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profeaustin.bsky.social
Tasha Austin PhD [she]
@profeaustin.bsky.social
100 followers 150 following 51 posts
Assistant Prof Teacher Ed| Multilingualism| Language Education
views mine

#BlackWorldLanguaging #EducationalLinguistics #LanguageEducation #TeacherEd #Racialization #Culture
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profeaustin.bsky.social
as i launch my first ever k-12 study, a class from the course i teach on ed research hits different

breaking the observer/ed hierarchy/dichotomy & working as a cultural insider rather than an objectifier is a beautiful labor

thank you ancestor Zora
so humbled
so grateful♥️🖤💚

#EduSky #AcademicSky
Title of slide: Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming a Space (2023) [Image of documentary on Zora Neale Hurston 'Claiming A Space'] Text of slide: What do you see as the challenges of being a cultural insider/outsider? How might funding produce a conflict of interest in one’s work? What is the role of linguistic fidelity in qualitative work? How do time spent, dis/honesty and compensation impact ethnography? Other?
January 13, 2026 at 7:01 PM
profeaustin.bsky.social
Sitting with the timeless wisdom of Fanon today:
#WorldLanguages #LanguageEducation #EduSky #AcademicSky #Blackademic #EdResearch
Culture eminently eludes any form of simplification. When the colonized intellectual writing for his people uses the past he must do so with the intention of opening up the future, of spurring them into action and fostering hope. -Fanon (1961)
January 7, 2026 at 5:28 PM
profeaustin.bsky.social
in search of wrapping paper anoche i stumbled upon my graduation announcement. the me of 2022 could not have fathomed the healing i now experience

my homie hooded me in the sala
i skipped graduation & kept my integrity
the pomp dont change your circumstance
love does.

#EduSky #AcademicSky
Dr. Betina Hsieh & Dr. Tasha Austin hug after doctoral hooding 4 images of a recently graduated Dr. Austin in various poses & fits around the campus of the school from which she graduated. Announcement reads 'Rutgers 2022' 'Dr. Tasha Austin, PhD' 'Venmo library fund @Tasha-Austin-2'
December 23, 2025 at 3:01 PM
Reposted by Tasha Austin PhD [she]
sifill.bsky.social
It starts with knowing the truth. Don’t allow yourselves to be gaslit into believing this is a real question.
December 6, 2025 at 2:44 PM
profeaustin.bsky.social
Indescribably proud to lead this team! @spencerfoundation.bsky.social study on Black WL teachers accepted to AAAL 2026 in Chicago!

Aminah Raysor & @queendomteaching.bsky.social are brilliant emerging scholars. Let's hear it for them!👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿
#TeacherEducation #LanguageEducation #BlackWorldLanguaging
Spencer Small grant team - T. Austin, D. James & A. Raysor smile for Zoom photo "Thank you for submitting your proposal, “They is me!”: Redefining ‘Traditional’ Students Through Narratives of Black World Language Teachers, for presentation at the 2026 American Association for Applied Linguistics Conference. We are pleased to inform you that your submission has been selected for inclusion in the conference program as an individual paper. As a reminder, you submitted this proposal for the following conference: Chicago: March 21-24 2026 This year we received more than 2400 proposals for consideration. Decisions were reached after an extensive review process involving 54 strand coordinators, 647 peer reviewers, and the conference organizing committee. Due to the limitations placed on us by scheduling and space, the acceptance rate for submissions was quite competitive. So, warm congratulations! Look for more information after November 6, 2025."
October 1, 2025 at 7:35 PM
profeaustin.bsky.social
Reminder from your friendly neighborhood educational linguist:

#CheckYourself #YourSlipIsShowing #BlackWorldLanguaging
#AcademicChatter
The difference between good and bad languaging is the evaluator’s knowledge of said practice’s history and context
August 30, 2025 at 5:12 PM
profeaustin.bsky.social
Our chapter on perspective-making is out! I just received my copy of the handbook of research in world language instruction and couldn’t be more excited! /1
Holding the handbook of research in world language instruction smiling Chapter 17: Perspective Making and Its Potential in Intercultural Learning - book open to the first page of the co-authored chapter by Erin Kearney and Tasha Austin
August 21, 2025 at 7:04 PM
profeaustin.bsky.social
thank you Dr. Bettina Love for sharing this healing in the form of a blog post.

iansamag.com/2025/08/04/f...

we got this, Black folks... and those w Black politics. we are the revolution❤️🖤💚 #CBCE25
From Mutual Aid to Hood Utopias: A Testimony on Black Communal Care
By Saint Trey Wooden Before I ever learned the word mutual aid, I knew what it meant to be fed by grief that did not ask for language.  After my mother died, the world did not stop, but the bl…
iansamag.com
August 7, 2025 at 7:18 PM
profeaustin.bsky.social
When my 2023 paper was undergoing revisions, my mentor asked me why my verbal description of it to her was different from what I’d written

/1
July 31, 2025 at 1:16 AM
Reposted by Tasha Austin PhD [she]
phillewis.bsky.social
45-year-old Venus Williams becomes the oldest woman since Martina Navratilova to win a singles match apnews.com/article/venu...
July 23, 2025 at 2:11 AM
profeaustin.bsky.social
a public service announcement from your friendly neighborhood educational linguist. don't facilitate antiBlackness through thoughtless discourses! #LanguageMatters #Etymology #TheBlackerTheBetter #EncodingHierarchy #AcademicChatter
In 2025 let’s stop using the word denigrate to denote a reduction in value. De-nigr-ate traces its roots to the act of making something blacker. In no world, and particularly not the modern one, does Blackness reduce value. Blackness in fact constitutes the overwhelming value of the world in culture, ideas, art, what the lands that Black people steward/ed yield, and more. Next time you want a synonym for reducing value, consider: colonize or gentrify.
July 16, 2025 at 12:53 AM
profeaustin.bsky.social
The Black language/teacher shortage when narrated within the larger discourse of US higher education, does not reflect shortage, but rather, refusal.

So proud of this handbook chapter & sharing as I think the value of it cannot afford to be delayed. Reach out for more info!

#TeacherEd #LanguageEd
“The Negro in a tight place is a genius”: Black language teachers and the (re)making of [B]lack jobs Tasha Austin https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0677-5061 Abstract This chapter discusses the need for Black language scholars particularly in the role of educational linguists. It details the author’s introduction to the field and describes the vantage point of those multiply marginalized as uniquely valuable to educational linguistics. The author then introduces the raciolinguistic genealogical methodology (Flores, 2021) followed by its application in a brief study on the naturalized discourse of the Black language/teacher shortage. In taking a genealogical perspective on the discourse of Black teacher shortages, the study outlines the material distribution of both land and monies through the first and second Morrill Acts becoming the model for stratified U.S. (higher) education. Finally, the chapter concludes with an invitation for more Black/Indigenous language scholars to engage in educational linguistics to unsettle recurring discourses around “Black jobs,” who is deserving of liberal arts, (and thus, language-rich) educational opportunities, and other pressing issues in education research. Denaturalizing the ‘Black teacher shortage’ In the tradition of Black scholars who wielded their knowledge of language and linguistics as critical resistance against anti-Black societal forces, this raciolinguistic genealogy denaturalizes discourses around the Black language/teacher shortage. It does so through drawing on literature that outlines the present-day absence of Black language/teachers (Anya & Randolph, 2019; NCES, 2025b) and connects it to programmatic misalignment that has both historically and contemporarily pushed Black advanced language learners out of their studies (Schoener III & McKenzie, 2016; Johnson, 2019; Austin, 2022). By tracing the preparation of Black teachers as funded by local and federal governmental apparatuses in the U.S., the data rather reflect a systematic denial to Black and Indigenous learners of what is considered a liberal arts education while converting their very bodies (and Indigenous land) into capital for the state. This chapter presents a raciolinguistic genealogy of Black language/teacher education demonstrating my assertion that educational linguistics is apt for those whose experiences most acutely reflect the shortcomings of society– particularly through the apparatus of schooling as an institution. Folks at the intersections of Black, queer, poor, women and disabled groups (among others) should be overrepresented among educational linguists not only because of their being framed as “problems” within dominant society (Du Bois, 2015), but because of our position on the margins which imbues us with perspectives often invisible to the majoritized group/s (Crenshaw, 1994; Collins, 2006). Of note, teacher education replicates some of the same challenges as linguistics– it is disproportionately valuable to peripheralized groups for the potential leverage it offers in shaping the ideologies of future generations, yet remains statistically least accessible to them (Austin & Anya, 2024; Austin, 2023; Charity-Hudley, 2023; Allen et al., 2017; Milner, 2010; Sleeter, 2001). To better understand the under-realized value of Black teachers (of language, specifically) and the apparatuses that stifle their entry to the ranks, I will take a raciolinguistic genealogical approach to denaturalizing how who is suited for leisure has been racialized as white while those suited for labor has been racialized as Black in U.S. higher education. I will first highlight the intersections between the two disciplines, teacher education and linguistics, then unpack my application of the critical educational linguistics methodology that befits the analysis –raciolinguistic genealogy (Flores, 2021), and finally present the findings of my analysis of language teacher education and its relationship to “[b]lack jobs” in the modern U.S. formation.
July 2, 2025 at 12:19 AM
profeaustin.bsky.social
when a school has challenges w bullying they may look n2

staff
policies
students
communities

rarely do they interrogate materials

if the 'scramble for Africa,' 'manifest destiny' & 'we're all immigrants' predominate in lessons, the kids are demonstrating proficiency

bullying is your curriculum.
May 30, 2025 at 1:57 AM
profeaustin.bsky.social
nothing more concerning than work (with robust institutional support, no less) that focuses on the existence, proliferation and proficiency of a language while

never...

not once...

centering the well-being of the *people* and *communities* who use the language.
May 26, 2025 at 7:24 PM
profeaustin.bsky.social
“In this new regime, academic freedom is a liability. Expertise is viewed as arrogance. Critical thinking is rebranded as subversion. The result is a hollow university, one that looks real from the outside but is dead on the inside.”

educationallinguist.wordpress.com/2025/05/13/t...
educationallinguist.wordpress.com
May 13, 2025 at 11:31 PM
profeaustin.bsky.social
may my contribution to research always be encouraging folks to ask better questions. #LanguageEd #WorldLanguages #TeacherEd #BlackLinguisticReparations #EdLinguistics #Multilingualism #SLA #Academic
With this understood, it is no longer sufficient to view the question of African speaking European languages as a function of cognitive skills, physical age, approximation to whites relationship to specific tasks and so forth. Admittedly, these are issues to consider, but none go to the heart of the matter. The real question is not how difficult was it for Africans to learn English words? Rather the truly important queries are, what did it mean to the African to hear and at some point repeat words associated with this captures? What did it signify to the African to be expected to learn an embrace concepts which further concretized his condition of social death? What was it like to have the world renamed, redefined and reimagined for him? Sober reflection leads to the conclusion that the African understood the political nature of his predicament. And in that setting, he also understood that this new language was profoundly political. It stands to reason that he would respond in kind. (Gomez, 1998, p.171)
April 25, 2025 at 9:18 PM
profeaustin.bsky.social
#LanguageEd #TeacherEd #WorldLanguages #EdLinguistics #TeacherPreparation #BlackWorldLanguaging #Raciolinguistics #Genealogies

Grateful for this opportunity and looking forward to communing with the good folks at UW Madison!
University of Wisconsin Madison: 18th Annual Second Language Acquisition Student Symposium Keynote Speaker: Dr. Tasha Austin Labor, Leisure and Language: Towards world languages for Black linguistic reparations The present climate of U.S. public education has placed the access to a general course of study in the public discourse at levels unseen in recent decades. This discourse centers on the privatization of K-12 schooling, the policing of federal funds with regard to education research, and the place of nationalism in compliance measures tied to federal resources. World language (WL) education access, however, has not been prevalent in these discourses at the same levels unless attention is directed to the years preceding the 2025 presidential election. The replacement of liberal arts with vocational-oriented programming, WLs with computer science or artificial intelligence-driven instruction, and the elimination of full departments of WLs have steadily taken place prior to the larger sweeping changes of the past months. How has the steady divestment from WL study and the diminishing expectation of a liberal arts education set the stage for the present attempt at overhauling U.S. public education? This talk will explore the genealogical implications of those discursively framed as worthy of language study since the colonial era (e.g. propertied white men) of the formation of the U.S. It will trace the framing of those suited for leisure as opposed to those suited for labor (e.g. enslaved/liberated African[s] Americans) and the ways in which both public and private funding has been distributed along racialized lines. Further, it will trace these discourses to the current era of executive orders and normalized elitist conceptions of WL study. Finally, it will conclude with recommendations for WLs as a site for Black Linguistic Reparations (Austin & Anya, 2024) through ...
April 16, 2025 at 3:17 PM
profeaustin.bsky.social
so proud of this collaborative work! here's @melissabaralt.bsky.social @clemonsaris.bsky.social & my study on TBLT Spanish instruction with young learners. the possibilities for WL teaching are endless when Black cultural value is assumed❤️🖤💚
www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi... [dm us for copies]
Title: “Black children are gifted at learning languages – that’s why I could do TBLT”: inclusive Blackness as a pathway for TBLT innovation Abstract: This paper presents a case study of a Black Spanish-language teacher and her 4th-grade students using Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) six years after a teacher-training program. We describe the program and the teacher’s understanding of tasks and TBLT. Using a bottom-up approach, we then explore the teacher and students’ implementation of TBLT six years later in a socioeconomically resilient 4th-grade classroom in Miami, Florida, where 95 % of the students are Black. Task-as-process was assessed with classroom observations, handouts, task outcomes, and interviews. Findings revealed that the teacher continued using TBLT, highlighting both its opportunities and challenges. Opportunities were driven by her beliefs, reliance on “Black students’ linguistic gifts,” and access to sample tasks...
April 9, 2025 at 9:10 PM
profeaustin.bsky.social
Join me for a research talk this Friday April 4 at 2pm EST via webinar

Thanks to the Spencer Foundation, and to my brilliant team, Dr. Michele Foster, Dawnavyn M. James and Aminah Raysor for making this possible!

#TeacherEducation #WorldLanguages #BlackWorldLanguaging #LanguageEducation
ACTFL research SIG early career award webinar Friday, April 4th at 1pm CST. Dr. Tasha Austin (University at Buffalo) Oral Histories of Black World Language Professionals. ACTFL members can register at MyACTFL
March 31, 2025 at 4:12 PM
Reposted by Tasha Austin PhD [she]
imanibarbarin.bsky.social
We need to tread eugenics with the seriousness we treat the most vile forms of bigotry because eugenics is what turns those bigotries into action items.
March 21, 2025 at 12:20 AM
profeaustin.bsky.social
yess!

so exicted to engage with @drpatriannsmith.bsky.social , Dr. Shondel Nero, Dr. Lakeya Afolalu all facilitated by @proferandolph.bsky.social

more details here: www.aaal.org/2025-austin-...

hope y'all will come through!
March 18, 2025 at 4:33 PM
profeaustin.bsky.social
www.votervoice.net/Shares/BAAAA... #LanguageEducation #SilenceWillNotProtectUs
Urgent—Congress Must Act to Reverse Devastating Cuts to Language Education Offices!
On Tuesday, March 11th, the US Department of Education announced that it was laying off close to 50% of its staff. Based on documents and media reports we have seen, it appears that the Office of Engl...
www.votervoice.net
March 13, 2025 at 1:12 PM
Reposted by Tasha Austin PhD [she]
kylietcheung.bsky.social
So ICE has effectively disappeared a student for protesting Israel's genocide, separating him from his 8 month pregnant wife. Pure fascism
premthakker.bsky.social Prem Thakker ツ @premthakker.bsky.social · Mar 9
UPDATE—Mahmoud's attorney says they do NOT know where he is.
They were first told he was sent to an ICE facility in Elizabeth, NJ. But when his 8-month-pregnant wife tried to visit him, she was told he's not there.
They've received reports he may be sent as far away as Louisiana.
March 9, 2025 at 10:09 PM
profeaustin.bsky.social
a timely and important message from the new president of @actfl.bsky.social regarding how we engage Black and minoritized voices in #WorldLanguages

looking forward to your leadership!

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....
<em>Foreign Language Annals</em> | ACTFL Lanugage Teaching Journal | Wiley Online Library
Click on the article title to read more.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
March 12, 2025 at 12:50 PM
Reposted by Tasha Austin PhD [she]
clemonsaris.bsky.social
Thrilled to share something we have been working on for years! Racial Justice in Multilingual Education is a bold new space for groundbreaking ideas, fresh perspectives, and innovative research. #NewJournal #MultilingualEducation
You can visit us at rjme.org. First issue is coming August 2025!
March 11, 2025 at 5:32 PM