Ahead of the recent wave of social justice movements (e.g., [All] Black Lives Matter (#BLM), #MeToo, #StopJewishHate, #StopAsianHate), in 2019 the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) declared a stance on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) in language education. It affirmed that it "values diversity…

In the context of Latin American Studies (LAS) and from a sociohistorical perspective, the author proposes a non-credit workshop in Spanish as a Foreign Language (SFL) at the University of Ottawa, Canada. Its general aim is to raise students' awareness of the interrelationships between coloniality and the geopolitics of knowledge through fiction.…

Offered through the Honors College at the University of New Mexico, Conexiones-Ecuador is an explicitly interdisciplinary study abroad program around the theme of "Food, Sovereignty, and Development." In an immersive language and cultural studies experience, students live with host families, take Spanish language classes at the…

Since 2005, Examples of Excelencia has been the only national effort recognizing evidence-based programs improving Latino student success in higher education. This year an external selection committee selected 4 programs among our 20 Finalists that stand out for their evidence-based efforts to advance Latino student success in higher education.…

This article seeks to demonstrate how using oral history in a service-learning course offers an opportunity for students, faculty, and community to engage in participatory pedagogy. Through oral history, students learn to listen, reflect, and see how their learning is achieved in connection with the community. As a pedagogical tool, oral history…

Pedagogical research into cooperative learning and open educational resources supports an expectation for strong learning outcomes in both cases. This article is a guide to the implementation of a group assignment in a college introductory Hispanic literature course where students create critical editions of literary texts. The critical editions…

This short-form article introduces the Pre-Texts protocol (Harvard Cultural Agents Initiative) as a way to introduce new texts in class by using creation as a catalyst for reflection and dialogue. This current article briefly describes the benefits of this technique for the present generation of learners and teachers, as well as outlines clearly…

"Excelencia in Education" brings to a national audience evidence-based practices situated at higher education institutions and community-based organizations across the country that are intentionally serving Latino students. The 2023 "Examples of Excelencia: What Works for Latino Students in Higher Education" selection committee…

This paper focuses on an advanced Spanish literature seminar I taught at Kansas State University dedicated entirely to Cervantes's "Don Quijote de la Mancha." In an effort to appeal to twenty-first-century students in rural Kansas, I designed my seminar to explore traditional questions of authorship, translation and reading, metafiction,…

The development of language courses designed specifically for Spanish heritage learners has recently gained much attention at all levels of education in the US. Since heritage learners started to acquire the language since childhood at home, their needs are different from those of students in the traditional foreign language classroom. To fulfill…

2020 ushered in the convergence of multiple societal, political, environmental, and health crises. Racial reckoning collided with fearmongering on a national scale and punitive policies targeted non-citizens simultaneous to the global health pandemic COVID-19. COVID-19 required the unexpected pivoting from in-person instruction to what was, for…

This short-form article discusses how college students can learn languages in the same way that K-12 students do and points out how teaching practices employed in K-2 classrooms that aid in bringing students from monolingualism to bilingualism can also be useful for college students as they become trilingual. Referring to theories presented at the…

Acquiring a second language (L2) has been increasingly recognized to be an ongoing developmental process, one that progresses in a fluid and non-linear fashion (Larsen-Freeman, 2015). Instead of operating like a mechanical black box that parses incoming linguistic information and outputs oral/written language indiscriminately, the learner's…

After years of controversy and terminological debate, the plurilingual approach is now well accepted by language teaching communities. Still, doubts concerning how the plurilingual approach can shape the way we teach languages remain. The aim of this article is to describe a pedagogical and sequential approach that can be followed by teachers who…

The drive to embed employability in Higher Education (HE) offers a growth opportunity for languages provision. The employability potential of language learning for the global graduate has been analysed by the "Born Global" project on languages and employability (British Academy, 2016). Employers have consistently identified communication…