Daniela's Page
I grew up in New Jersey (about 10 minutes outside NYC). I’m currently Assistant Professor of Italian and Second Language Acquisition, Italian Language Program Director, and Head of Italian at the University of Oklahoma. I teach courses in all levels of Italian language, literature and culture, and as well language teaching methods and second language acquisition theory at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. I serve as the World Language Education liaison to OU’s College of Education and to the Oklahoma State Department of Education and I also supervise teacher education students in their field experience.
One thing you should know about me is that I love to flip the script especially in terms of power dynamics and fostering deep, meaningful inter- and transdisciplinarity. I always seek to use my students’ prior knowledge in a way that helps deepen their learning and strive to have them be builders, doers, and cp-creators of knowledge.
Some key ideas that have significantly influence my philosophy of teaching and learning are complexity theory, extended and embodied cognition, and learner autonomy. To me, learning is all about being able to create complex webs of knowledge from within and without that are transferrable to many varied domains in our lives. So teaching must foster agency and autonomy to not just answer the hard questions but also figure out how to build the very questions themselves.
Some key experiences that have significantly influenced my philosophy of teaching and learning have been teaching at four large universities in the U.S., teaching English in Berlin, Germany and teaching high schoolers English in Italy. Notions of fairness, equity, empathy, and kindness are central to my teaching and learning experiences.
Daniela