COLLEGE PARK, MD (February, 2015) Professor Jeff MacSwan of the Department of Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership has been named a 2015 American Education Research Association (AERA) Fellow. The AERA Fellows Program honors education researchers with substantial research accomplishments, in order to convey the AERAs commitment to excellence in research and enable the next generation of emerging scholars to appreciate the value of sustained achievements in research.
MacSwan’s work centers on two strands: basic scientific research in bilingualism and applied research in language education. His newest edited book is Grammatical Theory and Bilingual Codeswitching (MIT Press, 2014), which features contributions from several authors and researchers on grammatical phenomena related to codeswitching. In the book’s first chapter, MacSwan defines codeswitching as “the alternate use of two or more languages among bilingual interlocutors,” involving “the mixing of phonologically distinctive elements into a single utterance.” In May, MacSwan will be giving a plenary talk on codeswitching at the 10th International Symposium on Bilingualism at Rutgers University. ISB is a biannual meeting which has been hosted on three different continents and in nine different countries.
In his applied research, MacSwan is currently working with colleagues on language assessment policy related to English Language Learners in the context of the new Common Core State Standards. He was recently appointed to a committee of the National Academy of Sciences to carry out a study on how to better support bilingual learners in U.S. schools. Further research on bilingualism and its implications can lead to better understandings of the role of language in schooling for bilingual children, and potentially to better teaching methods and practices for addressing their needs.
Jeff MacSwan is a professor in the Language, Literacy, and Social Inquiry program and the Neuroscience and Cognitive Science program at the University of Maryland. Dr. MacSwan's research focuses on the role of language in schooling, on education policy related to English Language Learners, and on the linguistic study of bilingualism and codeswitching. He is the author of numerous publications and co-editor of the International Multilingual Research Journal.
Click here for more information about Professor MacSwan and his work.
Click here for more information about the AERA Fellows Program.
Click here for the AERAs official announcement of its 2015 Fellows.
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