Professional Biography

Dr. Yuko Butler is the Director of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and Professor in the Educational Linguistics Division at Penn GSE. She serves as a professional consultant on language assessments of young learners at Educational Testing Service (ETS), the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL), and the Eiken Foundation (Japan). She was awarded the National Academy of Education’s Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2004, studying East Asian perspectives on TESOL.

Originally from Tokyo, Dr. Butler earned her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from Stanford University. She worked at their Center for Educational Research as a postdoctoral fellow, and jointly received the 1999 Cognitive Studies in Educational Practice Award for her research on the effects of metacognitive approaches to improve English as a Second Language (ESL) for language minority students. She then taught California’s Crosscultural, Language, and Academic Development certificate program at San Jose State University.

Research Interests and Current Projects

Dr. Butler’s research focuses on second and foreign language development and learning among children. She has been involved in a number of research projects concerning the effect of additional language learning in instructional settings among pre-primary and primary school students in both the United States and East Asia. Much of her work has focused investigating dual- or plurilingual development. She also has been heavily involved with the professional development of language teachers who work with young learners as well as adults.

While taking an ecological approach, Dr. Butler is interested in understanding the roles of various environmental factors and children’s age-related internal factors (such as their cognition and metacognition), as well as the interactions among them when children learn additional languages. She is also interested in understanding how to conduct “research with children” and “assessment with children” – an approach focused on developing more ethical research and assessment practices while trying to grant children greater autonomy than they have been given in traditional research methods.

Her recent research projects include studies on (a) how to incorporate children’s voices into the design of ecologically-valid materials, curricula, and assessments for their second/foreign language learning, and (b) how to invite children to design digital games for their foreign language vocabulary learning in order to maximize their digital knowledge and experience, as well as to give them ownership of and autonomy in their own learning.

Selected Publications

Journal Editorial Boards

Language Awareness
Editorial Board

Language Teaching for Young Learners
Editorial Board

JALT Journal
Editorial Board

Korea TESOL Journal
Editorial Board