Rate My Professor Leonardo Veliz

Associate Professor Leonardo Veliz is an educator in the School of Education at the University of New England, Australia, specializing in Learning, Teaching and Inclusive Education. He possesses qualifications comprising a Certificate IV in TESOL, Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Education (Secondary), Master of Arts, and PhD. A qualified secondary school teacher, Veliz has accrued extensive practical experience in highly diverse educational contexts spanning the United Kingdom, South America, and Australia. His academic trajectory exceeds 15 years, encompassing appointments in Australia and overseas institutions, where he has advanced scholarship in teacher education and linguistically diverse classrooms.

Veliz's research interests lie within multilingual and multicultural education, culturally responsive pedagogies for English as an Additional Language or Dialect (EAL/D) learners, multiple literacies across diverse settings, and initial language teacher education. An academic member of the Language, Literacy and Pedagogy Strategic Research Group, he has undertaken leadership as Head of the Curriculum Department. His teaching responsibilities cover Inclusive Education, Teaching for Cultural Diversity, Planning and Assessment, Language, Literature and Literacy, Research Methods, and TESOL-EAL/D. Veliz has edited prominent volumes including Multiculturalism and Multilingualism in Education (Brill, 2024), Global Perspectives on Multilingualism in Early Childhood Education (IGI Global, 2022), Language Teacher Agency: Navigating Complex and Contingent Realities (forthcoming, 2025), and Reimagining Literacies Pedagogy in the Twenty-First Century (Bloomsbury, forthcoming). Select peer-reviewed publications feature 'Enduring and thriving: migrant teachers' counter-narratives of resilience and persistence' (2026, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development), 'An exploration of language teachers' multilingual identities in Australia' (2025, Language Awareness), 'Early Childhood Educators' Pedagogical Knowledge for Multilingual Learners' (2025, Early Childhood Education Journal), 'On the teachability of figurative language: teachers’ perceptions of the role of metaphor in English language teaching in Chile' (2021, Colombian Journal of Applied Linguistics), 'Translanguaging as a pedagogy for equity, inclusion and social justice in a multilingual classroom' (2021, IGI Global), and 'A Socio-Semiotic Analysis of Latino Migrants’ Metaphorical Conceptualizations of Language Learning' (2019, Journal of Latinos and Education). His scholarship influences practices in inclusive pedagogies and professional preparation for multilingual education.