1. Introduction
Task-based language teaching (TBLT) is a comprehensive and holistic educational proposal with great potential to improve additional language (L2) teaching in a variety of contexts (Long, Reference Long2015; Norris, Reference Norris and Bygate2015). Despite being firmly grounded in second language acquisition research and educational theory (Long, Reference Long2016; Van den Branden, Reference Van den Branden2022) and despite TBLT’s global reach (East, Reference East2021), its implementation remains uneven across educational systems and regions. To date, most TBLT research has centred on Western Europe (Van den Branden, Reference Van den Branden2006, Reference Van den Branden2022), Asia (Butler, Reference Butler2011; Thomas & Reinders, Reference Thomas and Reinders2015), and, to a lesser extent, Central America (Bryfonski, Reference Bryfonski2024). By comparison, relatively little attention has been devoted to North America, where systematic institutional implementation of TBLT remains scarce, despite notable initiatives in U.S. government language programmes (e.g., Doughty & Pascal, Reference Doughty, Pascal, Ahmadian and Long2021) and individual school and university contexts (e.g., Coss, Reference Coss2025).
This limited uptake is not due to a lack of expertise. North America is home to a growing community of TBLT researchers, teacher educators, and practitioners. However, much of their work has developed through individual institutions and informal collaborations rather than sustained collaborative infrastructure. Opportunities for multi-site research, resource sharing, and coordinated teacher education remain limited. Longstanding concerns about disconnects between applied linguistics research and educational practice further limit opportunities for researchers and practitioners to identify priorities and co-construct classroom-relevant research (Gurzynski-Weiss, Reference Gurzynski-Weiss2024).
These two forms of fragmentation – among researchers and between research and practice – constitute potential sources of research waste (Isaacs & Chalmers, Reference Isaacs and Chalmers2025), as valuable expertise and opportunities for mutually beneficial collaboration remain underutilized. Addressing this problem requires stronger collaborative partnerships, both among researchers (i.e., collaborative research networks) and between researchers and practitioners (i.e., research–practice partnerships; Coburn & Penuel, Reference Coburn and Penuel2016; Hiver & Al-Hoorie, Reference Hiver and Al-Hoorie2026), consistent with recent calls in applied linguistics broadly (e.g., Gurzynski-Weiss, under contract; Sato & Loewen, Reference Sato and Loewen2022) and TBLT specifically (e.g., Kim, Reference Kim2024) to improve the research–practice interface and to pool resources for more rigorous, generalizable, and representative research.
In response to this fragmentation and limited TBLT uptake, and supported by a 2025 NFMLTA/MLJ Roundtable Conference Grant, we convened a two-day roundtable, ‘Building bridges and catalyzing change: Establishing a collaborative research–practice network to enhance task-based language teaching in North America’, held December 15–16, 2025, at Michigan State University (MSU), with co-sponsorship from the MSU College of Arts and Letters, the Second Language Assessment and Curriculum Lab, and the Applied Linguistics Program. The roundtable brought together 24 participants from across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico: researchers, teacher educators, language programme directors, programme administrators, and doctoral students, many holding dual researcher–practitioner roles, spanning commonly and less commonly taught languages (e.g., Spanish and French; Vietnamese, Chinese, and Korean, respectively) and K–16+ educational levels.
The event was intentionally designed as more than just a venue for sharing ongoing research. While the first day showcased current TBLT research projects across five thematic strands, the second day focused on collaboratively identifying research and practice priorities, developing sustainable partnerships, and establishing the foundations of a North American TBLT Collaborative Research–Practice Network. To document the outcomes of this newly established Network, this article synthesizes the major themes emerging from the research presentations and describes the collaborative agenda-setting activities, network-building efforts, and concrete outcomes that have begun to establish a sustainable infrastructure for advancing TBLT research, practice, and teacher education in North America.
2. TBLT research presentations
The first day of the roundtable was organized around five thematic strands representing major areas of current TBLT research and practice in North America. Although each presentation addressed a distinct context or research question, several broader themes emerged across the strands.
2.1. Strand 1: TBLT pedagogy
This strand illustrated an increasingly nuanced understanding of task design, learner perspectives, metalinguistic knowledge, individual differences, and authentic communication.
Caitlyn Pineault (Georgetown University) examined how L2 Chinese learners interpreted interpersonal tasks, highlighting divergences between task designers’ intentions and learners’ perceptions. Kevin Fedewa (MSU) and WeiHsuan Lo (University of Northern Colorado) demonstrated the successful implementation of task-based programmes for beginning-level learners of Korean and Chinese despite practical design challenges. Paul Toth (Temple University) argued for integrating metalinguistic awareness more explicitly into TBLT, while Julio Torres (University of California, Irvine) explored the role of explicit grammatical knowledge and individual learner differences during heritage Spanish learners’ oral task performance.
2.2. Strand 2: TBLT curriculum
Presentations in this strand emphasized the central role of needs analysis and curriculum design in translating TBLT principles into coherent educational programmes across diverse contexts.
Shawn Loewen (MSU) explored the evolving role of synchronous video interaction and generative artificial intelligence (AI) in task-based communication. Hoa Le (Harvard University) and Nicole Ziegler (University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa) presented task-based needs analyses for Vietnamese healthcare communication and Maritime English, respectively, demonstrating how authentic communicative demands can inform curriculum development. Claudia Fernández (University of Illinois, Chicago) illustrated how external programme evaluation can guide ongoing programme enhancement, while Melissa (Florida International University), on behalf of collaborators, described a task-based Spanish curriculum centred on Blackness in Latin America (see Baralt et al., Reference Baralt, Clemons, Anya and Gómez2022).
2.3. Strand 3: outcomes in TBLT
Together, these presentations reflected an increasingly broad conception of learning outcomes in TBLT, extending beyond linguistic development to include communicative competence, professional preparedness, self-efficacy, and learners’ engagement with emerging technologies.
Paula Winke (MSU) demonstrated how group oral assessments can support integrated-skills learning within TBLT. Xinyi Guan (MSU) demonstrated TBLT’s long-term value in developing transferable language and professional communication skills, while YouJin Kim (Georgia State University) examined the potential of generative AI as a task interlocutor across task types. Matt Coss (University of Alabama) argued for broader conceptualizations of TBLT outcomes that incorporate proficiency, learner affect, and longer-term educational trajectories.
2.4. Strand 4: TBLT teacher education
This strand underscored the pivotal role of teacher education in sustaining TBLT implementation, highlighting teachers’ conceptual understanding of tasks, instructional design expertise, and engagement with emerging technologies.
Xavier Gutiérrez (University of Alberta) and Greg Ogilvie (University of Lethbridge) reviewed recent TBLT-oriented teacher education initiatives for pre-service and in-service teachers. Fred Poole (MSU) explored how generative AI can support teachers in designing cross-disciplinary tasks, while María Elena Solares Altamirano (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) examined opportunities and challenges for TBLT teacher education across Mexican educational contexts. Koen Van Gorp (MSU) introduced a collaborative multi-site study examining teachers’ developing understandings of classroom activity types using Bryfonski and Pineault’s (Reference Bryfonski and Pineault2026) Activity Design Typology.
2.5. Strand 5: expanding TBLT research
The final strand highlighted that TBLT research increasingly extends beyond traditional school and university settings to new learner populations and community contexts.
Gabriel Michaud (Université de Montréal) outlined a research agenda linking task design and learner engagement among adult immigrants in immigrant-serving programmes, while Ellen Serafini (George Mason University) proposed a model for task-based needs analysis in community-based heritage language education to promote learner agency and social equity.
Taken together, the presentations revealed a vibrant and rapidly expanding TBLT landscape in North America, characterized by diverse educational contexts, innovative research agendas, and a shared commitment to advancing both theory and practice. At the same time, they highlighted substantial opportunities for greater collaboration across institutions, stakeholder groups, and research programmes, providing a compelling rationale for the network-building activities that formed the focus of the second day of the roundtable.
3. Building the network
The second day focused on collaborative agenda setting and network development. Rather than functioning as a traditional conference or workshop, we sought to identify shared priorities and establish mechanisms for sustained collaboration.
Laura Gurzynski-Weiss (Indiana University) invited participants to reflect on TBLT as a researched pedagogy and to collaboratively envision future directions, shifting attention from individual projects towards collective reflection for the field.
Next, the conveners (Matt Coss and Koen Van Gorp) led the group through a research-and-practice priorities agenda-setting activity. Working in deliberately heterogeneous groups representing different educational contexts and research expertise, participants identified and prioritized future directions according to both perceived importance and feasibility. The resulting priorities suggested a broad consensus regarding the most pressing opportunities for advancing TBLT research and implementation in North America. These priorities will be refined through a Delphi process and will form the basis of the network’s initial action agenda (Coss et al., in preparation).
Participants then shared overviews of ongoing and emerging collaborative TBLT initiatives across North America, each offering avenues for the sustained involvement of network members. These included a proposed TBLT micro-credential providing portable, skills-focused certification for language teachers (Baralt); a petition to establish a TBLT Special Interest Group within ACTFL (formerly the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) (Fernández and Coss); a practitioner-oriented book addressing common myths about TBLT (Fernández and Coss) and a planned edited volume on TBLT for and with practitioners (Coss); the Task-based Researchers and Educators Collaboration group (Gutiérrez and Bryfonski); a curated collection of practitioner-accessible summaries of TBLT research in the open-access OASIS database (PineaultFootnote 1); the TBLT Task Bank, including its workshop series and multi-site research partnerships (Gurzynski-Weiss, see Gurzynski-Weiss & Pineault, Reference Gurzynski-Weiss and Pineault2025); and a shared repository of teacher-facing TBLT presentations and successful practitioner conference proposals (Coss).
The final component of the day focused on developing future collaborative research. Participants pitched early-stage project ideas specifically to identify opportunities for cross-institutional collaboration, methodological refinement, and resource sharing. Project pitches addressed topics including critical TBLT, teacher cognition, activity design, early childhood education, community-based heritage language programmes, research–practice partnerships, online TBLT, and methodological innovation. The diversity of proposed projects demonstrated not only the breadth of current TBLT research but also participants’ willingness to move beyond individual institutional agendas towards coordinated multi-site research efforts.
The collaborative activities of the second day transformed the roundtable from a venue for disseminating research into a catalyst for capacity building and sustained collaboration. The network aims to connect researchers, teacher educators, practitioners, and graduate students across institutions while supporting collaborative research, teacher education, shared resources, practitioner engagement, and dissemination. By developing shared priorities, connecting complementary initiatives, and generating ideas for new multi-institutional research projects, participants began establishing such a collaborative network across North America.
4. Outcomes and next steps
The roundtable generated several immediate scholarly outcomes while laying the foundations for sustained collaborative capacity in North American TBLT. First, a guest-edited special issue on TBLT in North America (Eds. Coss and Van Gorp), tentatively titled Task-Based Language Teaching in North America: Current and Future Directions in Research, Practice, and Research-Practice Collaboration, is in preparation, bringing together researchers, practitioners, and scholar-practitioners to synthesize current research and chart future directions. Second, the network will put forth a tentative agenda of research-and-practice priorities for TBLT in North America for further refinement. Third, the network committed to sustaining collaboration through regular meetings and continued engagement at academic and practitioner conferences (e.g., the Second Language Research Forum and the ACTFL Special Interest Group).
Beyond these immediate scholarly products, perhaps the most significant outcome of the roundtable was the establishment of collaborative capacity for future TBLT research and practice. By connecting researchers, teacher educators, language programme leaders, and practitioners across institutions, languages, and educational sectors, the network has begun to create the relationships, shared expertise, and organizational infrastructure needed to support multi-site research, collaborative teacher education, practitioner-engaged scholarship, and coordinated dissemination efforts. By uniting previously disparate initiatives and deliberately including practitioners and teacher educators as equal contributors, the roundtable represents a first step towards breaking down the silos that have limited TBLT’s uptake in North American language education. Together, these initiatives strengthen the collaborative capacity of the North American TBLT community to generate, coordinate, implement, and disseminate high-quality task-based research and practice. We hope the network, as well as the research agenda it has begun to chart, will serve as a model for advancing TBLT as a researched pedagogy in North America and beyond.
