AOEL sessions at Ohio TESOL

The Advancing Ohio’s English Learners (AOEL) project team has multiple sessions at the 2023 Ohio TESOL Conference. The Activity 3 Instructional Guide session is Thursday, November 9, at 11 am. We will give an update on the project and elicit input from the audience on supplementary resources, videos and lesson plans they would like to see and/or share.

BAAL 2023 symposium

Artanti Sari and I are presenting today at the 56th Annual Conference of the British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL) at the University of York. We are part of the symposium ‘The Learning of Sacred Languages’, which features papers from a forthcoming special issue of the International Journal of Bilingualism, edited by Bene Bassetti. Our paper examines the use of digital spaces by transnational Indonesian-Muslim families to support their children’s Qur’anic Arabic language and literacy development.

 

AMI 2023 workshop on Language Socialization

Together with Min-Seok Choi (University of Louisiana at Lafayette), Grace Kim (Bucknell University), and Jackie Ridley (Kent State University), I facilitated a workshop for the 2023 Advanced Methods Institute: Advancing Qualitative Inquiry toward Innovation, Equity, Diversity, & Justice. In our workshop ‘Language Socialization Research and Social and Linguistic Justice’, we introduced participants to the paradigm, explored research methodology, and discussed the on-going shift in the field toward being more directly and explicitly engaged with issues of social and linguistic justice.

AERA 2023 paper & symposium

AERA 2023 in Chicago is wrapping up today. I am part of 2 symposia. I am the discussant for the symposium Illuminating Sociality and Learning in Diverse Educational Environments by Interrogating Movement, Touch, and Affect, organized by Sarah Jean Johnson (UTEP) and Ananda M. Marin (UCLA). I am second author on Jackie Ridley’s (Kent State) paper “¡Mira, the coche has wheels!” Supporting young children and families’ translanguaging through informal science’. The paper is part of a symposium organized by Jackie and Lindsey Rowe (Clemson U), In Supporting Children and Families in Early Childhood Education Contexts Through Translingual Practices and Pedagogies.

U Cambridge workshop

End of this month I will be a panelist and participant in a workshop focused on Language Learning in/as Religious Education. Dr. Artanti Sari and I will present together on Qur’anic Arabic learning in digital spaces. The workshop is the 3rd part of a series of events hosted by the Cambridge Interfaith Programme at the University of Cambridge. We will reflect on approaches, methods, and next steps in the research and teaching of religious languages. We will discuss the core questions: (1) What have we learned about how and why people teach and learn religious languages? (2) What do we do with that learning? (3) How does interdisciplinary discussion about such research impact our own work as teachers and/or researchers? This workshop will be of interest to educators, researchers, and practitioners of religious languages and literacies. We welcome participation and insights from attendees drawing from their own experiences with religious languages and literacies. This hybrid workshop takes place, Monday, 27 March, 2023, 13:15 to 16:45 GMT. For more information and registrations, click on the link above.

U of Cambridge Interfaith Week webinar

As part of University of Cambridge’s 13th World Interfaith Harmony Week programming, we are holding a webinar Language Learning in/as Religious Education on February 2, at 15:45 GMT. I will join Adel Mozammel (Darul Ihsan School), Anastasia Badder (Cambridge U), Jo-Ann Myers (Leo Baeck Institute), and Youmna Helmy (Cambridge U) to explore how religious communities draw on language as a semiotic resource aimed at specific goals, and how different methodologies can reveal aspects of the aims, processes, factors, and outcomes of sacred language learning and use. The event is free, just register in advance to get the Zoom link.

6th FLRT Symposium

FLRT held its 6th Graduate Student Symposium for Foreign Language Research and Teaching January 20th. In addition to 13 great papers by students, keynote speaker Professor Ester de Jong (University of Colorado Denver) gave a talk on multilingualism and language teacher preparation.

ASHA webinar with Monique Mills

Dr. Monique Mills and I will present a live webinar Perceptions of Narrative Quality in School-Age African American English (AAE) Speakers on December 22. The audience is school-based Speech-Language pathologists who work with African American children. We will explore variation in narrative practices common within AAE-speaking communities and discuss widely held beliefs about narrative language and its variation, how these beliefs affect clinical practice, and insights from research into how SLPs can expand our narrative language assessment practices to be more inclusive of culturally based narrative variation.

Sessions at AAA 2022 in Seattle

I am participating in 2 sessions at the 2022 Meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Seattle. The panel ‘Using Anthropology Of Language And Literacy To Address Equity In Unsettling Times’ brings together educational anthropologists who draw on anthropological theory and methods to examine the teaching and learning of language and literacy, drawing on theoretical frameworks that challenge dominant understandings. The round table ‘Refugee Education Across The Life Span In Unsettling Times’ showcases research on/with the language and literacy dimensions of the refugee experience.

Seminar for U of Cambridge UK Inter Faith Week

I will be part of a virtual seminar ‘Language Learning in/as Education’, hosted by the University of Cambridge as part of the upcoming UK Inter Faith Week. The seminar will feature talks by Dr. Anastasia Badder (University of Cambridge) and Dr. Jo-Ann Myers (Leo Baeck College), and responses from Dr. Farah Ahmed (University of Cambridge) and me. We will explore the nature of ‘progress’ n Progressive religious contexts and the significance of language and literacy learning for religious community identity, focusing on Jewish and Muslim educational contexts. The seminar will take place on Zoom on Wednesday, 16 November, 12:30 – 1:45pm (UK time). Check out the short article on InterFaith Week events and a recording of our panel.