Second Language Research & Practice

 

Call for Papers: Special Issue

 

Second Language Research & Practice invites contributions to a special issue, titled

 

“What or Who Are We Doing This For? Innovative Perspectives on Motivations, Struggles, and Futures of Teaching Languages Other Than English in the United States.”

Guest Editors:
Lucian Rothe (University of Louisville)
Luis Javier Pentón Herrera (VIZJA University)

Manuscripts Due:

December 20, 2026

 

Manuscript Types:

Research articles (up to 8,500 words) and praxis reports (up to 5,000 words)

 

Topic

Higher education in the United States is undergoing profound structural shifts driven by projected enrollment declines, fiscal constraints, legislative pressures, rapid technological change, and intensifying demands to demonstrate workforce relevance (cf. Davis et al., 2025; Kezar et al., 2025; Lane et al., 2024; NCSL, 2025; Robert et al., 2026; Sartain, 2025). Institutional responses to these pressures have raised urgent concerns about academic missions, academic freedom, employment precarity, and the sustainability of a liberal education (cf. AAUP, 2024; Finley & Tiede, 2025; Humanities Indicators of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2025; Kahn et al., 2024; Ramlo, 2025; Trinidad, 2025; Wallach Scott, 2024). Within this landscape, language programs offer a particularly revealing case. The teaching of languages other than English (LOTEs) has absorbed some of the most acute effects of these trends, including enrollment declines, requirement reductions, department consolidations, and program closures (cf. Goertler & Rutemeyer, 2026; Lusin et al., 2023; Moore & Fisher, 2024). Recent examples include West Virginia University cutting all bachelor’s and master’s programs within its World Language Department (Thompson et al., 2025) and Iowa State University redesigning its foreign language requirement (Zimotti et al., 2025). This special issue of Second Language Research and Practice, scheduled for publication in Fall 2027, situates LOTEs at the center of these systemic challenges, using their experiences to illuminate broader tensions shaping the future of higher education.

These structural and political crises evoke deeper questions about meaning and purpose, questions that compel us as educators to ask: What or who are we doing this for? While data on enrollment declines and program closures are well documented, the voices of LOTEs educators and stakeholders—those most directly affected by these transformations—remain largely sidelined. Their experiences of invisibility, overwork, instability, unsafety, and emotional labor are rarely treated as legitimate sites of scholarly inquiry.

This special issue seeks to create a space for educators, program leaders, researchers, practitioners, and administrators to reflect on why we do the work related to LOTEs, who ultimately benefits, and how we might sustain that work under increasingly difficult conditions. By centering lived experiences alongside forward-looking approaches, the special issue explores how questions of motivation, purpose, belonging, and identity intersect with the broader restructuring of U.S. higher education.

 

Scope

We seek contributions that move beyond narratives of decline to illuminate the motivations that sustain educators, the struggles and solutions that shape administrators’ and stakeholders’ decision-making processes, and the innovative futures that instructors and advocates imagine for LOTEs education in the United States.

We welcome research articles (up to 8,500 words) and praxis reports (up to 5,000 words) accepted in Second Language Research & Practice (SLRP) that address the lived and structural dimensions of LOTEs education today and in the future. SLRP is the open-access peer-reviewed journal for the American Association of University Supervisors, Coordinators, and Language Program Directors (AAUSC). The issue will include 2-4 invited contributions and 5-8 additional manuscripts.

We will introduce the special issue at the Modern Language Association Convention in January 2027. AAUSC’s panel, titled “Why Do We Teach World Languages? Exploring Motivations, Challenges, and Futures,” will feature invited presentations by (1) Anna Becker (International Scholars Alliance): “LOTEs, International Scholars, and the Politics of Belonging in U.S. Higher Education”; (2) Emily Heidrich Uebel (Michigan State University) and Dianna Murphy (University of Wisconsin–Madison): “Exploring Language Requirements for Admission and Graduation across the Big Ten Academic Alliance”; and (3) L. J. Randolph Jr. (University of Wisconsin–Madison): “Undoing Coloniality in the Future of LOTE Education in the United States.”

Contributors to the special issue may approach the following questions through empirical research, case studies, programmatic analysis, personal narratives grounded in research, or theoretical perspectives. Potential areas of exploration include, but are not limited to:

  • Motivations: 
  • What personal, ethical, and pedagogical commitments sustain LOTEs educators in an era of uncertainty?
  • How do these commitments relate to other academic disciplines?
  • What drives LOTEs educators to enlist and remain in the profession?
  • What elements or factors sustain LOTEs instructors in their profession?
  • What role do colleagues in STEM fields, other liberal arts programs, and medical areas play in advocating for LOTEs?
  • How do administrators and policymakers in support of LOTEs navigate the often contradictory demands related to the (financial) wellbeing of their institutions and their programs, larger educational values, and overall institutional goals?
  • Struggles: 
  • How do structural and material conditions, such as low pay, limited security, housing and healthcare precarity, and threats to psychological or physical safety, shape educators’ professional trajectories, sense of identity, and wellbeing?
  • In what ways do institutional and political pressures, including cost-cutting reforms and anti-intellectual rhetoric, exacerbate these challenges?
  • How do colleagues from other fields, university administrators, and stakeholders view the role and value of LOTEs?
  • Futures: 
  • What does an innovative future of LOTEs education in the United States look like?
  • How can we, as a community, build a more dignified and sustainable future for LOTEs educators in the US?
  • How will emerging technologies, including generative artificial intelligence, reshape the teaching and learning of LOTEs, and what risks or opportunities do they present for sustaining educators’ work?
  • What can we learn from other universities’ success stories?
  • How can colleagues from other fields and university administrators best advocate for and/or learn from LOTEs instruction in U.S. universities?
  • How should LOTEs educators and programs position themselves in relation to other liberal arts degrees, STEM, and medical fields?

 

Submission Information

The due date for submissions is December 20, 2026. All manuscripts will undergo peer review and should follow the submission guidelines of Second Language Research & Practice. When submitting a paper, please indicate that you wish to be considered for the special issue.

Contact

For questions or expressions of interest, please contact the special issue’s guest editors:

About the Guest Editors

Lucian Rothe (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison) is Associate Professor of German at the University of Louisville. Born and raised in Germany, Dr. Rothe is a trained secondary school teacher for English, history, and German as a foreign language and an award-winning teacher-scholar. In 2025, the German Special Interest Group of ACTFL honored him with the “Award for Outstanding German Program Development and Advocacy” for his contributions to scholarship, teaching, and service. Dr. Rothe’s work lies at the intersection of mixed-methods research in German studies, applied linguistics, and education. He explores (stereotypical) perceptions of communities, approaches to engaging language programming, and language education advocacy. His publications have appeared in Foreign Language Annals, Journal of Language, Identity, & Education, NECTFL Review, Phylon, Second Language Research & Practice, Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German, and Whiteness and Education. Dr. Rothe also serves as a Regional Lecturer for the German Academic Exchange Service and as Review Editor of instructional materials for Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German. More details at https://profiles.louisville.edu/lucian.rothe

Luis Javier Pentón Herrera (Ph.D., Concordia University Chicago; D.Litt./Hab., John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin) is an award-winning Spanish and English educator and a best-selling author. In 2024, he was selected as the 2024 TESOL Teacher of the Year, awarded by the TESOL International Association and National Geographic Learning. He is a Professor (Profesor uczelni, in Polish) at Uniwersytet VIZJA, Poland, and a Book Series Co-Editor of the Cambridge Elements in Language and Power (Cambridge University Press) and Contemporary Perspectives on Learning Environments book series (Emerald Publishing), as well as Co-Editor of Tapestry: A Multimedia Journal for Teachers and English Learners, and Associate Editor of Language Teacher Education Research. Further, he is a Fulbright Scholar and Specialist, and an English Language Specialist with the U.S. Department of State. Previously, he served as the 38th President of Maryland TESOL from 2018 to 2019, and earned the rank of Sergeant while serving in the United States Marine Corps (USMC). Two of his professional accolades include the ‘30 Up and Coming Emerging Leaders in TESOL’, awarded by TESOL International Association in 2016, and the J. Estill Alexander Future Leader in Literacy Award, awarded by the Association of Literacy Educators and Researchers (ALER) in 2018 when his dissertation was chosen as ALER’s 2018 Outstanding Dissertation of the Year. Dr. Pentón Herrera’s current teaching and research projects are situated at the intersection of identity, emotions, and well-being in language and literacy education, social-emotional learning (SEL), autoethnography and storytelling, refugee education, and language weaponization. His books can be found in the University of Michigan Press, Routledge, Springer, Brill, De Gruyter, TESOL Press, Bucharest University Press, and Rowman & Littlefield. More details at https://luispenton.com/

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