QFI Releases New Report on Teaching Arabic as a Global Language in U.S. K-12 Classrooms

Washington, D.C., June 2026 - Qatar Foundation International (QFI) announced the publication of Teaching Arabic as a Global Language in U.S. K-12 Settings: How do Teacher Identity and Critical Language Awareness Matter?

The report contributes to QFI’s research agenda and to the broader field of Arabic language education by addressing the need for more classroom-based research on how Arabic is taught and learned in U.S. K-12 settings.

Authored by Lourdes Ortega, Saurav Goswami, Hina Ashraf, Rima Elabdali, and Esha Mukherjee, the report examines the readiness, experiences, and needs of Arabic language teachers in the United States. It focuses on how Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Colloquial Arabic are incorporated together in K-12 classrooms to support communicative and intercultural competence.

The study draws on 143 complete survey responses from Arabic teachers across K-12 and higher education, along with in-depth interviews with a subset of teachers working in U.S. K-12 contexts. By foregrounding teacher voices, the report adds important evidence to a growing body of research on Arabic language education in U.S. K-12 settings.

The findings highlight the highly educated, multilingual, and fully qualified educators who teach Arabic in the United States. They also show that teachers’ approaches to integrating MSA and dialects are shaped by classroom context, student needs, teacher identity, and broader understandings of Arabic as a global language.

Teachers identified three meaningful reasons for integrating dialects into Arabic instruction: to bond with and support heritage students, to foster greater out-of-class communicative competence, and to cultivate students’ love for the Arab world and Arab cultures.

The report’s findings can inform future research, teacher preparation, professional development, curriculum design, and classroom practice. They also help the field better understand how Arabic’s many varieties can be taught in ways that are communicative, culturally meaningful, and responsive to students’ linguistic and learning needs.

Read the full report here.