Transdisciplinary Research In Language Education

Situated on the cutting edge of theory and classroom practice, this volume highlights transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary research in language education and other disciplines and epistemological spaces. The authors provide insights from language education and its potential to connect with a broad range of disciplinary traditions that include medicine, literature, fine arts, mathematics, and more. This forward-looking text addresses contemporary themes of social justice, intercultural citizenship, and antiracism throughout. Chapters provide educational research examples that can be applied in innovative ways to extend beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries. Language applications included are ESOL, Spanish, German, and Russian, with implications for both commonly and less commonly taught languages. Novice and experienced educators alike will benefit from the rigorous discussion of practice and contemporary theoretical issues. Book Features: Represents a range of research methods and practical approaches that integrate language acquisition with academic content. Shows best practices for conducting transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary research and how it can enrich language education as a whole. Addresses contemporary topics such as language policy, STEM education, integrative teaching, content area education, arts integration, and White supremacy culture. Offers creative and collaborative approaches for reaching beyond the ordinary conventions of TESOL and foreign/world language education.

Situated on the cutting edge of theory and classroom practice, this volume highlights transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary research in language education and other disciplines and epistemological spaces. The authors provide insights from language education and its potential to connect with a broad range of disciplinary traditions that include medicine, literature, fine arts, mathematics, and more. This forward-looking text addresses contemporary themes of social justice, intercultural citizenship, and antiracism throughout. Chapters provide educational research examples that can be applied in innovative ways to extend beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries. Language applications included are ESOL, Spanish, German, and Russian, with implications for both commonly and less commonly taught languages. Novice and experienced educators alike will benefit from the rigorous discussion of practice and contemporary theoretical issues. Book Features: Represents a range of research methods and practical approaches that integrate language acquisition with academic content. Shows best practices for conducting transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary research and how it can enrich language education as a whole.Addresses contemporary topics such as language policy, STEM education, integrative teaching, content area education, arts integration, and White supremacy culture. Offers creative and collaborative approaches for reaching beyond the ordinary conventions of TESOL and foreign/world language education. Contributors: Todd A. Bates, Meghan Odsliv Bratkovich, Melisa (Misha) Cahnmann-Taylor, Juntao Li, Terry A. Osborn, Aria Razfar, Timothy Reagan, Heather Schlaman, Eugenia Vomvoridi-Ivanovic, Manuela Wagner, and Jennifer Wooten.

This book is about complexity-driven, trandsisciplinary approach to language study. It illustrates how complexity science can be applied in the research of language and society in order to create and sustain a transdisciplinary dialogue across interested communities of practice which may be beneficial in improving living conditions of real people.

North American universities depend on international teaching assistants (ITAs) as a substantial part of the teaching labor force, which has led to the idea of an ‘ITA problem’, a deficiency model which is framed as a divergence between ITAs’ linguistic competence and undergraduates’ and their parents’ expectations. This outdated positioning of ITAs as deficient diminishes the invaluable role they play within the academy. This book argues instead for an approach to ITA which recognizes them as multilingual, skilled, migrant professionals who participate in and are discursively constructed through various participant frameworks, modalities and activities. The chapters in this volume offer state-of-the-art research into ITA using a variety of methods and approaches, and as such constitute a transdisciplinary perspective which argues for the importance of dialogue between research and practice.

Addressing the intersections between cognitive, sociocultural, and sociolinguistic research, this volume explores bilingual development across educational contexts to discuss and uncover the influences and impact of language in school programming and everyday practices. Confronting a standard monolingual lens, this collection highlights the importance of applying cross-disciplinary approaches to examine bilingualism in relation to topics such as language politics, linguistic identities, students’ experiences at home and in schools, asset-based teaching and curricula, and overall benefits. Ideal for courses in bilingualism, literacy, psychology, and language education, this text is an important resource for understanding and applying transdisciplinary, inclusive approaches to positively influence cognitive development, academic learning, and identity formation in bilingual education.

A Transdisciplinary Approach to Chinese and Japanese Language Teaching illustrates how the transdisciplinary approach to second language acquisition (SLA) centers around collaboration to provide a learning-conducive environment with rich semiotic resources for second/foreign language learners. The volume consists of 14 chapters from leading experts in SLA and Chinese and Japanese language educators from Canada, China, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. As a first work of its kind, the contributions feature both theoretical interpretations of transdisciplinary concepts that can apply to Chinese/Japanese as a second language learning and case studies showcasing how college-level Chinese and Japanese language educators design and implement pedagogical projects in collaboration with partners across languages, disciplines, communities, and borders by adopting a transdisciplinary perspective to analyze students’ learning outcomes. This book will benefit researchers, administrators, educators, and teacher educators in higher education with an interest in world language education and interdisciplinary and project-based teaching.

This volume reconsiders the problem of context in language testing and other modes of assessment from the perspective of transdisciplinarity. Transdisciplinary assessment research brings together collaborators who draw on the strengths of their differing backgrounds and expertise in order to address high-stakes complex socially-relevant problems. Traditional treatments of context in language assessment research have generally been informed by individualist cognitive theories within measurement and psychometrics. The additive potential of alternative social theories, including theories of genre, situated learning, distributed cognition, and intercultural communication, has largely been overlooked. In this book, the benefits of socio-theoretical reconsiderations of context are discussed and further exemplified in transdisciplinary research studies that investigate the use of assessment in classroom and workplace settings. The book offers a renewed view of context in arguments for the validity of assessment practices, and will be of interest to assessment researchers, practitioners, and students in applied linguistics, education, educational psychology, language testing, and other related disciplines and fields.

Accessible and comprehensive, this text introduces a transdisciplinary framework for literacy instruction in grades K–12. This cutting-edge volume addresses the need for literacy instruction that crosses disciplines to provide students with a skillset that is not constrained or siloed, but rather knowledge that students can apply to existing and emerging fields. The text begins with a clear, theoretical understanding of literacy instruction, delves into practical aspects of select instructional practices by grade level, and expands to the creation of schoolwide Multi-Tiered Systems of Support to ensure a continuous improvement system. The authors’ inviting and innovative approach walks through real-world pathways for meaningful and inclusive literacy practices at distinct grade levels and includes authentic examples that show what the successful implementation of a K–12 transdisciplinary framework looks like. Covering key topics such as MTSS, RtI, Professional Communities of Practice, national and state standards, this book supports pre-service ELA teachers, literacy coaches, reading specialists, and administrators, and is ideal for courses in literacy instruction and content area literacy.

To solve real-world issues, the model of transdisciplinary research, which uses approaches from both the hard and social sciences, has recently come to the forefront. It allows researchers to look at a problem from many angles, with the goal of making both societal and scientific advances. This primer provides scholars with a model for this type of work, while offering a description of methods for knowledge integration that can be applied to any field, making it an indispensable guide for every transdisciplinary researcher and teacher