Sarah Jey Whitehead began studying second language acquisition as an undergraduate at Bennington College, where she learned to understand qualitative data through discourse analysis. Having spent time in Spain and Peru, she became proficient in Spanish and earned her Master’s degree in teaching Spanish through Bennington College’s Center for Creative Teaching. After teaching in public charter schools for three years, where she developed a three-year concept-based Spanish curriculum, she was accepted to the University of Texas at Austin’s department of Foreign Language Education and offered a recruitment fellowship.

Dr. Whitehead's current research focuses specifically on the construction of authenticity in the foreign language classroom. Specifically, she is fascinated with two aspects of authenticity: The first aspect is that in foreign language classrooms, much (if not most) of what is said in the foreign language is for practice rather than for socially meaninful interaction: That is, foreign language students are often indoctrinated into a classroom culture in which the foreign language carries little socially-urgent value. The second aspect relates to the rather ubiquitous assumption that all things "authentic" imported into the foreign language classroom from afar carry inherent value. Sarah's current research makes use of ecological, sociocultural, and critical theories to investigate the construct(ion) of authenticity in the foreign language classroom.

Dr. Whitehead is also interested in curricular design (especially Backwards Design) and pedagogical theory, and applies her vast knowledge of educational theory to her continually developing practice. These are also skills she brings to her organization and supervision of Intermediate Spanish course (610D).

In her free time, she attends as many UT women's basketball games as she is able, and plays basketball in a local women's league.