Dr. Terry Osborn

Terry A. Osborn, Ph.D., is Vice Chancellor for Academic and Student Affairs and Professor of Education at the University of South Florida at Sarasota–Manatee. Dr. Osborn joined USFSM in 2010 as Dean of the College of Education. Osborn was instrumental in the development of the arts-integrated identify and focus for the College, and founded the Center for Partnerships for Arts-Integrated Teaching (PAInT), securing community support, state appropriations, and philanthropic gifts to fund this unique college-wide approach to educator preparation, the only one of its kind. In 2013, the Center was recognized with the Innovation in Teacher Education Award presented by the Southeastern Regional Association of Teacher Educators. In 2016, the Center was codified in Florida law to serve educational institutions statewide.

Dr. Osborn is an internationally-recognized scholar of language education and critical pedagogy, having published a dozen books and 34 articles and chapters, serving as editor of 6 academic book series, and as the founding co-editor international journal Critical Inquiry in Language Studies. He has served on the editorial advisory board or as reviewer for approximately 15 scholarly journals. Dr. Osborn’s scholarly work on critical reflection and the world language classroom received the American Educational Studies Association Critics’ Choice Award and his publication on interdisciplinary curriculum and instruction received the NECTFL Stephen Freeman Award for the best published article on language teaching techniques.

Published reviews of his scholarship offer insight into his work:

  • Osborn presents the field of language education with a challenge—a challenge to think and act beyond the confines of prejudice, poverty, hegemony, privilege, and the status quo of our language classrooms, and a challenge to reach out and embrace the one aspect which makes us all equal and unique at the same time: the human spirit.
  • Rather than a top-down approach to education, in which academic elites dictate educational goals, Osborn suggests a grass-roots education which springs from the values and needs of the people being educated. His call to “trust the people” is simultaneously inspiring and probably unsettling to many in academia.
  • In Critical Reflection and the Foreign Language Classroom, Terry Osborn did a wonderful job introducing critical theories and critical pedagogical concepts in a highly accessible, teacher- friendly language, drawing on examples and contexts familiar to the foreign language educator.
  • Osborn’s work represents a wonderful addition to the library of any critical pedagogue-language educators and teacher educators alike convinced that the field of foreign language education has much more to offer to individual citizens of democratic states than what it currently does.
  • Dr. Osborn also serves as the Executive Director of the Florida Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (FACTE), the state affiliate of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE). He served as President of both the International Society for Language Studies and the Language Studies Foundation. Dr. Osborn has been a featured or keynote speaker at universities and education conferences for two decades and previously taught foreign language in the public schools. He held certification as a secondary teacher in Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee.