Kris Knisely

The Challenge L2 educators strive to create inclusive classrooms for students of all genders. However, a lack of resources on gender non-binary language forms limits the ability to fully realize inclusion. How can all L2 identities be made sayable? How can teaching to and about non-binary speakers support inclusivity and competence development? Ab...

As a part of a long historical arc, contemporary language educators are increasingly recognizing the critical impetus to engage with gender in expansive ways for justice, equity, and intercultural, symbolic, and linguistic competence development. Despite a proliferation of general educational resources, a paucity of training and materials for Frenc...

Within a broad turn toward identity‐focused pedagogies, educators are increasingly recognizing the critical impetus to engage with gender in expansive and inclusive ways. However, challenges persist. Often inadequate supports are exacerbated by a lack of empirical investigations into whether and how gender‐just language teaching may contribute to s...

The impetus for trans inclusion in language classrooms and research has been amply articulated. As scholar-educators in a network of disciplines and departments where languages are taught, learned, and researched, the time for us to work towards forms of gender justice that honor, and revel in the knowledges and linguacultures of trans people has l...

There is increasing recognition of the imperative of gender justice in language education. Despite this momentum, reflected as it is in ongoing calls to resist cisheteronormativity and in a growing body of literature on the benefits of gender-just pedagogies, movement toward a distinctly trans approach to applied linguistics and toward trans multil...

Gender, language, and education are social and relational acts; they are things that we do and do together and through this social doing they are constantly remade. Conversations about language education often recognize the role of social languaging collectives in the ways that we continuously relearn to do language. Such recognition has historical...

Who we are deeply influences how we approach the processes of language teaching and learning. Recognizing this fact, scholar-educators are increasingly attending to the importance of identity, not only for justice and equity, but also for competence development. This includes considering how language education interfaces with queerness (Cahnmann-Ta...

Language educators are increasingly recognizing the importance of pedagogies that engage with students as whole persons, particularly from a gender-just and intersectional paradigm. However, action on this ethical impetus is often limited by a nexus of inadequate training, materials, and research. Using data from 112 US undergraduate students of in...

Many students, educators, and organizations are working to make language education more inclusive of people of all genders. The ethical reasons for doing this have been made clear. However, very little research has addressed what challenges and opportunities gender-just language education poses for student linguistic outcomes. Without this data, un...

Language education represents a site for identity (re)construction, mediated through language acquisition and use (Atkinson, 2011). As students develop linguistic abilities, they also develop a multilingual sense of self. Pedagogies that engage with students as whole persons inherently encourage identity-focused reflection and may facilitate more e...

Queer applied linguistics (ALx) has begun to emerge as a veritable subfield, asking what it means to be LGBTQ+ for the teaching, learning, and using of languages. However, narratives about LGBTQ+ lives and concerns have not historically attended equally to all segments of the acronym. Specifically, ALx has tended to be dominated by considerations o...

In language teaching, just as in the broader world, we cannot separate language from the people using, doing, and continually (re)shaping the language. In this way, identity is an inherent part of language learning and use. Mounting professional calls for diversity and inclusion (e.g., ACTFL) echo, at least in part, this assertion. To respond, educ...

In response to evolving sociocultural constructions of gender and increasing visibility of non-binary subject positions, speakers of French are subverting and adapting this grammatically binary language. However, existing studies have overarchingly remained detached from the ways that non-binary Francophones experience their own cultural positionin...

More information available at: https://www.krisknisely.com/publications

Cet article décrit les avantages et les inconvénients potentiels de l’intégration pédagogique de Facebook dans les cours universitaires de langues étrangères, s’appuyant sur deux études de cas, ainsi que sur un examen de la recherche existante. Les aspects pédagogiques et éthiques doivent être soigneusement traités, mais l’incorporation stratégique...

This article argues that disparities in educational quality in elementary and secondary schools contribute to discrimination against underprivileged students in the United States and in France. Using a comparative framework to apply the findings of recent studies demonstrating a relationship between race, socioeconomic status, and academic achievem...

Note: This article is available in both English and Spanish.

At present, there appears to be general disinterest in learning modern foreign languages in the US, which is particularly marked in French. However, in a time of ever-increasing globalization, there is a need for the development of diverse linguistic skills. Contributing to this disinterest are language ideologies that situate the learning of certa...

In a time of ever-increasing globalisation, the development of diverse linguistic skills has been growing in importance despite a trend of reduced language learning, which is particularly marked in Anglophone countries. Although the need for international interaction is not gender-specific, a growing body of literature has identified gender-related...

Gendered language attitudes (GLAs) are gender-based perceptions of language varieties based on connections between gender-related and linguistic characteristics of individuals, including the perception of language varieties as possessing degrees of masculinity and femininity. This study combines substantive theory about language learning and gender...