Dr. Loretta Fernandez grew up in Caracas, Venezuela, where she obtained her high school diploma, Bachiller en Humanidades. Later, she moved to Italy due to the political instability in Venezuela, and she studied at the Universita degli Studi di Palermo, majoring foreign languages and literatures with an emphasis in English, Spanish, and Italian. She then received her Ph.D. in Language, Literacy, and Culture at the University of Pittsburgh School of Education, with a specialization in understanding learning processes to improve teaching (Specifically, she applies Sociocultural Theory and Systemic Functional Linguistics to understand language learning).
While her early career was mainly concerned with teaching Spanish and English in Palermo high schools (which were schools located in areas of high poverty and mafia presence), she also worked in many educational projects to promote Foreign Language Learning in different European countries (e.g. Spain, France, Belgium, Lithuania, Hungary, Portugal) that were financed by the European Union. During that period, she also taught Spanish at the University of Palermo and in public high schools. When she moved to Pittsburgh, she worked at Duquesne University and the University of Pittsburgh.
She collaborates with different universities and researchers in South America (Chile, Uruguay, and Colombia), Italy, China, and the United States. In terms of research, she is interested in tools that assist teaching and learning; in particular, she has researched gaming in learning, how we learn grammar in different languages, and multimodalities and multiliteracies. In her research, she uses a theory-based approach with sociocultural theory and systemic functional linguistics as keys to interpreting and understanding learning processes.
Dr. Fernandez believes that helping students learn better is an instrument of equity and justice. Poor learning processes lead to disparity and inequality and thus fail our students opportunities to dismantle systems of oppression.
Fernández, L. & Christensen, J. (2023). Cultural Historical and Critical Psychology: Book review of Fleer, Gonzalez Rey, and Jones (Eds.), 2020. Language and Sociocultural Theory, 9 (1).
Fernández, L. (2022). Learning through interacting: The Vygotskyian perezhivanie for learning Italian in typified situations. L2 Journal, 14(3)
Cheng, H.C. & Fernández, L. (2022). Applying “The Flat Stanley Project” into Chinese Language Learning. K-12 Chinese Language Teaching, 5. https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/66661847/k-12-chinese-language-teaching-issue-5
Fernández, L. (2021) The Use of Typified Situations to teach Foreign Languages. System, 94. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2021.102473
Fernández, L. (2021) Multiliteracies and multimodality in teaching a literature classic. Contingencies, Journal of Global Pedagogy. 1(1).
Fernández, L. (2021) Developing oral interaction through the generic structure of typified situations: An Italian study abroad case study. In F. Troyan, Ed. Genre Matters in World Language Education: Contextualized World Language Assessment and Learning. New York, N.Y.: Routledge.
Taguchi, N., Fernández, L., & Yuechun, X. (In Press, Jan. 2021 expected) Systemic functional linguistics applied to L2 pragmatics assessment: Analysis of advice-giving in written discourse. In Taguchi, N. (ed.) New directions for researching, teaching, and assessing L2 pragmatics. Boston (MA): de Gruyter- Mouton.
Fernández, L. & Donato, R. (2020) Interacting with SCOBAs: Beginner learners of foreign language use of a pedagogical tool. Language and Sociocultural Theory. 7 (1).
Fernández, L. (2018) Qualitative Interview Analysis: The Use of Systemic Functional Linguistics to Reveal Functional Meanings. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 19 (3), art. 6.
Fernández, L. (2017). Learning Another Language with Conceptual Tools: An Investigation of Gal’perin’s Concept-Oriented Instruction (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh, PA.