Madison’s longest running African-American owned magazine, UMOJA, recently published a feature on UW–Madison’s Diego Román that was written by Erika Bullock, his colleague in the School of Education’s Department of Curriculum and Instruction.
Román is an assistant professor of bilingual/bicultural education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. He is interested in the intersection of linguistics, science education, and environmental studies. Specifically, Román investigates the implicit and explicit ideologies reflected in the design and implementation of bilingual and science education programs.
In the article, Bullock, an associate professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, shares Román’s work as a bilingual education advocate, and his research into how best to teach science to multilingual learners. She writes that “Román is concerned with how language choices in science are perceived across cultures and how children who do not live within the dominant culture make sense of that language.”
Bullock writes that Román has been using a National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship to work with rural Wisconsin school districts. He has been helping them teach science to multilingual students since 2020. Román also recently completed a multi-year virtual professional development program with Wisconsin teachers.
“In this program, he guided the teachers through training on how to talk about socio-environmental issues with multilingual learners,” Bullock writes.
In addition to his efforts in Wisconsin, Román has been working with Indigenous schools in Ecuador through a new undergraduate study abroad program in the School of Education. Participating students look at environmental, linguistic, and cultural history and issues in the Galapagos Islands.
To learn more about Román’s endeavors both across Wisconsin and internationally, check out the UMOJA feature.