Pamela Wesely, University of Iowa College of Education associate dean for faculty and graduate education and multilingual education professor, is the recipient of a national award for her excellence in language teacher education.

Wesely will receive the NYSAFLT Anthony Papalia Award for Excellence in Teacher Education. This award recognizes a world language educator who has demonstrated excellence in the preparation and continuing education of teachers for the profession. It is supported by New York State Association for Language Teachers, Inc. and ACTFL, the national organization for world language teachers.

The award will be presented to Wesely in Philadelphia on Friday, Nov. 22, as part of the ACTFL 2024 Annual Convention & World Languages Expo.

Wesely’s scholarship and teaching examines K-12 foreign/world language education in the U.S. Building on eight years of work as a middle school French teacher and 11 years working in the experiential learning environment of Concordia Language Villages in Minnesota, she studies the attitudes, motivations, perceptions, and beliefs of stakeholders in K-12 foreign/world language education. 

Innovation is a key area of interest in Wesely’s work, particularly pedagogical innovation that departs from the grammar-based curriculum, like content-based instruction, instruction focused on comprehensible input, social justice education, and technology integration in the language classroom. 

She is a co-author of Words and Actions: Teaching Language Through the Lens of Social Justice (ACTFL, 2018) and the author of the recent book The Beliefs and Experiences of World Language Teachers in the US (Multilingual Matters, 2024). She has published research articles in a wide number of journals, and she has presented extensively at national and international conferences. She has conducted teacher education workshops with teachers across the state of Iowa and the nation, working with universities, research centers, and teacher organizations to support best practices in world language teaching. Wesely is a past member of the ACTFL Board of Directors and a past president of the Iowa World Language Association.

Wesely has also received numerous awards and honors including the Citizen Diplomat Award from the Council for International Visitors to Iowa Cities (CIVIC) in 2020, and the Educator of the Year Award (Post-Secondary), from the Iowa World Language Association in 2019. She was inducted as a member of the Iowa Academy of Education in 2023.