Check out SLAT's August 2023 Newsletter! You can find it attached below, or through this link: https://arizona.box.com/s/9jvb3kt47q33ufkybrjdn6gp55rt6ghu
"An Investigation of the Digital Competence of Language Teachers in K-12 and University Settings"
Dissertation Proposal Title: An Investigation of the Digital Competence of Language Teachers in K-12 and University Settings
Dissertation Committee: Dr. Suzanne Panferov Reese (Chair), Dr. Betul Czerkawski, Dr. Chris Tardy
How to prepare for the publishing process
Dr. Ana Carvalho will be facilitating the workshop this year, and she’ll focus on what students should prepare for when it comes to publishing, what types of materials to publish, demystifying the publishing (and preparing for publishing) processes, how to prepare publication drafts for presenting at conferences, and more. This workshop is open to all SLAT major and minor students who are interested in attending for the first time, or who have attended in the past and want a refresher or clarifications.
Dr. Carvalho is a professor in the Department of English and Portuguese and affiliated with SLAT and Linguistics. Her work has been published in several journals and books, and she will be a wonderful resource and contact to provide information and guidance on the publishing processes.
Please make sure to register for the workshop through this form: https://forms.gle/xUsX1YTTxBTrr4JV8
"Teaching in a Material World: A Critical, Multimodal Analysis of GTAs Materials Use in the Spanish Classroom"
Dissertation Proposal Title: Teaching in a Material World: A Critical, Multimodal Analysis of GTAs Materials Use in the Spanish Classroom
Dissertation Committee: Dr. Suzanne Panferov Reese (Chair), Dr. Dwight Atkinson, Dr. Beatrice Dupuy, Dr. Nick Ferdinandt
Abstract: The proposed research is a qualitative, classroom-based case study focusing on Graduate Teaching Assistants’ (GTAs) use of materials in the Spanish language classroom.
Language learning and teaching materials (LLTM) are central, rather than peripheral, to how GTAs are socialized into teaching a language, and in what takes place in the language classroom. Often graduate student-instructors are provided with rigid syllabi, textbooks, and/or pre-existing materials for use in their classes. However, GTAs still use materials in creative and idiosyncratic ways, which may result in unpredictable language teaching and learning dimensions. By adopting sociomaterialism (Fenwick, 2015; Pennycook, 2018) as a paradigmatic orientation, the definition of materials expands to include a wider variety of phenomena, such as physical entities, texts, environments, signs, and technologies (Guerrettaz et al., 2021).
I will investigate how GTAs adopt, appropriate, and respond to materials based on contextual factors including their own views and understanding of language and culture(s), as well as institutional demands that inform their teaching practices in the Spanish language classroom at the University of Arizona. In particular, what materials and knowledge do GTAs plan to use in their teaching; how do they use these; and how do they make sense of what goes on in their classrooms?
The study takes a grounded approach to understanding GTAs’ teaching experiences in situ through critical discourse analysis of interviews and multimodal interactional analysis of classroom video recordings. The goal is to identify areas for improvement for language program administrators in supporting GTAs in their training and to offer suggestions for enhancing current GTA training models toward the development of critical language teachers, aware of how they can make the most out of their material world.
