Please join us in congratulating Dr. Meike Wernicke, Dr. Candace Galla, and Nicole George, whose article has been selected for the Best of The MLJ Award for 2025!
Wernicke, M., Galla, C., & George, N. (2025). Rethinking French-as-a-second-language education as a space for supporting Indigenous language work on xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) land. The Modern Language Journal, 109(3), 586–606. /10.1111/modl.13011
Their article has been recognized by The Modern Language Journal as being of the highest quality, with the broadest potential impact on the field of language learning, teaching, and use.
Congratulations everyone!
Please join us in congratulating Dr. Kathryn Accurso on being awarded a 2026 Large TLEF Transformation grant (Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund)!
From Silos to Synergy: Transforming Teacher Education for Multilingual Equity and Indigenous Integrations.
Large Project Stream: $50,934 (Year 1); $167,000 anticipated across the life of the project.
This timely project will transform how UBC prepares 750 teacher candidates (TCs) annually to support multilingual learning and integrate Indigenous knowledges into subject teaching for grades 6-12. Grounded in community collaboration, the project strengthens partnerships, renews curriculum, and builds lasting capacity for equity-driven education.
Congratulations, Kathryn and team!
Save the Date! LLED will be inviting Drs. Stanton Wortham and Deoksoon Kim from Boston College on May 29th for a public talk series!
Talk 1: Voices in Motion: Tracing Bilingual Identity Development Through Digital Storytelling and Systemic Functional Analysis
Speaker: Dr. Deoksoon Kim, Professor at Boston College and Director of the Transformative Education Lab
Digital storytelling has become an increasingly powerful practice in education, enabling learners and educators to create short, multimodal narratives that integrate video, images, voice, and music. These 3–5 minute stories provide rich opportunities for individuals to express emotions, construct meaning, and make their voices visible. This presentation highlights how digital storytelling can serve as both a pedagogical and analytical tool, particularly when examined through a Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) lens to uncover identity development over time. Drawing on work with bilingual learners, the presentation illustrates how students use digital storytelling to reflect on their experiences, negotiate their linguistic and cultural identities, and engage more deeply in the learning process. It also demonstrates how teachers employ digital storytelling as a form of reflective practice, documenting their professional growth and evolving instructional beliefs. Overall, this session positions digital storytelling as a transformative approach that fosters reflection, supports identity development, and bridges theory and practice in language and teacher education.
Save the Date! LLED will be inviting Drs. Stanton Wortham and Deoksoon Kim from Boston College on May 29th for a public talk series!
Talk 1: Relational, Holistic and Formative Development
Speaker: Dr. Stanton Wortham, Charles Donovan Dean of the Lynch School of Education and Human Development at Boston College
Many educational approaches emphasize human development beyond knowledge and vocational skills—aiming at virtue, imagination, character, and other holistic goals. Interest in such holistic education is growing, even though most policies and assessments still focus on academic subjects. Approaches like social and emotional learning, well-being, whole child and character education, flourishing, 21st century skills, and civic education all reflect this broader vision. This talk focuses on one such approach: formative education. It has three interconnected elements: It promotes growth across intellectual, social, ethical, and spiritual dimensions and seeks integration among them so young people can become more whole. It gives students space to reflect on intrinsic values and life purposes, helping them make better decisions and pursue meaningful goals. It occurs in community, where others support students’ development, clarify their paths, and advance the common good, enabling individuals to flourish with others. The paper argues that formative education is a more comprehensive and adequate model of whole-person education than most alternatives and outlines a new interdisciplinary Department of Formative Education devoted to research and practice in this approach.
Drs. Derek Gladwin and Kedrick James at a book launch event at Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Ciudad de México, to talk about their new book, "Becoming Ecological: Navigating Language and Meaning for Our Planet's Future"
Moderator: Dr. Rubén Ahumada Lazo
Host: Dra. Claudia I. García Rubio
Becoming Ecological: Navigating Language and Meaning for Our Planet's Future was born out of the recognition that we’re living through cascading ecological, political, and cultural crises — what many are now calling the polycrisis: climate breakdown, species extinction, democratic erosion, extractive economies, and rising anxiety about the future. We’re all witnessing it unfold every day, moment by moment.
But rather than writing another book cataloguing everything that’s broken, what’s rupturing and unravelling, through endless parades of graphs, warnings, and despair, we wanted to try something else.
So we asked: what if the way forward isn’t only through technology and politics, but through language and meaning?
#becomingecological #tecnologicodemonterrey #climatechange #ecologicalchange #sustainability #philosophy #language #literacy
Join us on May 12th for a public talk: "Empowering nurses to ensure safe medication management among older patients in homecare – a qualitative study using art-based methods", by Astrid Skogseth, PhD Candidate from Nord University.
Date: May 12, 2026
Time: 1PM – 2PM
Location: Multipurpose Room, Ponderosa Commons North, PCN 2012
All are welcome. Light refreshments will be provided. Please RSVP by Thursday, May 7 at noon.
More info at lled.educ.ubc.ca/
Join us on May 1st for this LLED public talk with Gretchen Schiller, Professor from the University of Grenoble Alpes, France. Her talk is titled: "Anatomies of Practice: Arts-based Research"
📅 Friday, May 1
🕒 2 PM
📍 Multipurpose Room, PCN 2012
All are welcome.
Talk and discussion about Research-creation and Arts-based approaches to research. Professor Schiller will share projects from the Performance Lab and share innovative ways of integrating the arts within multiple research contexts. She will discuss her recent work Listening to Performance entitled Speakers in Sneakers, introduce the community to the Performascope as well as discuss the internationalisation of the ResCam community.
Please join us to congratulate all the faculty members who were celebrated at the 2026 inaugural Faculty Wellbeing Champions Recognition Event on April 7, 2026!
A number of LLED community members were present that day at the event, recognized for their important role in supporting student wellbeing within teaching and learning environments.
We are so proud to have you in our department!
