Juan Carlos Rocha Osornio

Dr. Juan Carlos Rocha Osornio is an Associate Professor of Spanish (Teaching Stream), in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese + Latin American Studies. He completed his Bachelor's degree in Spanish and English Language and Literature, and Master's degree in Spanish at Texas A&M University-Commerce (Commerce, Texas, USA). He then moved to Canada to complete his Ph.D. in Hispanic Studies at Western University (London, Ontario, Canada). In addition, he holds certificates on Sexuality, Culture, and Society from the University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands), Spanish as Foreign Language Pedagogy from Universidad de Salamanca (Spain), and on Effective College Instruction from the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE) and the American Council on Education (ACE).

He is currently the President of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish & Portuguese (AATSP), Chapter Ontario, Canada, and Co-Founder of the Canadian Spanish Teaching Assistant Dialogues (CASTAD), an inter-university initiative that has been co-organized since 2017 by the Department of Spanish & Portuguese at the University of Toronto and the Department of Languages and Cultures at Western University. More than a conference on language teaching, CASTAD has created a collegial space for graduate students working as teaching assistants in Spanish courses in Canadian universities to share their experience and learnings in the classroom.

His research focuses mainly on two areas: Foreign Language Pedagogy (Teaching and Learning of Spanish and English as Foreign Languages), and on Mexican History, Literature, and Culture. He is the author of El espacio torcido en la narrativa mexicana de temática homosexual masculina (2015), a book published by Verbum Editores (Madrid, Spain), where he analyzes the work of four Mexican writers that deal with the topic of male homosexuality. In recent years, he has also conducted research and published peer-reviewed articles on Spanish for Chinese Speakers, Community-Engaged Learning, Telecollaboration (Language Virtual Exchange or E-TANDEM), Teachers' Training Programs, Affective Dimension, Intercultural Competence, and Open Educational Resources. In the past, he has coordinated the Spanish Language Sequence Program in our Department.