MLA 2026 Toronto_Call for Proposal (Second Language Teaching and Learning)

The MLA Forum on Second-Language Teaching and Learning invites submissions for consideration to be included in two guaranteed and two non-guaranteed sessions to take place during the 2026 MLA annual convention, which will take place on January 8-11, 2026 in Toronto. Please see the Calls for Papers below and be in touch with the designated contact person for interest and questions.

Ten years ago, Bill VanPatten provocatively asked “Where are the experts?” He argued that, despite having a vested interest in advancing students’ linguistic proficiency, collegiate language departments lacked faculty with specialized language expertise. This gap, he noted, led to several challenges for departments, including persistent myths about language learning and teaching, inadequate training for future language faculty, and a lack of knowledge regarding language standards and pedagogy that impact decisions concerning instructional materials and curriculum development.

Meanwhile, the increasing professionalization of language program administrators (LPAs)—particularly language program directors—has highlighted the critical contributions of language experts who have contributed to the well-being of their departments in key ways, from developing curricula and pedagogies to evaluating programs, and supporting instructors’ professional learning. An emerging theme in this scholarship (e.g., Blyth, Bourns, & Magnan, 2020; Brown, et al., forthcoming; Katz & Watzinger-Tharp, 2005; Lord, 2014) is that the responsibilities of LPAs are so multifaceted no single individual can effectively manage them all. Instead, the expertise required can and should be shared, with departments benefiting from multiple language experts.

This session explores the evolving role of expertise in language program administration and asks what types of specialized knowledge are needed for developing and leading 21st-century university language programs. How has expertise developed in key LPA areas of responsibility over the years? And what should training or professional learning for particular language specialists look like? We invite discussions on how departments can benefit from fostering collaborative environments where expertise is not confined to one individual, but rather distributed across a network of professionals. We also welcome position papers and reports that address specific dimensions of language expertise within the context of collegiate language programs, e.g., curriculum design, pedagogical innovation, educational technologies, testing, teacher education, professional learning, or program evaluation.

Interested speakers are invited to submit abstracts (up to 300 words) outlining their planned presentation alongside a bio (up to 150 words) to Cori Crane (cpcrane@ua.edu) by March 18, 2025. This session is sponsored by the MLA Second Language Learning and Teaching Forum and is a guaranteed session. Participants must be MLA members to be included in the convention program.

Blyth, C. S., Bourns, S. K., & Magnan, S. S. (2020). Preface: The trajectory from volume to journal. Second Language Research & Practice, 1(1), 1–5.

Brown, A. V., Crane, C., Dupuy, B., & Ene, E. (Eds.) (forthcoming). The Routledge handbook of language program development and administration. Routledge.

Katz, S., & Watzinger-Tharp, J. (2005). Toward an understanding of the role of applied linguists in foreign language departments. Modern Language Journal, 89(4), 490-502.

Lord, G. (2014). Language program direction. Theory and practice. Pearson Education. VanPatten, B. (2015). Where are the experts? Hispania 98(1), 2–13.

One of the enduring lessons from the COVID-19 global pandemic is the inextricable link between well-being and learning and teaching (Felten, 2022). Recent challenges impacting undergraduate and graduate education such as climate change, global geopolitical conflicts, the ongoing difficulties of building more just societies, and the rise of Artificial Intelligence all remind us of the fundamental need to substantively change our pedagogies to align with the interconnectedness of student and faculty wellbeing in our educational ecosystems (Bass, 2023). As Felten and Lambert (2020) observe, “The classroom, whether physical or virtual, is the primary point of contact between institutions and undergraduates, so it is the single most important site for students to experience welcome and care, to be inspired to learn, to build webs of relationships, and to ask questions of meaning and purpose” (p. 80).

The extraordinary external factors of recent years that impact student and faculty well-being and therefore learning and teaching, provide opportunities for us to reimagine the traditional dynamics and pedagogical roles and relationships of undergraduate and graduate students and faculty in and beyond the classroom (Debelius et al., 2024). As acts of empowering and amplifying undergraduate and graduate students’ voices (Conner et al., 2024), participation and engagement with others can range from brief activities such as minute papers and midsemester check-ins (Angelo & Cross, 1993; Angelo & Zakrajsek, 2024) to pedagogical initiatives that extend over longer periods of time including, but not limited to, weekly or mid-semester student-faculty conferences/conversations, structured reflections (Crane & Sosulski, 2021), pedagogical partnerships (Cook-Sather, 2022), and co-designing assessments (Smith et al., 2024). Other approaches that reimagine traditional pedagogical roles of students and faculty include co-teaching and team-teaching by undergraduate and graduate students with faculty (Cassuto & Weisbuch, 2021; Jarvis & Kariuki, 2017).

This session seeks contributions that reimagine the traditional pedagogical roles and relationships of students and faculty in language education, literature, and cultural studies in these extraordinary times and that address any of the following questions:

• In what ways do faculty and students learn from each other when they work collaboratively by changing their traditional educational roles and creating pedagogical spaces or shared communities of practice around learning and teaching that, among many possible positive outcomes, include the following: building classroom community, fostering a sense of belonging, promoting and developing creativity, critical thinking, intercultural (communicative) competence, intercultural citizenship, which improve students’ learning and/or teaching?

• In what ways do we foster learning through teaching that prioritizes our undergraduate and graduate students' voices and lived experiences as fundamental, mutually reciprocal, and beneficial components of learning and teaching with faculty (e.g., tenured, tenure-track, contingent) and/or with the support of administrators (e.g., department chairs, program administrators, deans, centers for teaching and learning), all of whom play a crucial role in both supporting and sustaining (over the long term) these positive pedagogical changes in our complex educational ecosystems (Kinzie et al., 2023)?

• To what extent do purposeful and meaningful co-creation and collaboration for learning and teaching among faculty, undergraduates, graduate students, and/or program directors/administrators provide crucial opportunities to reimagine the how, why, with, for, and from whom we learn and teach?

Interested speakers are invited to submit abstracts (up to 300 words) outlining their planned presentation alongside a bio (up to 150 words) to Lee B. Abraham (lba2133@columbia.edu) by March 18, 2025. This special session is sponsored by the MLA Second Language Learning and Teaching Forum. It is a guaranteed session. Participants must be MLA members to be included in the convention program.

Angelo, T. A., & Cross, K. P. (1993). Classroom assessment techniques: A handbook for college teachers (2nd ed.). Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Angelo, T. A., & Zakrajsek, T. D. (2024). Classroom assessment techniques: Formative feedback tools for college and university teachers (3rd ed.) Wiley.

Bass, S.A. (2023). Redesigning college for student success: Holistic education, inclusive personalized support, and responsive initiatives for a digitally immersed, stressed, and diverse student body. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 55(2), 4-13. https://oi.org/10.1080/00091383.2023.2180273

Cassuto, L., & Weisbuch, R. (2021). The new PhD: How to build a better graduate education. Johns Hopkins University Press. https://doi.org/10.1353/book.81097

Conner, J., Raaper, R., Guzmán-Valenzuela, C., & Gauthier, L. (Eds.). (2024). The Bloomsbury handbook of student voice in higher education. Bloomsbury.

Cook-Sather, A. (2022). Co-creating equitable teaching and learning: Structuring student voice into higher education. Harvard Education Press.

Crane, C., & Sosulski, M. J. (2021). Identifying and evaluating transformative learning in language learning. In B. L. Leaver, D. Davidson, & C. Campbell (Eds.), Transformative language learning and teaching (pp. 217–226).

Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108870788 Debelius, M., Kim, J., & Maloney, E. J. (Eds.). (2024). Recentering learning: Complexity, resilience, and adaptability in higher education. John Hopkins University Press. https://doi.org/10.56021/9781421450322

Felten, P . (2022). From pandemic to endemic pedagogy: Being CLEAR in our teaching. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 2022(169), 39-46. https://doi.org/10.1002/tl.20481

Felten, P., & Lambert, L. M. (2020). Relationship-rich education: How human connections drive success in college. Johns Hopkins University Press. https://doi.org/10.1353/book.78561

Jarvis, D., & Kariuki, M. (Eds.). (2017). Co-teaching in higher education: From theory to co-practice. University of Toronto Press.

Kinzie, J., Ketcham, C. J., Weaver, A. G., & Moore, J. L. (2023). Introduction: Capstone experiences in undergraduate education. In C. J. Ketcham, A. G. Weaver, & J. L. Moore (Eds.), Cultivating capstones: Designing high-quality culminating experiences for student learning (pp. 1-22). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003443933

Smith, A., McConnell, L., Iyer, P., Allman-Farinelli, M., & Chen, J. (2024). Co-designing assessment tasks with students in tertiary education: A scoping review of the literature. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 1-20. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02602938.2024.2376648#d1e264

How should we articulate the rationale and vision for language study as part of curriculum in higher education, particularly at a time of ascendance of AI and backlash against globalism and multiculturalism? Would the overhaul of the goals and "benefits" of language study enumerated in public-facing documents (e.g., Language Connects Foundation) help, and which dimensions, professional, educational, social, or personal, should be highlighted? Or is a more overarching, ardent narrative appealing to humanity and social justice called for? This panel invites conceptual discussions and action research reports that inform the existential question of how language education relates to the ethical challenges of our time at macro and micro levels.

We would like to bring together diverse approaches for a shared goal of articulating philosophical and ethical grounding of language education. Theoretical constructs such as multilingualism, interculturalism, translanguaging, raciolinguistics, language and social justice have long informed research and practice in language teaching concerned with diversity, structural inequalities, marginalization and minoritization of groups, and cultural/epistemic apathy.

As a way to animate the discussion, we refer to new theorizations of intercultural competence that flag power relations and political and ethical dimensions of the concept. Guilherme's reconceptualization "Intercultural Responsibility" concerns both local and global stages given the extreme mobility and increasingly multicultural states at our time (Guilherme, 2020, Guilherme & Diatz, 2015). Simpson's "Intercultural Communication Pedagogy" (Simpson & Dasli, 2023, Simpson & Dervin, 2020) proposes to depart from a knowing subject towards an acting subject to engage with the political. Guilherme and Simpson's theorizations of interculturalism underline self-other relations and antagonisms without resolution, and reveal to us complexities of reaching beyond an individual culture ingrained while reminding us of its incompleteness.

Interested speakers are invited to submit abstracts (up to 300 words) outlining their planned presentation alongside a bio (up to 150 words) to Hae-Young Kim (haeyoung@duke.edu) by March 18, 2025. This special session is sponsored by the MLA Second Language Learning and Teaching Forum. It is a non-guaranteed session and will be part of the MLA internal peer review process. Participants must be MLA members to be included in the convention program.

Guilherme, M. (2020). Intercultural responsibility: Transnational research and glocal critical citizenship. In The Routledge handbook of language and intercultural communication (pp. 343–360). Routledge.

Guilherme, M., & Dietz, G. (2015) Difference in diversity: Multiple perspectives on multi-, inter-, and transcultural conceptual complexities, Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 10(1), 1–21.

Simpson, A., & Dervin, F.. (2020). “Forms of dialogism in the Council of Europe Reference Framework on competences for democratic culture.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 41(4), 305–319. doi:10.1080/01434632.2019.1618317

Simpson, A., & Dasli, M. (2023) Concluding remarks on intercultural communication pedagogy and the question of the other. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 31(2), 325–337. DOI: 10.1080/14681366.2022.2164337

4. Overcoming Competing Concerns in Language Education Discourse
At MLA 2025, a group of panelists and participants held a robust discussion on competing concerns in language education discourse, scrutinizing how certain concepts tend to be used, recycled, decontextualized, and sloganized, or taken up in ways that suggest that their meanings are both transparent and shared across multiple contexts (Schmenk et al., 2018). The discussion unearthed an ongoing need to go beyond historicizing and contextualizing these ways of talking about language and language education and move towards actively countering them.

Language educators are well aware that the concerns and tensions we face are shaped by the strategic defunding of language studies, outright attack on academic initiatives on language, as well as the neoliberal instrumentalization of higher education and its devastating impact on our work. We face pressure to frame language learning in ways that urgently and uncritically prioritize its marketability (i.e., in language courses, programs, language learning as a worthwhile endeavor in general), stand in defense of it and all people who language (i.e., against the reduction or removal of foreign language requirements, the shuttering of language courses, programs, and departments), and/or commodify expertise or skill in this area (i.e., in job interviews, on campus, in schools and districts). Sister initiatives have similarly called for a reshaping of narratives, words, beliefs, and directions in language education (see, e.g., MLA 2026 session: “Language Education Revisited: Words Matter!”).

In this session, we thus invite language and culture studies scholar-practitioners ready to propose new ways forward or expand on existing ways that push back, counter, and overcome competing concerns in language education discourse.

Interested speakers are invited to submit abstracts (up to 300 words) outlining their planned presentation alongside a bio (up to 150 words) to Janice McGregor (jmcgregor@arizona.edu) by March 18, 2025. This special session is sponsored by the MLA Second Language Learning and Teaching Forum and the American Association of University Supervisors, Coordinators, and Directors of Language Programs (AAUSC). It is a non-guaranteed session and will be part of the MLA internal peer review process. Participants must be MLA members to be included in the convention program.

Schmenk, B., Breitbach, S., & Küster, L. (Eds). (2019). Sloganization in language education discourse. Multilingual Matters.