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Editor: Rashi Jain (Montgomery College)

    Transnational academia as we know it is evolving in an effort to keep pace with changing 21st century realities, and stakeholders are redefining the ways in which they participate in academic communities around the world (Jain et al., 2021; 2022). Some follow trajectories that take them from the ‘peripheries’ of these academic communities into their ‘centers’ (e.g., Canagarajah, 2012; Yazan, 2019). Others pursue trajectories that take them from the ‘center’ to the ‘periphery’ of one community and into the ‘center’ of another (e.g., Jain, 2020; under review). Some maintain boundary trajectories across multiple communities of practice, serving as bridges across those communities and their overlapping practices (e.g., Savski, 2021). Some leave their core communities temporarily to participate in other communities before returning with additional expertise and new insights (e.g., Peercy, 2014). And some continually traverse the globe, participating in different communities at different times in their lives (see Ustuk & De Costa, 2022). 

    Across these diverse trajectories and institutional settings in the vast field of language education (England, 2019), teaching often forms the core of the different forms of membership and multimembership (Wenger, 2008), be it in the shape of (language) teaching or teacher preparation. Indeed, educators across K-16+ settings constitute a global majority in the discipline of education -- despite an inequitable professional landscape, especially within language teaching and language teacher education. Despite myriad inequities, many become educators because they are passionate about the craft and understand well the transformative power of education for those they teach. Teaching practices then become the socioemotional glue creating, connecting, and holding together professional communities across the transnational landscape. Collectively, the teaching practices of this global majority inform (and are, in turn, informed by) other forms of practice in education, including doing research and making theories. 

    One way, thus, to make meaning of a rapidly changing transnational educational landscape (and dynamic forms of participation) is to reimagine ‘academia’ as ‘pracademia’ (see Jain, forthcoming), where ‘practice’ emerges as an integral part of the academic community and is agentively visibilized as such. Practice, thus, is not limited to the traditional notions of teaching alone, but spans teaching, theorizing, and doing research -- and is integral to identity-making across diverse and overlapping communities of practice (Wenger, 2008). In a reimagined transnational pracademia, therefore, those historically dichotomized as ‘practitioners’ and ‘academics’ find common ground to create a more equitable landscape across the overlapping practices of teaching, theorizing, and research. In essence, we all become pracademics in this reimagined pracademia. 

    Such an approach enables all stakeholders across the transnational (E)LT landscape to decolonize their own ways of thinking around the so-called ‘centers’ and ‘peripheries’, as well as about what constitutes an ‘academic’ or a ‘practitioner’. Knowledge creation, dissemination, and application thus begin to be seen as shared domains across institutional settings. Similarly, stakeholders may see themselves as embodying both practitioner and academic roles, thus aligning themselves agentively with more cohesive and coherent pracademic identities and trajectories through their lived practices. As Wenger (2008) articulates, “What narratives, categories, roles, and positions come to mean as an experience of participation is something that must be worked out in practice” (p. 106).  

    A reimagined pracademia also provides practical and equitable solutions to challenging professional realities — including an ever-tightening academic job market as universities produce increasing numbers of PhD holders while university-based tenure-track positions continue to shrink (Larson et al., 2014), a growing dissatisfaction with the ‘business-as-usual’ approach in mainstream academia, emotional and physical burnout of those engaged in mainstreamed academia, a historical devaluation of some stakeholders and contexts perceived (and marginalized) as ‘peripheral’ in mainstreamed academia, and changing employment trends and increased mobilities across seemingly ‘peripheral’ instructional contexts (Kouritzin et al., 2023). 

    A reimagined pracademia fosters safe(r) and more equalizing spaces for critical perspectives and radical voices that challenge the status quo and that push back against the myriad dichotomizations pervasive in the field -- practitioner vs. academic, teaching vs. research, K-12 vs. higher education, university vs. community/vocational college, ‘native’ vs. ‘non-native’, Global North vs. Global South, monolingual vs. multilingual, teacher vs. teacher educator, educator vs. administrator, to name a few. There is a growing body of scholarship across overlapping professional communities -- including TESOL, Applied Linguistics, and College Composition -- that has been exploring some of these issues across a transnational ELT landscape (e.g., Shohamy & Pennycook, 2022). However, what’s ‘missing’ from published literature so far is a coherent and collective articulation of a reimagined pracademia. 

    In an effort to address this ‘gap’, diverse stakeholders are invited to submit individual and collaborative chapter proposals spanning critical perspectives, radical practices, and transnational trajectories across the language teaching and learning landscape. The book will be divided into three sections: conceptual, pedagogical, and empirical. 

  • The conceptual section will include deeply reflective chapters where contributors reimagine themselves as pracademics across a transnational landscape. These chapters could include autoethnographic, narrative, and/or reflexive elements as the authors weave in abstract theories with their own lived experiences as part of the meaning-making process (e.g., Kubota, 2014; Motha et al., 2012). Proposals are especially encouraged from pracademics working with raciolinguistically marginalized and minoritized populations and/or those who may themselves experience raciolinguistic minoritization across transnational contexts -- and who agentively theorize and/or conceptualize their pracademic practices accordingly. To balance the conceptual reflections, the chapters could include brief descriptions of pedagogical and/or research practices that authors engage in as part of their pracademic theory-making. Further details and guidelines will be provided to authors with accepted proposals.

  • The pedagogical section will contain chapters focusing on the practice of language teaching and language teacher education, and provide descriptive accounts of how the authors engage in research-based and theory-based pedagogies in their diverse settings (e.g., Jain, forthcoming). Proposals are especially encouraged from pracademics working with raciolinguistically marginalized and minoritized populations and/or those who may themselves experience raciolinguistic minoritization across transnational contexts -- and who agentively theorize and/or conceptualize their pracademic practices accordingly. The chapters will include deep descriptions of actual classroom practices and materials that authors use. To balance the pedagogical focus, the chapters would include brief descriptions of the theories and/or research that authors drew upon as part of their pracademic practices in the classroom. Further details and guidelines will be provided to authors with accepted proposals.   

  • The empirical section will comprise inquiries spanning autoethnographies, self-studies, narrative studies, practitioner research, as well as other forms of individual and collaborative pedagogy-based research that allow pracademics to turn the interrogative lens towards their own practices, identities, and trajectories situated in/across their communities of practice (e.g., Hammine & Rudolph, 2023; Jain, 2024). Proposals are especially encouraged from pracademics working with raciolinguistically marginalized and minoritized populations and/or those who may themselves experience raciolinguistic minoritization across transnational contexts -- and who agentively theorize and/or conceptualize their pracademic practices accordingly. To balance the empirical focus, the chapters will include descriptions of actual classroom practices, conversations, and materials that authors used in the inquiries they report. Further details and guidelines will be provided to authors with accepted proposals.

Given that ‘pracademia’ and ‘pracademic’ (see also Jain, 2013) are emerging concepts in the field of language teaching and language teacher education, the following prompts may be helpful to potential contributors as they think about their own pracademic work:

  • Do you identify as a pracademic, i.e., someone who is both a practitioner and an academic?

    • You value both teaching and research (and how the practices overlap and inform each other).

    • You believe that knowledge is created both by those who teach and those who engage in research. 

    • You theorize about the intersection of pedagogical and research practices. 

    • You share about your pedagogical and research practices in professional venues, including regional, national, and international conferences, as well as through publications.

  • How do you bridge the practitioner-academic divide in your pracademic practice?

    • You engage in practitioner research.

    • You engage in collaborative research with other pracademics.

    • You teach coursework on teacher research, positioning yourself as a fellow pracademic.

    • You organize professional development opportunities for fellow pracademics.

  • How has embodying a pracademic identity shaped your transnational trajectory and practices?

    • You agentively pursue positions and opportunities across transnational spaces where you are supported as both teacher/educator and researcher.

    • You engage in pedagogy-based research and research-based pedagogies across transnational contexts.

    • You theorize about ‘transnational practice’ as encompassing both teaching practice and research practice, and you conceptualize the two as dualities (not dichotomies).

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References

 

Chapter proposal submission process

You are invited to submit a proposal by June 15th, 2024*.  Please include the following information: 

  • Proposed chapter title 

  • Author name(s) and affiliation(s)

  • Book section to which your chapter is being submitted (conceptual focus, pedagogical focus, or empirical focus)

  • Description of the proposed chapter (400 words)

  • 3-4 keywords

  • Author(s) biography (50 words)

 

Contributors with accepted proposals will be informed by June 30th and invited to submit their full manuscripts (5000-7000 words) by October 15th, 2024. The submissions should be original and not be submitted for publication elsewhere. This volume is being discussed with a reputable publisher. The formal book proposal will be sent to the publisher by July 15th. The call for chapters has now ended and new proposals are no longer being accepted.  

© 2024 Rashi Jain

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