31, no. 1 (Fall 1999): 1-2
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From the Editor
Elizabeth B. Welles
BRIEFLY described in the ADFL Updates is the new MLA study of college and university departments, Models of Good Practice: A Study of Innovation in Foreign Language Programs in United States Colleges and Universities. The purpose of the project, which is supported by the Mellon Foundation, is to find out what practices or clusters of practices, both traditional and new, are common to many language departments; to determine which practices are the most effective; and to identify departments that organize language education successfully.
The motivation for the project was twofold. First, we had a growing sense of significant changes in the field, confirmed through conversations with colleagues from the MLA's Advisory Committee on Foreign Languages and Literatures and the ADFL Executive Committee and with participants in the ADFL summer seminars. Many developments in, for example, approaches to teaching, in understanding how students learn, in electronic technologies, and in testing procedures for oral production had emerged over the last twenty years or so--roughly since the 1979 President's Commission on Foreign Languages and International Studies. Now faced with fiscal constraints, calls for accountability, a demographically diverse student body, as well as enrollment patterns in which students of Spanish account for more than half of those studying a foreign language, the field is at another turning point. Second, increasing numbers of chairs, who because of these conditions are considering program review, are calling us to find out what effective programs, innovations, and structures have been adopted in departments and institutions like theirs. They are considering traditional practices, such as language requirements; innovations, such as teaching with technology; and restructuring, such as the move from a single language to a multilanguage department (or the reverse). Thus because of external pressures, changes within the field, and requests from colleagues, stocktaking seemed in order.
The creation of the Models of Good Practice survey instrument presented us with something of a dilemma. Surveys are largely concerned with quantifiable information, but many aspects of successful language learning and, therefore, of successful departments are distinctly unquantifiable. How does one measure student interest and motivation? The dynamic teacher? Or the visibility of the department on campus and beyond? One doesn't, we concluded, except by looking at indirect indicators. Further, what makes a successful department? In our experience most departments are successful in educating their students in foreign languages and culture. We decided, in this study, that by successful we meant those departments that were able to produce the most students with an appropriate mastery of language and culture by providing them with a variety of intellectual and experiential opportunities. With many factors in mind, we set out to design a questionnaire that would examine all manner of language program practices: immersion experience; study abroad; a department's work with other departments, with professional schools, and, beyond the campus, with secondary schools and the community; and so on. The study, which follows in the footsteps of a 1997 NEH-funded survey conducted by Renate Schultz, is intended to locate patterns of good or innovative practice and ask about the effects of such large-scale undertakings as the implementation of teaching technology and the establishment of language centers. We plan to publish the results of the survey, which we refer to as phase 1, in the ADFL Bulletin. From the tabulations of the survey we will select for further study, phase 2, a variety of departments that have interesting, original, or successful programs. These program narratives will form the basis of a publication about models of good practice; we hope it will be useful to all departments.
This survey is one of a kind, and whatever its drawbacks, the tabulation and interpretation of the results will tell us a great deal about what the field is doing and doing well. The questionnaire has probably reached your department by now, and I urge department chairs to give it their attention. Your participation in this project will contribute to the shape of the field by providing evidence that will help other department chairs and college administrators make informed decisions about their programs.
Turning now to the contents of the Bulletin, I would like to point out several important aspects of departmental interest, campus concern, and fieldwide enterprise. "Advice to Job Seekers," based on A Preconvention Workshop for Job Seekers and the Mock Interviews for Job Seekers (MLA convention sessions in San Francisco) should be of use to candidates who will begin looking for positions this fall. Elvira García, from a large urban institution; Richard Williamson, from a small liberal arts college; and Fé Brittain, from a community college, tell how it is to be working in their respective environments and offer practical forms of encouragement to candidates seeking jobs in these settings. Lee Skinner, who was an interviewee in a mock interview at the 1998 convention, describes the situation from the other side of the hiring equation, that of the candidate. She discusses her recent (and successful) job search: how she prepared to talk about her dissertation and her teaching, how she responded to unexpected questions, and the perennial discomfort about what to wear to an interview. In regard to what happens after hiring, the report of the 1997 MLA staffing survey describes the deployment of faculty members by rank in relation to the levels of courses they teach and documents the growing use of part-time and full-time non-tenure-track faculty members for undergraduate teaching.
The section "The Nonnative Speaker in the Study of Language and Literature" is introduced by Carol Maier, who organized that session at the last MLA convention; these papers enlarge the discussion about what constitutes a native speaker; about the acceptance of different versions of language; and about the implications of language variations for teaching, learning, and hiring in the field. These same concerns are reflected in the essay of Guadalupe Valdés in the section "Teaching Tolerance: Combating Bigotry." Introduced by George Haggerty, who organized that session at the last MLA convention, these papers confirm the belief of MLA's Task Force on Bigotry that the classroom is the primary site for encouraging a free exchange of views and for learning to understand and tolerate difference.
This issue initiates the Bulletin's forum Standards for Language Learning: Preparing for the Twenty-First Century. The forum addresses the implications of the Standards for language and literature departments in higher education. I would like to thank those who took the time to add their considered opinions to the growing commentary on the Standards enterprise. The total pool of eighteen contributors represents a variety of expertise, languages, and institutional settings. There are nine from PhD-, six from MA-, and two from BA-granting institutions, and one from a two-year institution. The majority are from Spanish, but there are five from French, two from Russian, and one each from German and Chinese. At least two writers can be identified with teacher preparation, six with teaching graduate and upper-level literature and culture courses, and three primarily with language teaching.
In our call for contributions to the forum we suggested a number of rather obvious topics, but our authors, much more creative than we were, wrote about more complicated issues. Though all express positive views, there is a large variation in perspective. Several threads wind their way among these critiques. The most prominent topic, addressed by several with some urgency, is articulation between high schools and colleges; these contributors note, with distress, that much has been said about strengthening connections between these levels and between these institutional cultures but that little has been done. They suggest that the approaches to teaching and learning in the Standards should be used by college-level faculty members to understand secondary school accomplishments and thus to prepare themselves for the new Standards-educated students arriving in college classrooms. Several authors invoke curricular flexibility as a key to the accommodation of approaches implied by the Standards: reorganization of classroom space and course schedules, the inclusion of different kinds of materials (audiovisual media, Internet, textual), a rethinking of student credit hours and faculty workload, and a reconceptualization of the major as preparation for a variety of careers besides teaching.
There is some question about who should be given the responsibility of designing and implementing a Standards-based teaching program, and a fear that this task might be turned over to lower-level faculty members. Without the full participation of senior faculty members the process of integration into the higher-level courses might be impeded. There are cautions about dealing uncritically with innovation and accepting the Standards as doctrine. Some call the Standards "visionary," but others note that their theoretical foundations, goals, and methods have grown out of previous ideas and practices (the prevailing metaphor is "bubbled up")--many colleagues reportedly dismiss the Standards with an "I'm already doing that." To me, the uniqueness of the Standards lies in the way they have put the best of pedagogical thinking and practice into an accessible form that demonstrates the interlocking nature of the various skills in the process of language learning. As David Foster says, the document provides "a cognitive and epistemological model of considerable complexity that [is] intellectually compelling to sectors of the profession other than just the specialists in pedagogy." This is indeed an accomplishment. The publication of and discussion about the Standards offers us a focus for thinking about language education at all levels and is a stimulus for imagining how the field might refashion itself for the future.
© 1999 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
