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Dear Bilingual Basics Newsletter Readers,
Greetings!
We are incredibly proud to announce the publication the Fall
2020 issue of the Bilingual-Multilingual Education Interest Section
(B-MEIS) newsletter—Bilingual Basics. The theme for
this edition is“Glocalized Approaches to Bilingual Education.”Within
this edition, our authors focus on addressing various challenges in
bilingual education across different cultural and social contexts. The
newsletter also provides opportunities for global collaboration and the
re-thinking and refurbishing of existing paradigms. The Covid-19
pandemic has compelled professionals in the field to reposition
themselves, reimagine possibilities, and retool practice in order to
better protect and maintain diversity in education.
With shifting boundaries between work/classrooms and the home,
between the global and the local, English language classrooms of today
need to be restructured and expanded, going beyond the existing
frameworks to stay relevant and productive for our students. We have
dedicated this issue of Bilingual Basics to
exploring the evocative potential of changing educational landscapes in
contemporary education, so that we can continue to build strategic
coalitions and expand our knowledge base moving forward. Innovative
research being conducted to find creative solutions and meet the
challenges of bilingual/multilingual education also find representation
via the contributor’s reflections.
We have eight manuscripts in this Newsletter that were reviewed
by the chair of B-MEIS Ching-Ching Lin, and three editors, Kirti Kapur,
Matthew Nall, and Islam M Farag.
Input related to bilingual education research and practices are
valuable funds of knowledge. This Newsletter is an important source for
educational researchers, teachers, community organizers and other
stakeholders, who have been working closely with students’ assets to
share their knowledge and perspectives.
Warm Regards,
Kirti Kapur and Matthew Nall
Matthew Nall is from the United States but he has taught English in Japan for the past 9 years. He is currently an Assistant Professor at Miyagi University, in Sendai, Japan. He also teaches part-time and Miyagi University of Education, and he is the Editor for Refereed Articles with MEXTESOL Journal. His current research interests include language teacher identity and agency emergence, as well as negative pragmatic transfer.
Kirti Kapur has 32 years of experience in ELT. At NCERT, she works on curriculum design, textbook development, research, and training across all stages of education. She holds certifications in Critical Thinking, Assessment, and Special Education Needs, from the University of Maryland and University of Oregon, USA. She is also an alumna of the Summer Institute for English Language Educators, Hawai‘i Pacific University, USA. Kapur has trained teachers from Afghanistan and Tibet on making ELT learner centric. She has over 90 papers, on issues like Multilingual Education, Second Language Teaching, Problems of Learning among Indigenous Communities, and Assessment, to her credit. She is a recipient of the Ray Tongue scholarship awarded by IATEFL, UK and the International TESOL, USA award for Professional Development.
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