores how graduate students teachers perceive their development as teachers and scholars in foreign language departments.

For expressions of interest and questions about the volume, please contact the editors at your earliest convenience. Submission deadline for one-page abstracts is April 1, 2010, and for full manuscripts is September 1, 2010. See style sheet (APA format, 5th ed.) in recent issues of the AAUSC series, or visit http://www.apastyle.org.

CALL FOR PAPERS: AAUSC Volume 2010 (CLOSED)

Editors:
Glenn S. Levine, University of California, Irvine
Alison Phipps, University of Glasgow

Series Editor:
Carl Blyth, University of Texas at Austin 

Critical and Intercultural Theory and Language Pedagogy

Critical theory, cultural studies, postmodernity as a label for today’s world, and postmodernism as an intellectual movement have come to mean many things to diverse academic fields of inquiry and different sectors of society. Yet many of those who study and teach languages in the North American context have largely ignored crucial theoretical issues that have been taken up in a wide range of fields, from literary studies to anthropology to management. And on the “other side of the fence,” those in literary and cultural studies often have viewed what happens in language classrooms as irrelevant to the intellectual work of the academy. This dilemma was recently fleshed out in the MLA ad hoc committee report, “Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World” (http://www.mla.org/flreport); language departments and professionals were challenged to find new ways to bridge the gap between conventional language instruction and more advanced ‘content’ courses, to better integrate and articulate language instruction with the goals and mission of a liberal arts education, and to pursue new ways for language instruction at all levels to contribute to students’ development as global citizens.

To foster this important endeavor, the goal of the volume is to explore the role of language teaching and learning in a postmodern world and the ways that literary theory, critical theory, social theory, cultural theory, and other theories, can or already do contribute to our thinking about curriculum, teacher training, and language teaching and learning. The volume should inform language program directors and instructors about these theories, as well as provide fuel for discussion and debate in language departments as they work toward addressing and implementing proposals put forth in  the MLA Report. The volume thus seeks to bridge the language-literature/culture divide that is still the reality of many language departments. The group of projected contributors, who come from diverse fields within and outside of applied linguistics and SLA, represents a new direction for the AAUSC series. The twofold purpose is to provide a forum for those scholars to weigh in on issues of second-language teaching and learning, and to foster a dialogue among scholars from many fields who are concerned with critical issues of language, learning, and education.

With regard to the place of theory in language pedagogy, the volume aims to bring theoretical debates center stage for language professionals and to tackle the suspicion  in which theorists are thought to hold practitioners and in which practitioners are thought to hold theorists. The editors take the view that for new forms of belonging to be imagined for our plurilingual times, and for political questions of language to truly inform language practice, then theories are needed which are strong enough to bear the weight of collective and individual self-reflection. There is, in language studies, an urgent need for thinking which may bring about a new consciousness of the import, place and incontestable profundity of the activityundefinedpractical and engagedundefinedof language learning. Indeed, it is the editors’ view that much of the theory developed over the last few decades in the humanities and social sciences has overshot the political and practical realities of classrooms and language learning practices. This volume, then, seeks to think about the fundamental textures of shared intercultural experience in teaching and learning languages. Without such a focus, then language pedagogy risks being left with little to say, and little conceptual novelty with which to say it, when faced with the profound questions raised by the politics of our current age.

Suggestions for Possible Topics

Manuscript proposals are welcome that consider any aspect of how theory can, should, or does relate to, inform or impact language curriculum, program direction, teacher training, or teaching practice. The intended readership includes language program directors and coordinators, basic language instructors, and language department faculty at large. Though we envision most contributions to be in essay form, we also welcome empirical research reports exploring connections between theory and issues of language teaching and learning. The focus may be as broad or narrow as the author(s) choose; they can deal with broad concepts or with specific features or aspects of language, culture, teaching, learning, etc. Specific questions of interest include but are not restricted to the following:

• Theory and theories
  o An accessible ‘introduction’ to a specific theoretical framework in terms of its relevance for language education and/or language program design and direction
  o How do specific theories (e.g., social theory, critical theory, sociocultural theory, cultural theory, complexity theory) relate to or inform particular aspects of language curriculum and teaching?
  o How can language program directors and language teachers best make use of or ‘apply’ theory in designing curricula and teaching?

• Postmodernism and postmodernity, and preparing global citizens through language education
  o Investigations/interrogations of issues of race, gender, class, postcolonialism etc. as these relate to collegiate language education
  o Issues of globalization and language education
  o Critical pedagogy and/or contribution of collegiate language instruction to social change
  o Transcultural communication and intercultural communicative competence as a vehicle and goal for collegiate language education
  o Language socialization and literacy perspectives

Whatever the specific focus, each contribution should address in concrete terms the implications or applications of particular theories for language program directors and language teachers, and ideally, each should also speak to scholars working in the author’s field of inquiry, highlighting what they could learn from issues and aspects of language teaching and learning.

Timeline

Interested parties should submit abstracts to both editors by May 1, 2009. Potential contributors will receive feedback through a blind peer-review process by June 1, 2009. All manuscript submissions will also be blind peer-reviewed.

The deadline for full-length manuscripts is September 15, 2009, and final revisions will be due by March 15, 2010. Please note that the deadlines for full- length manuscripts and final revisions may be subject to change. The volume will appear in November, 2010 at the annual AAUSC meeting held in conjunction with the MLA Convention.

Please direct inquiries to Glenn S. Levine or Alison Phipps.