Dawn Heston

Dawn Heston is an Associate Teaching Professor of Spanish and Director of Graduate Studies for the Master of Arts in Language Teaching at the University of Missouri. She is affiliated with the College of Arts and Science and the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, within the Department of Spanish.

Education: PhD in Learning, Teaching, and Curriculum (2018); Master of Arts in Spanish with Emphasis in Language Teaching (2003).

Research focuses on biliteracy, dual language education, and scaffolding reading strategies. She has conducted classroom observation studies in dual language programs and contributed to Spanish-language textbook development. Her work emphasizes authentic materials, communicative language teaching, and teacher training for novice instructors.

Key projects include a 2015 inter-campus online graduate seminar on multilingual education (collaborating with Drs. Flore Zéphir and Angie Zapata) and participation in the U.S. Department of Education’s National Professional Development Grant (2018–2020), which supported Missouri K-12 educators working with English Learners through workshops like “Constructing Scaffolds for Language Learners.”

Teaching responsibilities include elementary/intermediate Spanish language courses and graduate-level methodologies such as “Building Language Skills in Multilingual Classrooms.”