About
PROFESSIONAL BIOGRAPHY
Kris Lewis is an Assistant Professor of TESOL and Applied Linguistics in the English Department at Illinois State University.* An experienced language educator, they have taught English language and literacy classes to diverse student populations in Uganda and the United States. Kris has also taught numerous courses in the areas of English language, academic writing, educational linguistics, and TESOL methods. Kris holds an MSEd in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and a PhD in Educational Linguistics, both from the University of Pennsylvania. Outside of their academic position, Kris works as a freelance editor and writing coach, specializing in providing support to multilingual writers in various academic English genres.
*Kris’s freelance work is done on their own time and is not associated with their position at Illinois State University; their opinions are their own. Please note that I do not provide services to students currently enrolled at Illinois State University.
RESEARCH INTERESTS AND CURRENT PROJECTS
Kris’s research explores the complex processes involved in language teacher identity development, as well as the ways in which student teachers navigate the practices and processes of second language teacher education. Their dissertation, “Be(com)ing Language (Student) Teachers in a TESOL Practicum,” explored the hybrid experience of “becoming” and “being” teachers that graduate-level TESOL students experienced during a practicum semester. Kris theorized an ecological model of (language) teacher education in order to examine the interplay between language student teachers’ socialization and identity formation within and across the contexts and timescales of a practicum semester. They examined “images” of language (student) teachers and language (student) teaching to analyze the various ideas, representations, and enactments that circulate and are legitimized across practicum contexts. Drawing on a methodological framework of ethnography-in-education, discourse analysis, and collaborative inquiry, this dissertation project specifically followed the experiences of eight multilingual focal student teacher participants. This study demonstrates the rich potential for inquiry into student teachers’ own experiences and interpretations of the practices of teacher education.
Kris’s current research uses narrative inquiry, arts-based methods, and practitioner inquiry to understand how undergraduate students make sense of TESOL courses and clinical experiences both before and after graduation. In addition, they are examining how students respond to various teaching practices, including a rhetorical approach to grammar, humanizing practices for multilingual education, the gamification of linguistics principles, and a critical perspective on generative AI use.
