Two Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian and African Languages faculty members have been appointed Co-editors for TESOL Quarterly (TQ), the academic journal for the TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) International Association.

Starting in 2017, Professor Charlene Polio and Assistant Professor Peter De Costa will become Associate Co-editors of TQ, and in 2018 they will fully assume their new roles as Co-editors. Their term runs through December 2021. 

“I am especially pleased to see two individuals as eminently qualified as Professors Polio and De Costa taking on the position of Co-editors,” said TESOL President Dudley Reynolds.

“They will be great stewards of the future of our profession.”

Polio, a professor at Michigan State University for more than 20 years, became actively involved in TESOL early in her career, serving as an Interest Section chair and member of the TQ editorial board. She has extensive experience working with pre-service and in-service teachers.

At MSU, she directed the M.A. TESOL program before becoming Associate Chair of the Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian and African Languages in 2008, and was instrumental in creating two TESOL undergraduate minors. While staying committed to research that benefits ESL instruction, Polio has conducted more than 50 workshops for ESL and foreign language teachers, and continues to teach TESOL methods, second language writing, and pedagogical grammar classes. 

At MSU since 2013, De Costa has been committed to advancing TESOL’s mission for a number of years as an awards reviewer and amember of the Research Professional Council.He contributed to the creation of the guidelines for TESOL’s Research Mini-Grants. De Costa’s primary area of interest is identity and ideology in Second-Language Acquisition (SLA), and he currently is investigating English language policy in Chinese universities as enacted through university-wide curricula and its impact on the acquisition of English.

As a former high school English teacher in Singapore, De Costa has worked extensively with English learners and teachers in the United States and abroad. In addition to teaching courses in SLA to pre-service teachers at MSU, De Costa collaborates with non-native graduate students and trains them in writing for publication. With his substantial experience in teacher education and contact with pre-service teachers, De Costa is well acquainted with their professional struggles, which he has problematized in his recent body of work on language teacher identity.

TESOL Quarterly, a refereed professional journal published by TESOL Press and distributed by Wiley, fosters inquiry into English language teaching and learning by providing a forum for TESOL professionals to share their research findings and explore ideas and relationships in the field. In publication since 1967, TQ is published in March, June, September and December. TQ’s readership includes ESOL teacher educators, teacher learners, researchers, applied linguists and ESOL teachers. For more information, please visit TESOL’s website or the Wiley Online Library.