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Since the end of World War II, international leaders have made calls addressing the world language teacher shortage. For almost 70 years, such rhetoric has been advanced, yet world language teacher shortages remain in many countries such as Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In this article, the authors discuss the past and current state of affairs of the shortage before advancing ideas for language teacher recruitment and retention to which a variety of stakeholders (e.g., parents, administrators, language teacher associations) can contribute immediately in order to address the world language teacher shortage in earnest. Challenges Since the end of World War II, international leaders have called attention to the world language teacher shortage, yet the shortage exists more than 70 years later. What immediate, active steps and initiatives can be taken to remedy this situation? Video & Discussion

Federal and state legislation continues to promote teacher accountability in the United States. The new edTPA, a subject‐specific teacher performance assessment, is purported to measure beginning teacher readiness and is being pilot tested and implemented for licensure and certification decisions across the country. In this exploratory quantitative study, the researchers examined edTPA scores of 21 world language teacher candidates from two teacher preparation programs and compared those results to the cut scores for the states of Washington and New York. Results indicated that participants performed best in the planning section and were most challenged by the assessment section. This research has implications for teacher certification candidates, world language teacher preparation programs, policy makers, and other stakeholders.

Language immersion has been an emerging educational method for K-12 students to acquire foreign languages. Despite its effectiveness, there are limited teacher education programs designed specifically for language immersion educators. Thus, many language immersion teachers have been applying knowledge learned from general teacher educational programs, which are not designed for language immersion settings, in their daily teaching. Simultaneously, language immersion programs, especially Chinese immersion programs, have identified multiple educational challenges related to curriculum design and content teaching, classroom management, and cross-cultural communications. This study aims to address these challenges from the perceptions of six selected Chinese immersion teachers towards their teacher preparation programs via qualitative in-depth case studies. The participant selection considers various education and teaching backgrounds of Chinese immersion teachers to represent a wide range of perspectives. The results show that the educational philosophy and psychology theories and practices, curriculum and instruction, cross-cultural competence, and practicum in existing preparation programs contribute positively towards immersion teaching in the U.S. However, Chinese immersion teachers demand more social-emotional learning and diversity, equity, and inclusion preparation. Potential solutions to these challenges require synergistic efforts from the current teacher preparation programs, Chinese immersion programs, and policymakers.

As nationwide calls for educational rigor and accountability continue across the U.S., many states have made the edTPA®, a teacher performance assessment, a requirement for teacher certification. The edTPA® is a subject-specific performance assessment that requires aspiring teachers to plan, implement, assess, and reflect upon a learning segment, while demonstrating pedagogical skills related to their disciplines. While it is designed to promote teaching excellence, the edTPA® can drive already-stressed teacher candidates to their breaking point, as it places them in an unfamiliar classroom and asks them to quickly display their knowledge and savvy.   This book is here to help teacher candidates not only survive the challenge of the edTPA®, but also thrive. It maps out precisely what steps aspiring secondary education teachers should take to ensure successful completion of the edTPA®. Demystifying the language used in the assessment, it uniquely connects edTPA® requirements with what teacher candidates learn within their teacher preparation programs, showing them how the assessment relates to what they are already doing in their classrooms. The strategies in this book draw on both academic research and practical experience to guide student teachers as they plan for their edTPA® portfolios and for their teaching careers beyond.

edTPA is a performance‐based assessment used in teacher licensure programs across the country as evidence of a candidate's readiness to teach. Although multiple studies have indicated it to be a challenging assessment and have offered multiple recommendations for candidate support, few have examined the impact of specific means of support. In this mixed‐method study, the authors used surveys, interviews, classroom observations, and edTPA performance data to investigate the impact of content‐specific edTPA support seminars on the preparation and performance of world language and English as a second language teacher candidates. The study provided evidence that content‐specific support seminars can provide opportunities for more tailored support, instructors who are more familiar with content standards and resources, and more consistent messaging than non–content‐specific seminars. Results also indicated that clustering candidates in content‐specific seminars can lead to stronger performance outcomes than seminars involving teacher candidates from a variety of different content areas. Implications for teacher preparation programs are discussed. The Challenge High‐stakes assessments, like edTPA, represent a barrier to the profession at a time of critical shortage of foreign language teachers. What might teacher education programs do to prepare candidates to pass edTPA? Does this support need to be content specific or could it be generic support intended for all teacher candidates?

Implemented in almost 900 teacher education programs across 41 states and the District of Columbia, edTPA is marketed as a content‐specific, standardized portfolio assessment of beginning teacher performance. However, concerns about edTPA and its content specificity are pervasive. To that end, the researchers surveyed teacher educators with World Language (WL) edTPA experience (N = 88) to ascertain their perceptions of the assessment, including its impact on teacher candidates, teacher education programs, and clinical placements as well as the resources required, support experienced, and consequences perceived as a result of its implementation. Using a framework of teacher education accountability, the researchers explored issues of control, content, and consequences related to power relationships and the WL edTPA, centering on the assessment's intended content specificity, while recounting an ACTFL task force's efforts in 2016 to influence the assessment's content. The Challenge Accountability mandates from federal and state governments prompt teacher education programs to prepare teacher candidates for standardized assessments of teacher knowledge and skills, including teacher performance assessments like edTPA. With a critical language teacher shortage across the country, who controls the World Language edTPA, its content, and the resulting consequences?

This paper describes the development of a survey instrument to assess K‐12 teachers' perceptions of engineering and their familiarity with teaching design, engineering, and technology (DET). Item development, field testing, and the factor analysis are described along with reliability and validity. Administration of the instrument revealed differences based on gender, grade level taught, and years of teaching experience. Female teachers rated the importance of DET higher than male teachers, elementary teachers were least likely to teach DET, and moderately experienced teachers were the most willing to learn more about DET. Barriers to infusing DET into the curriculum were time and administrative support. All teachers were unfamiliar with DET, lacked confidence in their ability to teach DET, and held stereotypes about the skills needed to be an engineer. Based on the findings, recommendations are made for professional development of K‐12 teachers and for the pre‐service teacher preparation curriculum.

Phase 1 of this study explores findings from a nationwide survey on computer‐assisted language learning (CALL) that was completed by 409 in‐service teachers of French, German, and Spanish. These results, in turn, informed specific themes that were explored in greater detail during focus group sessions with 22 in‐service K–12 foreign language teachers (Phase 2). The main theme that emerged from the survey and the focus groups was the perceived need (expressed by in‐service teachers) for future teachers to learn how to think about, analyze, and integrate new technologies into a foreign language curriculum without having to depend on tool‐specific training since prospective teachers will use a number of new technologies—many of which have not yet been developed—throughout their career. Consequently, Phase 3 of this study examines a new component of a foreign language pedagogy course in which 18 prospective teachers studied and applied a faceted classification scheme for analyzing and understanding computer‐mediated discourse as a tool‐independent approach to CALL training.

Studies have shown that there are not enough qualified foreign language and English as a second language teachers in this country. To increase the number of new second language teachers who remain in the profession, and to promote their use of best teaching practices, the ACTFL has identified mentoring as a national research priority. The importance of mentoring is further reflected in the new national standards established by the Council for Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) for teacher education programs. To address CAEP standards for advanced licensure programs and meet the needs of new second language teachers, a peer mentoring project was initiated. Using a mixed methodology, the researchers investigated the perceived benefits of a partnership between 27 mentors in an advanced licensure second language teaching program and 27 mentees, many of whom were practicing “lateral entry” second language teachers who had not yet completed second language teacher training. The results suggested that, when both parties shared content area expertise and worked together in a nonjudgmental, supportive manner, the partnership was mutually beneficial. The results also suggested that the relationship can be facilitated when both partners share certain commonalities, including age and amount of previous teaching experience.

Bilingual teacher preparation programs are opportunities for aspiring teachers or Bilingual Pre-Service Teachers (BPSTs) who have linguistic proficiency and cultural knowledge in two languages that are seen as assets to address the needs for bilingual and multilingual populations in the US. However, there is an evident shortage that has been documented to attest to the high need of hiring bilingual and dual language educators (USDE, 2015). In this article, three bilingual teacher preparation programs housed in Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) explore their practices and present highly effective examples for bilingual and dual language teacher preparation. The findings include the process of bilingual teacher identity formation that calls for critical consciousness that includes an awareness of the sociopolitical and sociocultural connections for learning. Other significant findings include support for highly effective pedagogical practices and attention to the socioemotional process that leads to advocacy and agency resulting in a social justice orientation and perspective. A cyclical model is presented as a framework for successful bilingual teacher preparation and the implications provide a future direction in exploring the cyclical model as a recruitment and retention strategy for successful bilingual teacher preparation.