Dan E. Davidson is an American linguist working at the intersection of Russian studies,second-language acquisition and international educational development. He is the president emeritus and [1] co-founder of American Councils for International Education and professor emeritus of Russian and Second Language Acquisition at Bryn Mawr College.[2]
In 1976,following several preliminary attempts by both American and Russian scholars to expand exchange of scholarship between the U.S. and the Soviet Union,Davidson co-founded the American Council of Teachers of Russian (ACTR),which would later become American Councils for International Education. The membership organization sponsored many activities associated with Russian language study,including efforts to expand existing scholarly and student exchanges in language and area studies between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.[3] Over the years,American Councils has expanded from a small membership organization with a single graduate exchange program to a well-known federally funded exchange organization that operates in over 80 countries,focusing on the instruction of critical languages and academic exchange with less commonly studied world regions and cultures.[2]
In addition to his work with American Councils,Davidson has held leadership roles in a number of international organizations and educational initiatives,including serving as co-chair of the "Transformation of the Humanities Program," funded by philanthropist George Soros,in Russia,Ukraine,and Belarus. The project produced over 400 new textbooks in the humanities and social sciences for use in Russia,Ukraine and Belarus between 1992 and 1995.[2] Davidson is the co-founder and chair (2006–present) of the Center for Education,Assessment and Teaching Methods (CEATM) in Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan),the first independent,merit-based university admissions testing program in the former Soviet space. He also served as Vice President of the International Association of Teachers of Russian Language and Literature (MAPRYAL) from 1994 to the present and Vice-Chair of the Board of Governors of the European Humanities University from 2007 to 2016.
Davidson has authored thirteen books and more than 60 academic articles,including a twenty-year longitudinal study of adult second language acquisition during study abroad. Davidson co-authored the Russian:Stage One textbook series,the first collaborative Soviet-American Russian language textbook,which continues to be used in its revised form today.[7]
His scholarly articles cover the disciplines of historical semantics ("N.M. Karamzin and the New Critical Vocabulary:Toward a Semantic History of the Term Romantic in Russian," 1974),lexical pragmatics ("The Bilingual Associative Dictionary of the Languages of Russian an American Youth," 2004),[8] and second-language acquisition ("The Development of L2 Proficiency and Literacy within the context of the Federally Supported Overseas Language Training Programs for Americans," 2015). In 2016,he published "Assessing Language Proficiency and Intercultural Development in the Overseas Immersion Context." In 2021,Davidson was editor and contributor for Transformative Language Learning and Teaching.
Transformative Language Learning and Teaching was awarded the AATSEEL Prize for Best Book in Pedagogy at the organization's National Conference in February 2022,calling it "a groundbreaking volume on the theory and practice of transformative teaching in the language learning context."[9] In 2023,the Modern Language Association recognized Transformative Language Learning and Teaching with the Kenneth W. Mildenberger Prize for its comprehensive exploration of transformative learning theory and practice in the language field.[10]
Davidson's comparison of the face-to-face and "virtual immersion" on the linguistic and cultural growth of young adult English-speaking learners of Arabic,Chinese,and Russian,co-authored with Nadra Garas,“What Makes Study Abroad Transformative? Comparing Linguistic and Cultural Contacts and Learning Outcomes in Virtual vs In-Person Contexts”appeared in the University of California,Berkeley L2 Journal, 15(2),2023,pp.71–91.[11]
Davidson has also presented oral testimony by invitation on four occasions to the U.S. Senate. In March 1992,he testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations Subcommittee on European Affairs.[15] On September 19,2000,Davidson made a statement to the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs Subcommittee on International Security,Proliferation,and Federal Services.[16] He has testified twice before the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management,the Federal Workforce,and the District of Columbia.[17][18] The May 2012 hearing,titled "A National Security Crisis:Foreign Language Capabilities in the Federal Government," identified a shortage of personnel qualified to fill language-designated positions in key government agencies and offered strategies for increasing the number of Americans possessing advanced proficiency in both language and regional knowledge.[18]
Davidson, Dan E.; Lekic, Maria D. (2010). "Study Abroad: When, How Long, and With What Results? New Data from the Russian Front". Foreign Language Annals. 43 (1): 6–26. doi:10.1111/j.1944-9720.2010.01057.x.
Davidson, Dan E.; Lekic, Maria D. (2012). "Comparing Heritage and Non-Heritage Learning Outcomes and Target-Language Utilization in the Overseas Immersion Context: A Preliminary Study of the Russian Flagship". Russian Language Journal. 62: 47–78. doi:10.70163/0036-0252.1157.
Davidson, Dan E.; Shaw, Jane (2019). "A Cross-Linguistic and Cross-Skill Perspective on L2 Development in Study Abroad". Foreign Language Proficiency in Higher Education. Educational Linguistics 37. Educational Linguistics. 37: 217–242. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-01006-5. ISBN978-3-030-01005-8.
Davidson, Dan E., Garas. Nadra (2021). “Transformative Language Learning in the Overseas Immersion Environment: Exploring Affordances of Intercultural Development, Transformative Language Learning and Teaching, Eds., Leaver, Betty L., Dan E. Davidson, Christine Campbell, Cambridge University Press, pp.109–119.
Davidson, Dan E. (2021). Ensuring US National Capacity in World Languages and Cultures for the Twenty-First Century: More Learners, More Languages, Better Results!. International Education at the Crossroads. pp.132–144. doi:10.2307/j.ctv1ghv48c.19. ISBN978-0-253-05391-6. S2CID234825648.
↑ Brecht, Richard D., Ljudmila A. Verbitskaja, Maria D. Lekic, William F. Rivers (eds.) (2009). Mnemosynon: Studies on Language and Culture in the Russophone World, Moscow, 2009. p. 13
↑ “The Bilingual Associative Dictionary of the Languages of Russian and American Youth”, Language and Speech Behavior [ Jazyk I recevaja dejatel’nost’], Journal of the Linguistic Society of St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg University Press, Vol. 7, 2004, 39-48. (issue appeared in May of 2006). Republished in a slightly altered form in Prezidium MAPRIAL 2003-2007. Sbornik nauchnyx trudov. Edited by O. I. Glazunova and L. V. Moskovkin, MIRS: St. Petersburg, 2007, 103-112.
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