Roswita Dressler

The University of Calgary | HBI · Werklund School of Education

This study is an examination of signage and sign-making practices in one elementary (Kindergarten to sixth grade) public school which offers a German Bilingual Program (GBP) for the development of German–English bilingualism. Schools are public spaces in which the visible language choice on signs reveals the circulating discourses around language s...

This article explores the linguistic identity of young multilingual learners through the use of a Language Portrait Silhouette. Examples from a research study of children aged 6–8 years in a German bilingual program in Canada provide teachers with an understanding that linguistic identity comprises expertise, affiliation, and inheritance. This arti...

Bilingual language education in Canada comprises Bilingual Programs in minority languages and programs in official languages (e.g., French immersion). However, pedagogy in Bilingual Programs has not been studied to the same depth as it has been in French Immersion, so little is known about the teaching practices within them. Immersion pedagogy, the...

Reflective writing is a practice often encouraged in study abroad programs. Reflection can be facilitated through experiential learning, but little research is available on how to guide or structure-related learning activities. In this article, we discuss the Cross-cultural Reflection model (CCR), which emerged through our own process of researchin...

Some study abroad (SA) researchers use Facebook as a tool to reach participants or as the site or context of research. In Dressler and Dressler (2016) , we examined the linguistic identity positioning of one sojourner in Facebook posts over two sojourns. In this paper, we determine the methodological affordances and challenges of the social media s...

If teachers have previously used technology (e.g., Learning Management Systems, document sharing, video-conferencing, gamification, social media or video-recording), they are likely to use it again. For second language teachers, sudden or planned-for online instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic may have resulted in their using new or familiar te...

Participants in study abroad (SA) programs (sojourners) are often encouraged to blog as a form of reflective writing, yet little is known about this practice. Generally, reflection facilitates sojourners’ engagement in their personal and professional growth. Drawing from two different but complementary frameworks, we analyzed blogs from 51 sojourne...

Some pre-service teacher education programs include opportunities for students to participate in study abroad (SA) experiences, aimed to deepen and enhance future teaching practice. However, little is known about what participants perceive as having influenced their practices in the years post-sojourn, once they are working as teachers. This prompt...

While this article primarily focuses on innovations and successful teaching outcomes emerging from the pandemic, this CASLT study also gathered data about the many challenges that teachers and their students have faced in terms of equity, mental health, workload, administrative support, and more. We will explore these issues in more depth in an upc...

25 free copies: https://www.utpjournals.press/stoken/author/CONTRIB_ISSUE_CMLR-781_4260101/full Fostering target language use in second language classrooms is a persistent challenge for teachers. A lack of specific guidelines in curriculum documents, inexperience with a wide variety of pedagogical approaches, and the tendency to default to English...

Learning about another educational context is often a stated institutional goal of pre-service study abroad. However, living abroad is no guarantee that pre-service teachers will reflect upon their language learning and teaching experiences through the lens of future teaching. Drawing from a large study of reflective practices during study abroad,...

Attracting and retaining teachers for rural and remote areas are pervasive global problems, and Canada is not immune to these issues. As recommended by the Northern Alberta Development Report (2010), communities need to make an increased priority of local teacher recruitment, by “growing our own teachers” (p. 11). One way to do just that is to allo...

Learning from study abroad experiences was not uniform, indicating pre-service teachers’ level of professional development. � The majority of pre-service teachers’ reflections post-sojourn remained at the descriptive levels. � Reflections at the critical level showed clear implications for teaching and learning practices. � Customized reflective pr...

This article offers findings from a qualitative case-based research study examining the ways educators in central Brazil made sense of diversity, and the extent to which they believed recent policies promoting ethnocultural diversity are being realized in K–12 contexts. The research team also examined the degree to which these educators felt that r...

We examine the quantity and quality of uptake of surface-level and meaning-level feedback provided by peers and an instructor on writing assignments in an online graduate-level research course at a North American English-medium university. In this study, the instructor and peers (9 graduate students) endeavored to provide feedback that was timely,...

Dialogue journals are useful pedagogical tools for developing communicative written fluency. While instructors often respond to student writing by modeling, questioning and providing feedback, visual aids are also sometimes used to enhance communication. In this study, findings from an examination of 12 adult English Language Learners’ dialogue jou...

Paper presented by Dianne Gereluk on behalf of the research team during a panel on rural education during the 46th Canadian Society for the Study of Education (CSSE) annual conference on May 27, 2018.

Attracting and retaining teachers for rural and remote areas is a pervasive global problem. Currently, teacher education in Canada is primarily delivered in face-to-face formats located in urban centres or satellite campuses. There is a need for relevant and responsive teacher education programs for rural pre-service teachers. Recognizing this need...

https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/CJAL Teens who post on the popular social networking site Facebook in their home environment often continue to do so on second language study abroad sojourns. These sojourners use Facebook to document and make sense of their experiences in the host culture and position themselves with respect to language(s) and...

Short-term study abroad programs are growing in popularity, and educators and researchers are exploring effective tools to enhance the learning and cultural experiences of students in these programs. Dialogue journals, writing journals in which students respond to instructor prompts and in turn initiate topics for further written discussion, are a...

In this article, action research is explored as a process for instructor reflection, professional learning and collaboration. The context for the professional learning was the teaching of graduate level education courses in which action research, in conjunction with a cohortbased, collaboratory approach to learning, was used to facilitate students'...

A review of the literature on rural and remote pre-service teacher preparation with a focus on blended and e-learning models. Calgary: University of Calgary. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/1880/50497

A video webcast of the presentation is available at: http://albertaruraleducation.ca/multimedia.php

Some heritage language learners (HLLs) are comfortable identifying themselves as such, while others are decidedly reluctant to adopt this term (Piño & Piño, 2000). HLLs in this paper are defined as those students having a parent or grandparent who speaks German or those who have spent a significant part of their childhood in a German-speaking count...