The foreign students who study at Russian universities continue learning Russian at bachelors' degree. The main difficulty which professors face while teaching Russian as a foreign language lies in the fact that foreign students are often unprepared to learn specific vocabulary, necessary for educational and professional activities. A totally…

This reflective "Perspectives" article will give readers some insight into the professional self-development experiences of an English as a second language (ESL) practitioner after she recognized a significant shift in learning and teaching paradigms resulting from instructional tools available on the World Wide Web. It also attempts to…

English learners in EFL contexts where grammar-based instruction is still dominant often lack opportunities to use the target language both within and outside the classroom. In 2010, we initiated a club-based approach to facilitate students' learning beyond the classroom. It focused on meaningful communication, authentic tasks, student agency,…

The report of the MLA Task Force on Ethical Conduct in Graduate Education calls on administrators, departments, and faculty members to embrace "student-centered graduate education informed by an ethics of care." To confront long-standing issues in graduate education--such as precarity, bias and favoritism, harassment, mental health,…

Language tandem exchanges offer students valuable opportunities for autonomous learning and authentic intercultural communication encounters. This paper will discuss the key principles of tandem language exchange, and in particular online ones, and then present the EU-funded European University Tandem (EUniTa) project which was developed by…

To help satisfy the pressing need for technology-related professional development for in-service teachers, the Global Academic Essentials Teacher Institute (GAETI) was implemented to provide in-service foreign language and social studies teachers with content, pedagogy, and technology explorations centered on the teaching of the Common Core State…

In this article, the author describes her preparations for the Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) professional presentations in Haiti. As a cultural worker, (after Paulo Freire), she was very conscious of the need for care in working with "the Other" especially when the Other is known only from second hand…

The primary source of federal aid to elementary and secondary education is the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)--particularly its Title I-A program, which authorizes federal aid for the education of disadvantaged students. This report provides a brief overview of major provisions of the ESEA. It is organized by title and part of the…

Jane L. Beyer Westerhold knows no boundaries. As superintendent of the Des Plaines (Ill.) Community Consolidated School District 62 in suburban Chicago, Westerhold has led a three-year master plan with a $109 million facilities upgrade, narrowed the achievement gap between low-income and other students, and kept a AA+ bond rating--the highest…

In this ethnographic self-reconstruction, the author represents the ways in which he negotiated the differing teaching practices and professional cultures of the periphery and the center in an effort to develop a strategic professional identity. He brings out the importance of using multiple identities critically for voice in the wider…

Prospective teachers pursue a graduate degree in TESOL with the expectation that they will become more qualified, on paper and in practice, and more recognized as professionals in the field. In this article, the authors interrogate that assumption by exploring what it means to be a TESOL professional and how graduate students begin to shape this…

The author has worked as a language teacher, teacher educator, and second language acquisition (SLA) researcher for over forty years. During this time grammar has figured largely in his thinking, in part because it has traditionally been so central to language pedagogy and in part because he became fascinated with how the human mind grapples with…

When asked by a principal to design a workshop for ELA and ESL teachers on addressing new ESL regulations, the author suggested that they offer professional development that might inspire teachers to try new practices that could help their students grow as writers. The author decided to devote a workshop not to rules and regulations, but to…

This article takes a broadly sociocultural perspective on the development of an Armenian English as a foreign language (EFL) teacher. It focuses on how experiences and actions outside the professional development classroom influence language teacher agency. The paper is framed within activity theory and specifically draws on Galperin's orienting…

Although the interactive whiteboard (IWB) is becoming increasingly prevalent in classrooms throughout the more efficient parts of the world and research has shown how this tool can increase the effectiveness of teaching and even transform pedagogy (Kennewell & Beauchamp, 2007), research literature overviews (Higgins, Beauchamp, & Miller,…