Dr. Diego Román's recent tenure and promotion!

A warm congratulations to Dr. Diego Román on his recent tenure and promotion to Associate Professor of Bilingual/Bicultural Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His commitment, thoughtful scholarship, and continued contributions make a lasting impact, and we’re excited to see all he will continue to achieve. To learn more about Dr. Diego Román's work, please read below!

Biography

Dr. Diego Román is an Associate Professor in Bilingual/Bicultural Education at the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Román holds a B.S. degree in Agronomy from Zamorano University in Honduras and a M.S. degree in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. He also earned a M.S. degree in Biology, a M.A. in Linguistics, and a Ph.D. degree in Educational Linguistics, all from Stanford University. At the K-12 level, Dr. Román taught middle school science to Emergent Bilinguals for seven years, first in rural Wisconsin and then in San Francisco, California. Dr. Román's research interests are located at the intersection of applied linguistics, bilingual education, and science education. Specifically, he investigates the implicit and explicit ideologies reflected in the design and implementation of bilingual and science education programs particularly on how environmental topics are taught to multilingual students. He conducts his research from a Systemic Functional Linguistics perspective by analyzing the linguistic and multimodal characteristics of the discourse that take place in bilingual and science classrooms. Dr. Román has researched the language used to teach climate change at the middle school level and is currently examining science, environmental, and bilingual programs (Spanish/English and Kichwa/Spanish) in rural Wisconsin and in Ecuador. He was a 2020 Spencer Foundation/National Academy of Education Postdoctoral fellow. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the Spencer Foundation.

Recent Publications

Román, D., del Rosal, K., & Basaraba, D. (2019). Constructing Explanations in Science: Informal Formative Assessment Practices among Science Teachers of Emergent Bilinguals. Research in Science Education, 49, 1055-1067.

Román, D., Pastor, A., & Basaraba, D. (2019). Internal linguistic discrimination: A survey of bilingual teachers’ language attitudes towards their heritage students’ Spanish. Bilingual Research Journal

Román, D., Briceño, A., & Basaraba, D. (2018). English Learners and the complex language of written science texts: Practical advice for teachers. Science Scope, 42(3), 40-46.

Busch, K. C., & Román, D. (2017). Fundamental climate literacy and the promise of the next generation science standards. In D. Shepardson, A. Roychoudhury, & A. Hirsch (Eds.), Teaching and Learning about Climate Change: A Framework for Educators (pp. 121-134). New York, NY: Routledge.

New Project:

He is currently collaborating with Dr. Shamya Karumbaiah and Dr. Mariana Castro in developing and studying an AI tool to support monolingual English teachers of science who work with multilingual students.