The last two decades have seen an increased interest in translation and interpret ing pedagogy, evidenced by the number of conferences, journals, and publica tions devoted to this area of translation studies. In consonance with that trend, the American Translation and Interpreting Studies Association selected pedagogy as the theme of its tenth anniversary conference, held on March 29–31, 2012, at the University of Texas, Brownsville and Texas Southmost College. The idea for this volume emerged as a natural consequence of this gathering of scholars. The editors are grateful to the presenters and the participants who at the time responded to a call for conference presentations. In addition to seeding efforts at the conference, the editors posted calls for papers on national and international scholarly websites and networks, and at universities and colleges involved in interpreting and transla tion education and research. The editors also approached other scholars who had previously worked in the areas of teaching and learning translation and interpret ing in both spoken and signed languages. As mentioned above, ATISA VI and this volume are a response to increased interest in the teaching of translation and interpreting not only within translation studies but also in related fields. This interest is in great part due to the emer gence and affirmation of translation and interpreting studies as an academic field throughout the world and to the growth in the number and impact of programs devoted to the teaching of translation and interpreting. As a result, teachers of translation and interpreting ponder the most effective pedagogical methods while researchers investigate how students actually learn to translate and interpret and what methods are more conducive to that learning. The nature of the issues and questions raised is extremely varied, cutting across a broad range of disciplines and research paradigms. Some are as general as those emerging from current dis cussions on educational philosophies and the nature of knowledge and learning (see for instance Kiraly’s work and his article in the current volume), while others are more specific, such as those that examine program and curriculum design, re search translation and interpreting competence and acquisition, and propose new teaching methodologies and approaches. As in other academic fields, the role of new technologies (and how they impact teaching and learning) is more important than ever before and must therefore be considered in any translation and inter preting pedagogy (cf. Jiménez-Crespo’s article and references therein). This volume aims to contribute to this body of knowledge by addressing some of the above-mentioned issues in connection with teaching and learning in trans lation and interpreting classrooms and programs. This collection of papers ex plores these issues across languages and settings (from university classrooms to online learning environments), with a focus on both processes and products. All of the contributors are researchers and educators of either translation or interpret ing — or both. Opening this collection of articles, Donald Kiraly builds on his keynote ad dress at ATISA VI in a broad-ranging paper dealing with the very nature of knowl edge and learning, (“Occasioning Translator Competence: Moving Beyond Social Constructivism Towards a Postmodern Alternative to Instructionism”). In chart ing the transition from conventional ways of teaching translation to more modern approaches, Kiraly describes early teaching methods as the chalk-and-talk ap proach, based on the instructor providing material and the students translating that material. The main criticism of the chalk-and-talk approach is that it does not provide any authentic “real-world” experience. Kiraly goes on to explain the various methods of teaching translation and how each method uses and focuses on different parts of a person’s knowledge. For instance, the chalk-and-talk in structional method is based on the idea that knowledge is found in one’s mind, while postpositivist instruction focuses on the knowledge that can be discovered. The author suggests an Initial Postmodern Model that links learning with experi ence. The main tenet of this model is that learning is not the direct result of teach ing; namely, knowledge is a dynamic emergent construct created by the learner in interaction with the social environment. This postpositivist worldview (Initial Postmodern Model) is what Kiraly believes should underlie translation pedagogy.
