Author in the News: Betty Lou Leaver's co-edited book earns national award
Betty Lou Leaver's book, Transformative Language Learning and Teaching (see affiliate books), published by Cambridge University Press, recently received the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages book prize for Best Book in Pedagogy 2022.
Leaver, Davidson, and Campbell’s Transformative Language Learning and Teaching is a groundbreaking volume on the theory and practice of transformative teaching in the language learning context. The world language education field has experienced many methodological upheavals corresponding to theoretical or practical paradigms over the past century. The editors of this volume distill these changes into three large patterns whose practices are based on educational philosophies the primary paradigm of which encompasses three elements: transmission, in which information flows unidirectionally from teacher to learner, resulting in rote memory, reproduction, and accuracy; (2) transaction, in which information flows bidirectionally between teacher and learner and among learners, resulting in associative memory, higher-order thinking, and proficiency; and (3) transformation, in which information flows multidirectionally within and beyond the classroom, resulting in critical and creative thinking, as well as personal change. This volume takes the larger educational movement of transformative learning and teaching—a movement relevant to the full range of disciplines taught at any level — and examines its applications in the learning and teaching of world languages. Building on the pedagogical frameworks of the Proficiency Guidelines (and their European cousin, the Common European Reference Framework), as well as the World Readiness Standards for Language Learning and substantial research on language learning outcomes in different paradigms and for different purposes, the authors contributing to this volume paint a picture of the impact and potential impact of restructuring world language curricula to focus on transformative learning experiences. The volume’s contributions point the way for classroom practitioners to develop and implement new learning tasks that engage learners not only in studying the target language and culture(s) but also in transforming themselves as they do so, enhancing their own sense of compassion and global citizenship as well as their motivation to continue studying the target language after a semester of instruction ends. This volume has the potential to change our classroom practices and to have an enormous impact on the world language education of all students.
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