Introduction: Moving Forward with Spanish for the Professions and Specific Purposes

The following four interrelated essays developed from the session titled, Curriculum Development Activism (CDA): Moving Forward with Spanish for the Professions and Specific Purposes (SPSP), at the 100th AATSP Annual Conference in 2018 in Salamanca, Spain. The overarching theme for the essays was “Looking Forward/Forward Looking: Spanish and Portuguese on the Move.” The articles further explore an issue of pressing interest within the profession, that of Spanish and non-English Language for the Professions and Specific Purposes (LPSP) as a vital curricular consideration in undergraduate and graduate foreign language programs in the United States. They do so via the lens of a forward-looking Curriculum Development Activism (CDA), which is more fully defined and contextualized here than when the term was initially coined in the Hispania Centenary Issue (2017), and also via best-practices curriculum development methodologies at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI).

CDA is a crucial consideration because it serves as a safeguard against curricular stagnation and disconnection from the always evolving needs of the learner and society. Such stagnation and disconnection pose a real threat to the continued relevance and centrality of the study of Spanish and foreign languages in US higher education. For this reason, graduate-level programming through the PhD is encouraged to take on a stronger leadership role in a redefined aspect of the language generalist that is now required, that of LPSP, for today’s foreign language educator. This would respond to the curricular sea change that has been taking place at the undergraduate level. Since Spanish for the Professions and Specific Purposes is a major subset of all Languages for the Professions and Specific Purposes, in talking about SPSP in these interconnected articles, it is at the same time a reference to LPSP and vice versa. Because of the relevance of its content in meeting the needs of the learner and society, SPSP-CDA can also help to attract new enrollments and buffer against enrollment downturns.

Specifically, the four articles address context, stakeholders, leadership, attitude, curricular architecture, best-practices integration and normalization, program continuity, and how the future curricular landscape of the study of Spanish and foreign languages in the US will likely be shaped increasingly, and be best served, by SPSP-CDA. The first article provides a status update of LPSP-SPSP-CDA context and dialectics. The second engages with key foundational, curricular, and policy considerations. The third and fourth articles address integration and normalization of SPSP within an evolving liberal arts curriculum, via adaptable models for SPSP-CDA in US higher education at two leading university programs in applied Spanish.