Call for Papers on Instructor Preparation in Russian Studies

Call for Proposals: Proposed edited volume on instructor preparation in Russian studies [Russian language and culture]. 

Working title: Russian Studies Instructor Preparation in a Changing World

Emil Asanov, Karen Evans-Romaine, and Jason Merrill, editors

Proposals due February 10, 2026

Literature on teacher education for World Languages, i.e., languages other than English, has focused on declining enrollments in teacher preparation programs at the undergraduate level (e.g., Burke & Ceo-DiFrancesco, 2021), teacher shortages (e.g., Swanson & Fischbach, 2025), and strategies to tackle these issues (e.g., Davis et al., 2022; Thompson & Morgan, 2023), all in the face of declining enrollments in language programs across the United States (Lusin et al., 2023). To address these challenges, scholars have suggested strengthening teacher preparation programs in World Languages by providing access to continuing professional development and responding to the needs of both diverse students and teachers alike (García et al., 2019). 

The field of Russian language pedagogy shares some challenges with other World Languages, while others are unique to our field: educators in Russian language and culture are reexamining what we teach by broadening and deepening our perspectives on the contexts and communities in which Russian is spoken, as well as who our students are and could be, through more inclusive materials and teaching practices (Dengub et al., eds., 2020; Evans-Romaine & Quinn, eds., 2023; Garza & Stauffer, eds., 2025). For this proposed volume, we invite teacher educators to address recent challenges by sharing their experiences and best practices in Russian language and culture instruction: for example, in teaching methods courses, teacher education curricula, and mentoring of instructors. We welcome research articles and submissions describing best practices from teacher educators throughout the world. 

Topics might include:

• Pedagogy and digital literacy in preparing new teachers
• AI in teacher training
• The place of pedagogy in graduate curricula
• Preparing teachers to work with the whole classroom, including learners of diverse backgrounds
• Preparing instructors for focusing on intercultural communicative competency
• Preparing instructors to teach literature or writing courses for general education 
• Recent theories in curriculum construction (for example, decentering Russia, translanguaging, anticolonial pedagogies) and teacher preparation
• New and innovative approaches to pedagogy and teaching Russian language and culture
• Methods courses 
• The linguistic preparation of graduate students and beginning instructors

All submissions must be no longer than 5000 words, including references and notes. 

Languages of Publication: English (with an abstract in Russian).

Submission Instructions: Those interested in contributing should submit the following to teacheredvolume@gmail.com as a single Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx) or .PDF file attachment by February 10, 2026:

• Author name(s) and affiliation(s);
• Proposed article title;
• 250-word overview/abstract;
• 50-word biography for each author.
  
  Please note: Abstract acceptance does not guarantee publication of the submitted manuscript. All manuscripts will be subject to a double-blind peer review process. 
  
  Timeline:
  
  February 10, 2026 - Submission deadline for 250-word abstracts and author bio/information.
  
  March 3, 2026   - Invitations to submit a full article sent.
  
  May 31, 2026 - Submission deadline for full-length manuscripts (up to 5,000 words, including References). Authors should prepare their manuscript according to the in-house style guidelines of the publisher. We are currently exploring different publishers to house this volume.
  
  Publication expected in 2027.
  
  We look forward to your submissions. Please send any questions about this project to the co-editors of the thematic issue at teacheredvolume@gmail.com.