Arturo Escandon studied Mass Media in Santiago, Chile, at one of the most prestigious Media Studies schools of the country, ARCIS, focusing on Narrative & Communication Theory, and Semiotics. He gradually moved into the field of education, first specialising in the production and direction of educational television, and then as a practitioner teaching foreign languages. He completed his Master of Arts in Open & Distance Education (Open University, UK) in 2002, and since then has being involved in the research and development of distributed and collaborative learning systems using communication and information technologies.

While in Japan, Arturo Escandon has extensively researched one of the most intriguing problems foreign-language educators face at the tertiary level in the country, that of learners' resistance to education/learning, basing his approach on the works of Pierre Bourdieu and L.S. Vygotsky, as well as on an array of socio-cultural approaches to analysing learning.

He began his doctoral studies at University of Bath's (UK) Department of Education in 2005, and is currently engaged in assessing contradictions, disturbances and innovations in foreign-language activity systems at the tertiary level in Japan using Basil Bernstein's theories of pedagogic code. His research interests embrace Socio-cultural and Activity Theory, socialisation issues in foreign-language learning, learners’ resistance to education/learning , constructivist learning environments, distributed learning and issues of learning transfer to work environments.

Currently he teaches Spanish as a foreign language and Spanish & Latin American Culture at Ritsumeikan University, Japan, where he has pioneered  a comprehensive Spanish-language curriculum using computer assisted learning systems. He has contributed essays to Spanish Instituto Cervantes and the Spanish International Co-operation Agency's journal Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos. He also was a fellow researcher of the Center for Latin American Studies at Nanzan University, Japan.