Description
Educators all over the world are being challenged to provide effective instruction for culturally and linguistically diverse learners and immigrant communities while valuing and celebrating students’ cultural backgrounds. This task requires training, professional development, cultural sensitivity, and responsibility to promote positive outcomes.
Beyond Language Learning Instruction: Transformative Supports for Emergent Bilinguals and Educators is a critical research publication that bridges linguistics theory and practice and comprehensively addresses all fundamentals of linguistics through the English language learning lens. Featuring topics such as curriculum design, immigrant students, and professional development, this book is essential for educators, academicians, administrators, curriculum designers, instructional designers, researchers, policymakers, and students.
Author's/Editor's Biography
Alina Slapac (Ed.)
Alina Slapac
is an Associate Professor of action research, curriculum and instruction at the University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL). Her research interests include teacher preparation and development with focus on global and multicultural education, (participatory) action research, culturally and linguistically responsive teaching, collaborative online international learning, and transformative pedagogy. She has been collaborating with educators from China, Norway, Romania, Spain, South Africa, South Korea and USA on research and teaching. Dr. Slapac has been an UMSL Global Fellow and an UMSL Inquiry Circles Fellow on global competency. Her two co-edited books are Handbook of Research on the Global Empowerment of Educators and Student Learning through Action Research (Slapac, Balcerzak & O’Brien, 2021) and Beyond Language Learning Instruction: Transformative Supports for Emergent Bilinguals and Educators (Slapac & Coppersmith, 2019) (IGI Global). Her articles have been published in Journal of Research on Childhood Education, Educational Studies, Kappa Delta Pi Record, Scholar-Practitioner Quarterly, Journal of Immersion and Content-Based Language Education, and Teacher Education and Practice, among others. She also published several book chapters in co-edited books, such as: Social Justice and Culturally-Affirming Education in K-12 Settings; At School in the World: Developing Globally Engaged Teachers; Research Anthology on Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning; International Perspectives on Modern Developments in Early Childhood Education; Intercultural Responsiveness in the Second Language Learning Classroom and Designing Socially Just Learning Communities: Linking Literacy Learning across the Lifespan. She is currently working on a new co-edited book (with Dr. Cristina Huertas-Abril) on global education and teacher development through telecollaboration.
Sarah Coppersmith (Ed.)
Sarah A. Coppersmith most recently has been an Assistant Research Professor in the University of Missouri, St. Louis (UMSL) College of Education and an Adjunct Instructor of Geography in the Humanities Division at Lindenwood University, St. Charles, Missouri. She is currently a Fellow in the Inquiry Circle Program on global competency (Longview Foundation, UMSL Global, and UMSL College of Education, 2019-2020). Her recent research includes a focus on in-service and pre-service teachers’ application of linguistically and culturally responsive teaching practices with English learners; stress, self-efficacy, and inquiry learning with pre-service teachers; explorations of inquiry learning in the Fur Trade Era in the Mid-Mississippi Valley in an International Baccalaureate Language Immersion setting, and moral agency beliefs of undergraduates studying World Regional Geography.