Key Organizations for Current Research and Best Practices
National Level
- ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages), the national professional organization that provides the most important documents, professional learning, and resources that transcend what ALL state and local world language programs should follow and offer.
- CAL (Center for Applied linguistics), a national level research site for all levels (elementary, middle, high, university, and adult educational fields) of second language acquisition resources that guide practitioners in the latest products, studies, and databases of researchers in bilingual, multilingual, and cross-cultural and linguistic studies.
- TELL (Teaching Effectiveness for Language Learning), a national level, practitioner-lead initiative to define the most effective characteristics of world language teaching and learning to include the framework and key elements or actions an ideal world teacher takes to ensure the most effective current teaching. Self-assessments, tools, and nationwide resources are provided and updated on an on-going basis. He Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) adopted TELL in 2012 upon which it aligns all of its documents and professional learning offerings.
State Level
- VDOE (Virginia Department of Education), World Languages Office, provides the state leadership in all aspects of world languages that affect all local school divisions and identify guidance and requirements in the areas of: curriculum, course offerings, instruction, materials, assessments, professional learning, state updates, news, and opportunities, resources, teacher licensure, and program design.
- Teacher Direct is designed to establish a direct line of communication with classroom teachers and educators. The goal of Teacher Direct is to provide a way to share new instructional resources created by VDOE staff as well as make teachers aware of professional development and grant opportunities, and other information of special interest to teachers and their students.
- FLAVA (Foreign Language Association of Virginia), the state professional organization for all teachers and administrators of world languages. FLAVA provides leadership statewide by convening meetings with all leaders in local school divisions for collaboration, advocacy, and professional learning. FLAVA offers an annual fall state conference in early October and other webinars, information, resources in support of world language teachers and leaders pre-K though university level statewide.
- VADLEN (Virginia Dual Language Educators Network) a recently renewed organization of leaders and educators of all types of immersion programs, particularly dual language immersion programs.