- Assistant Professor
- TESOL and Bilingual Education
- Phone: 401.874.4173
- Email: nicole.king@uri.edu
Biography
Dr. Nicole King is an Assistant Professor of TESOL and Bilingual Education in the Feinstein College of Education at the University of Rhode Island. Her experiences as a former teacher of multilingual learners in the US (Louisiana and South Carolina) and Italy drive her research interests in the translingual and transmodal practices of multilingual students, families, communities, and teachers. She seeks to bring these perspectives to teacher education and to empower pre- and in-service teachers to enact equitable and sustaining practices in their teaching and advocacy. Her work has been supported through collaborative Fulbright DAI and Mother Cabrini Health Foundation grants and has been published in TESOL Journal, System, Foreign Language Annals, Language Teaching, The Language Educator, and a recent co-edited volume, Developing Translanguaging Repertoires in Critical Teacher Education.
Research
Dr. King’s work critically examines the connections between research and practice situated within localized contexts and communities. She researches how to prepare teachers to create more linguistically, culturally, and racially just and humane spaces for learning and teaching. As a qualitative researcher who employs ethnographic methods, she strives to develop rich understanding and relationships with the multilingual teachers, students, and families with whom she researches. Specifically, she looks at the development and transformation of translanguaging repertoires in pre-and in-service language teachers within localized settings, how multilingual students negotiate language ideologies, language use, culture, and positioning in the expression of their identities, and the reciprocal exchange of knowledge and understanding when teachers learn to take up a community-as-pedagogy mindset.
Education
- Ph.D., Teaching & Curriculum: Foreign, Second, & Multilingual Language Education, The Ohio State University, 2021
- M.Ed., International Literacy, Sam Houston State University, 2015 Teacher Certification, University of New Orleans, 2006
- B.A., Psychology & Economics, Tulane University, 2004
Selected Publications
- Pryzmus, S., King, N. (Eds.) (2026). The language, education, and identity development of transnational youth—learning from and advancing transdisciplinary approaches, Behavioral Sciences.
- Child, G. King, N., & Song, K. (2026). Framing teachers as experts: Developing translanguaging spaces and stances for learning and teaching. In Z. Tian & S. M. C. Lan (eds.), Translanguaging in action in English-medium classrooms: A resource book for teachers. Bloomsbury Academic.
- King, N., Child, G., Song., K., & Thieman, D. (2025). Midwestern teachers’ developing equity-based mindsets and practices over time: Using virtual coaching cycles for teacher transformation. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education.
- Lu, X. King, N., Tian, Z. (2024). Enacting culturally sustaining pedagogies and translanguaging jointly in early language learning classrooms. The Language Educator.
- King, N., Song, K., & Child, G. (2023). Virtual professional development project on secondary teachers’ awareness of race, language, and culture. Language Teaching, 56(1), 137-142. doi:10.1017/S0261444821000446
- Ridley, J., & King, N. (2023). “I have meaningful work:” Crafting teaching and advocacy at an ESL after-school program. TESOL Journal. doi: 10.1002/tesj.729
- Song, K., & King, N. (2023). Collaborative multilingual families’ story making that transcends school policies and practices of inequity at community translanguaging spaces. In V. J. Lee, & K. S. L. Grant (Eds.) (2023). Advancing culturally responsive and socially just approaches to multilingual family – school partnerships (pp. 3-28). Lexington Books.
- Tian, Z., & King, N. (Eds.) (2023). Developing translanguaging repertoires in critical teacher education. Critical Approaches in Applied Linguistics, De Gruyter Mouton.
- Troyan, F. J., King, N., Bramli, A. (2021). Enacting culturally sustaining immersion pedagogy through SFL and translanguaging. Foreign Language Annals.
- King, N. (2021). Designing a better place: Multimodal multilingual composition. In D.- S. Shin, T. Cimasko, & Y. Yi (Eds.), Multimodal composing in K-16 ESL and EFL education – Multilingual perspectives (pp.147-162). Springer.
- King, N., & Bramli, A. (2021). Il était une Fois: Co-constructing narratives in French. In F. J. Troyan (Ed.), Genre in world language education: Contextualized assessment and learning (pp.151-166). New York: Routledge.
- King, N., & Ridley, J. (2019). A Bakhtinian take on languaging in a dual language immersion classroom. System, 80, 14-26. doi:10.1016/j.system.2018.10.008