AÍDA WALQUI

Founder, Quality Teaching for English Learners

Director, National Research and Development Center for Improving the Education of English Learners in Secondary Schools

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Aída Walqui is Principal Investigator and Director of the National Research and Development Center to Improve Education for Secondary English Learners housed at WestEd. Her work focuses on the development of teacher expertise to realize the immense potential of multilingual learners and the contexts that promote it.

 

Walqui’s career in the field of second language development spans several decades, all levels of education, and multiple countries. She taught at the Catholic University in Lima, at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, at Alisal High School in Salinas, CA, at Stanford University, and at the University of CA, Santa Cruz.

 

For the last 20+ years she has worked at WestEd, where she started one of its signature programs, the Quality Teaching for English Learners (QTEL) initiative, focused on supporting the rigorous development of English Learners’ conceptual, analytic, literacy and language practices in subject matter areas.

 

A native Peruvian, Walqui received an MS in Sociolinguistics from Georgetown University, and her Ph.D. from Stanford University. She is the author of many books and articles, including the recent Reconceptualizing the Role of Critical Dialogue in American Classrooms. Promoting equity through dialogic education published by Routledge (co-edited with Amanda Kibler and Guadalupe Valdés).

Email:  awalqui@wested.org