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On Thursday, October 11, ICMEE hosted two administrators from the WIDA consortium, Dr. Diep Nguyen, Director of Professional Learning, and Dr. Timothy Boals, WIDA Executive Director. As leaders in the field of linguistically responsive teaching and assessment, Dr. Nguyen and Dr. Boals engaged with the broader College of Education and Human Sciences community in a slate of public talks and discussions.
Dr. Nguyen, in an address entitled, “Serving Immigrant and Refugee Students: Considerations Beyond Language and Academic Learning,” urged educators to consider the underexplored area of students’ social acculturation, and provided key perspectives from research and practice to this end. Dr. Nguyen also provided several recommendations for assessing immigrant and refugee students’ needs, including the importance of treating each case individually, communicating an attitude of unconditional acceptance, and establishing a buddy system between students and cultural mentors.
In his talk, “Ensuring Success for Multilingual Learners,” Dr. Boals presented several major themes gleaned from the latest research on teaching multilingual learners. Using the popular concept of “college and career readiness,” Dr. Boals suggested that for multilingual learners, college and career readiness comprises the abilities to situate meaning in school contexts, to take on a “college-going identity,” and to participate adequately in the practices and discourses of schooling. The implication for educators, said Dr. Boals, is to shift our thinking from a focus on the language of a particular content area to the language for learning and doing the content area.
Dr. Nguyen and Dr. Boals also took part in a fireside chat with faculty, staff, and students, organized around the idea of actualizing educational research into meaningful educative practice. Both administrators emphasized the importance of practice, though, as they acknowledged, research is typically more highly valued by institutional standards. “Our role,” said Dr. Nguyen, “is elevating practice to inform research.”
While the public events took place over the course of one day, Dr. Kara Viesca and members of the ICMEE administrative team continued to meet with Dr. Nguyen and Dr. Boals on Friday, October 12 in order to continue strengthening the partnership between ICMEE and WIDA. Those interested in this collaboration are encouraged to sign up for the ICMEE newsletter for more updates as our joint work progresses!