Dr. Pamela M. Wesely is a Professor of Multilingual Education and the Associate Dean for Faculty and Graduate Education in the College of Education at the University of Iowa. Dr. Wesely’s scholarship and teaching examines K-12 world language education in the United States. Innovation is a key area of interest in her work, particularly pedagogical innovation that departs from the grammar-based curriculum, like content-based instruction, instruction focused on comprehensible input, social justice education, and technology integration in the language classroom. Building on eight years of work as a middle school French teacher and eleven years working in the experiential learning environment of Concordia Language Villages in Minnesota, she studies the attitudes, motivations, perceptions, and beliefs of stakeholders in K-12 world language education using mixed methods, quantitative, and qualitative approaches to inquiry.

Her work has been published in journals including Foreign Language Annals, Modern Language Journal, Journal of Teacher Education, CALICO Journal, Language Teaching Research, and Journal of Mixed Methods Research. She is the co-author of Words and Actions: Teaching Languages Through the Lens of Social Justice (ACTFL, 2014, 2018) and the author of The Beliefs and Experiences of World Language Teachers in the US (Multilingual Matters 2024). She served as the co-director of the Center for Translation and Global Literacy from 2022-2026, a National Resource Center funded through the Department of Education. She is a former Treasurer and member of the Board of Directors of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), as well as a former president of the Iowa World Language Association.