The Acceso project and foreign language graduate student professional development

Abstract

This chapter describes how the Acceso project affords graduate student instructors (GSIs) unique opportunities for professional and pedagogic development. Through guided collaboration, the GSIs contribute to curricular development for the foundational levels of language studies in a way that answers the 2007 MLA Report’s call for curricular reform via integration of content exploration and form-focused study. To this end, the University of Kansas has created the open access, Web-based Acceso platform, which structures the content of a critical cultural inquiry- based curriculum developed for intermediate-level learners of Spanish. Graduate student perception of their own professional growth as a result of collaborating in the design and implementation of the initial phase of the project is explored through the analysis of an anonymous open-ended questionnaire completed by a subset of the project’s participants (n=17). The participants’ reflections reveal that the Acceso project provided opportunities for pedagogic and professional development and suggest directions for improvement in subsequent stages.