Learning to learn, teach and develop : co-emergent perspectives on translator and language-mediator education

Whether as mentorships, work placements or intra-curricular learning scenarios like translation projects, student translation companies and agency simulators, authentic experiential learning has enjoyed widespread and growing advocacy in translator and language-mediator education. Predicated on the assumption that only through deliberate and reflective practice in and beyond the curriculum can the adaptive expertise necessary to the professional activity of translation and language mediation evolve, authentic experiential learning has its epistemological roots in social-constructivist and, later, emergentist models of competence development. This talk will consider actual applications and potential implications of co-emergent perspectives on teaching and learning for student, staff and organizational development. It will sketch out an integrated framework for student and staff interactions with communities of practice, on the one hand, and with applied (action) research, on the other, in order to empower institutions and their human resources to adopt a more transformative role in educating not only future and current translators and other language mediators, but also their teachers and the organizations in and with which they work