Spanish is the second most common language among US children aged 5-17, with 26.8% speaking it at home. To foster cultural understanding and promote positive relationships, it's crucial to introduce young children to different languages and cultures. Preschool language education can cultivate respect and empathy, building more inclusive…

Methods of teaching and learning through inquiry have been used as long-standing instructional approaches in the sciences. This practice-oriented paper presents the work of a fully developed instructional unit that uses a guided-inquiry model as a method to implement social justice-oriented practices in an intermediate-level university Spanish…

In this article, we will highlight an overview of a project that we facilitated with colleagues that encouraged immigrant youth and members of their families to share photographs that they took and stories that they wrote with fellow students in their school, their teachers, with members of their own student and cultural communities, and with…

When wondering, learners express the desire to know what they do not know, as well as what they already know. In the modern languages curriculum, a language learner who uses 'wonder' is driven by curiosity for the language(s); has questions about the place and the people; has a wish to know more about various cultures; and eventually become a…

As more higher education institutions in the United States look not only to be designated as Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI) but to serve their student population in languages other than English, learning designers who are native speakers or have fluency in languages other than English are utilizing their language and cultural competencies to…

This section discusses how the changing students' experiences necessitated a rethinking of the educational programme and the development of an active pedagogy. The reform used two powerful instruments: an adaptation of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, which allows the language coordinator to evaluate the linguistic needs…

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…

The most effective way to address the critical social and political issues confronting students today is to promote intercultural competence with empathy at the core of language instruction. Language has the ability to shape our thoughts and to alter our consciousness. As students view the world through the prism of cultural openness, they are…

The Digital Humanities (DH) has been for many years, even decades, in constant development and self-definition and has been able to gather a diverse and international community that goes beyond the traditional framework of academia. Modern Languages (ML) also finds itself in the process of establishing the terms in which it intersects with the…

In today's interconnected and globalized world, there is a need for pedagogies that can "successfully prepare learners for intercultural encounters" (Drewelow, 2017, p. 255). In particular, instructional approaches that focus on cultivating learners' global competence, that is, the ability to communicate in more than one language with…

World language teachers are a special breed of teacher. In some cases, traveling and speaking other languages has profoundly changed their lives and they've channeled their passion into a career. In other cases, teachers are from another country, and are passionate about sharing their language and culture with students. World language teachers…

This article presents one way that librarians, archivists, and educators can create new knowledge by connecting communities with rare material culture. The authors share how they engaged critically reflective practices while gathering descriptions of rare Mexican artists' books at community-engaged outreach events. The books took on new meanings…

Assessment of students' work in Virtual Exchange (VE) frequently focuses on their participation in the activities and may also include an evaluation of students' learning. In this chapter, we discuss a two-sided approach to assessing students' work in an intercultural VE project. On the one hand, we evaluated students' engagement in the exchange…

What images of the world do we find in language textbooks? What countries and continents are favoured, what key problems of the world are mentioned and taken up, what segments of the world's populations are represented and how, what role is given to the understanding of world history, colonialism and imperialism, what role is given to the…

We describe the integration of telecollaborative language coaching sessions into an online Spanish program as the unifying thread for asynchronous learning and reflection activities. In survey responses, students reported improved language skills and cultural knowledge, and the ability to apply linguistic skills to "real-life" situations…