Laura Baecher

Teachers College, Columbia University Ed.D., Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), 2002 M.Ed., TESOL, 1996

University of Vermont B.A., Art History, Minor in Spanish, Burlington, VT, 1990

Dr. Baecher teaches courses for PreK-12 teacher candidates in the MA TESOL program, and is focused on courses that support instruction of English learners and teacher development.

Her current courses include:

• EDESL 785/788: Practicum in TESOL
• EDESL 771: K-12 Curriculum and Materials in the Content Areas
• EDESL 796: Methods in TESOL
• EDESL 703: Teaching English in Global Contexts

Dr. Baecher is passionate about serving English language learners and their teachers, and has been involved in the TESOL field as an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher to adolescents and adults, in school, community, and university settings; as a program administrator for ESL services, as a mentor teacher and as a teacher educator and researcher.

Dr. Baecher’s research, teaching, and service activities are shaped by three common and related aims:

1. examining the work of practicing ESL teachers,
2. increasing the quality of TESOL teacher education, and
3. engaging a collaborative partnership of faculty, teacher leaders, and teacher candidates to advocate for English language learners.

She has published and presented nationally on the subject of video analysis of lessons in the process of teacher development, the challenges facing ESL teachers, and the connection of teacher preparation to teacher practice.

• Cirocki, A., Madyarov, I., & Baecher, L. (Eds.) (2020). Global Perspectives on the Practicum in TESOL. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer.
• Baecher, L. (2019). Video in Teacher Learning: Through their Own Eyes. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
• Farrell, T.S.J. & Baecher, L. (2017). Reflecting on Problems of Practice in TESOL. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
• Lindahl, K. & Baecher, L. (2019). Preparing TESOL specialists for K-12 contexts. In L. de Oliveira, (Ed.), The Handbook of TESOL in K-12, pp. 357-370. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons.
• Huelsenbeck, C., Baecher, L., & Staehr Fenner, D. (2019). Action research for advocacy in a supervised teaching seminar. In H. Linville and J. Whiting, (Eds.), Advocacy in English Language Teaching and Learning, pp. 71-84. New York: Routledge.
• Baecher, L., Kasper, J., & Mincin, J. (2019). Educating students of refugee backgrounds: Critical language teacher education in TESOL. CATESOL Journal, 31(1), 165-179.
• Peercy, M.M., Sharkey, J., Baecher, L., Motha, S., & Varghese, M. (2019). Exploring TESOL teacher educators’ identities and pedagogies: A shared narrative inquiry. TESOL Journal, 10(4), 1-16.
• Baecher, L. & Chung, S. (2019). Transformative professional development for in-service teachers through international service learning. Teacher Development, 1-19.
• McCormack, B., Baecher, L., & Cuenca, A. (2019). University-based teacher supervisors: Their voices, their dilemmas. Journal of Educational Supervision, 2(1). Available at: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/jes/vol2/iss1/2/
• Baecher, L., Kung, S.K., Ward, S., & Kern, K. (2018). Facilitating video analysis for teacher development: A systematic review of the research. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 26(2), 185-216.

• Intensive Teacher Institute-TESOL, Co-PI, 2014-2017 New York State Education Department
• ESL Curriculum Adaptations for Engage NY Learning Modules Curriculum Development , 2015 New York State Education Department
• MOOC on ESL for Elementary School Teachers Curriculum Development, 2014 Kellogg Foundation-TESOL