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IN DEPARTMENTS of foreign language across the United States, the language program has often been a contested area. On the one hand, language courses are perceived to deal with “skills” rather than content and thus to be less worthy of faculty engagement than upper-division courses in literature, culture, and linguistics. On the other hand, it is recognized that language programs are closely related to the overall foreign language curricula, both by the students they attract into more advanced courses and by the foundation they lay for advanced work. Additionally, lower-division courses are the primary training arena for graduate students preparing for a career in postsecondary language teaching. The ambiguous position of language programs within departments has been associated with a serious lack of coherence in undergraduate curricula as well as with a division of labor whereby language courses are relegated to graduate students and to lecturers or adjunct faculty members while literature and culture courses are taught by ladder-rank professors (Patrikis). These issues have generated intense interest and discussion within the profession, and faculties continue to struggle with them locally.
The Language Program Director (LPD) is situated at the intersection of language programs and upper-division work, and the construction of this position reflects the way a department situates its language program with respect to its curriculum as a whole. While LPDs have often been hired with the expectation that they will single-handedly oversee the language program, thereby freeing other faculty members from engagement with it, this pattern is currently being challenged. A growing interest in integrated curricula, where intellectual content is included from the beginning and language development continues through all levels, calls into question the LPD’s role as administrator of a service program and suggests ways in which the LPD can fruitfully contribute to the department beyond the language program. However, institutional practices of hiring, tenure, workload, and so on can enormously complicate the hiring and retention of the LPD colleague, whose research profile may be less obviously critical to the department than excellent administrative abilities. Additionally, faculty members trained in literary criticism or even theoretical linguistics may find it difficult to knowledgeably evaluate the research of a colleague trained in education, second language acquisition, or applied linguistics.
This essay explores some of the issues that attend the decision to recruit an LPD: What should the LPD’s responsibilities be? Should the LPD be a tenure-track faculty member? If so, what are reasonable requirements for tenure? If not, what conditions will best support an LPD’s work? The answers to these questions depend not only on the good will of the department but also on practices and policies that vary greatly among institutions (e.g., requirements for tenure, the flexibility of the tenure and promotion system, the availability of alternate appointment structures, and support and resource allocation for undergraduate instruction). With such variations in mind, I am less interested in arguing for a single appointment structure than in exploring a number of factors that bear on the LPD’s ability to meet the department’s needs.
It is important to recognize that the much-discussed split between language and literature is the result of institutional and historical pressures (Freed and Bernhardt; Patrikis) rather than a consequence of necessarily divergent priorities. Most faculty members in foreign language departments today were trained during or following the period when language teaching was dominated by the Audio-Lingual Method (ALM). To be sure, there was tension between the linguistic and literary missions of language departments even before ALM, but proponents of ALM, by insisting that the authority for language in7truction should lie with applied linguists and psychologists, helped entrench today’s division of labor. The overwhelmingly pragmatic emphasis of ALM, which aimed at training students to communicate effectively with native speakers, contrasted with the less easily quantifiable aesthetic and intellectual goals of the study of foreign literatures and cultures. Additionally, the era of ALM coincided with the postwar increase in graduate enrollments that both spurred and was facilitated by the institutionalization of TA labor, thus further separating faculty members from language teaching.
Increasingly, the administrative and curricular separation of language programs from the study of language, culture, and linguistics has been called into question. Dorothy James, for example, suggested that the relegation of language courses to teaching assistants, lecturers, and adjunct faculty members was in part responsible for declining enrollments in foreign languages and that ladder faculty members ought to be engaged in language teaching. In one of many responses to James’s article, Yvonne Ozello and Elaine Marks argued that the problem was not solely one of disinterest in language teaching on the part of ladder faculty members. Language teachers, they charged, must address “the shocking lack of intellectual content in many language classes and textbooks [. . .], the inanity of exercises focused at the sentence level, the repetition of oversimplified, context-free grammar rules, and the use of trivial, factual cultural tidbits” (64). This exchange reflects the effect our divided system has on academic programming. In an institutional structure that devalues undergraduate teaching, it is a challenge to attract gifted, well-prepared teachers; support their efforts; and reward them for excellent work. Thus, if departments fail to recognize the potential of language courses for transformative education, they may leave those courses to professionals whose administrative skills guarantee trouble-free operation but who, whether because of alienation from departmental life, lack of institutional support for professional and intellectual growth, excessive demands on their energies, or inadequate training, fail to build programs that adequately support the articulation between language classes and advanced study.1 Thus stereotypes about language instruction (and language teachers) are reinforced, and the gulf between language instruction and advanced study is perpetuated.
In recent years a growing number of scholars in foreign language education have advocated curricula that build both intellectual content and language development into language instruction. For example, Claire Kramsch (Context) argues that language study should be seen not only as the project of building linguistic accuracy and fluency but also as an “initiation into a kind of social practice that is at the boundary of two or more cultures” Û9). Her emphasis on language as social practice is echoed by Richard Kern’s reconceptualization of foreign language literacy as a set of socially, historically, and culturally situated practices that enable students to “encounter [. . .] new values, norms, and world views” 378). Janet Swaffar argues for foreign languages as “a discipline [. . .] that asks the question, How do individuals and groups use words and other sign systems in context to intend, negotiate, and create meanings?” (6). Putting theory into practice, Heidi Byrnes (Developing) describes a curriculum revision project in German that eliminates the traditional distinction between upper-division and lower-division courses by integrating intellectual content from the beginning of instruction and supporting language development through the most advanced levels. Patricia Chaput describes the process of developing a language sequence in Russian with cultural content at its center.
Running through these diverse but complementary perspectives is the conviction that language instruction must go beyond the pragmatic goal of teaching language skills as a basis for some later pursuit (travel, business, diplomacy, study of literature, etc.) and offer students an intellectual experience that is valuable in itself. This orientation has both pragmatic and intellectual implications for departments of foreign languages and literatures. Even if one were not persuaded that it isıa good thing to offer intellectual content as well as linguistic skill-building to students who will discontinue their language training after completing the language requirement, it should seem clear that intellectually grounded, content-oriented language courses would better prepare students for advanced work and perhaps even attract promising students to the major or minor. At a time when many departments are defending their language courses against pressures to outsource them or to move them into separate units, an integrated curriculum lends credibility to our claim that language courses are essential to the project of departments of national languages and cultures and that their location within our departments guarantees academic oversight of the programs. Integrated curricula also offer graduate teaching assistants the opportunity to be involved in curriculum development and the teaching of critical perspectives in a way that is not possible when they are limited to teaching communicative skills.
A commitment to integrated curricula also has substantial implications for the LPD’s position. In the conventional construction of the position, the LPD’s responsibilities are overwhelmingly administrative—arranging schedules, ordering materials, writing syllabi, training and supervising instructors, and ensuring that the language program runs smoothly without imposing on other faculty members. In many cases, the LPD is not considered a faculty member, is excluded from departmental decision making, and has no voice in curricular issues beyond the language program. There is, in this arrangement, little opportunity for other faculty members to collaborate with the LPD on developing intellectually coherent programs from the beginning courses through the completion of the major, yet, without such a collaborative effort, it is difficult to imagine how to integrate language courses into a broader curricular plan. Sharing in the development of a common vision for the departmental curriculum allows the LPD to develop the language sequence congruently with the department’s educational aims and to offer valuable insights from an area of expertise central to fulfilling the department’s mission.
When an LPD is to be hired, departments have the opportunity to reflect on their curricular vision, the language program’s place in it, their expectations of the LPD, and their commitment to supporting the intellectual and professional growth that is crucial to an LPD’s effectiveness. Thinking through these issues allows a faculty to articulate its curricular goals and to become better aware of the articulation between lower-division programs and advanced classes. It can also set the stage for a fruitful long-term collaboration between an LPD and other faculty members, resulting in innovative, intellectually rewarding language programs, substantive TA training, and better programmatic articulation at all levels.
Before considering how an LPD appointment might be structured, it may be useful to review the typical activities of an LPD. These fall into three general categories: teaching and program direction, training and supervision, and professional engagement within and beyond the home institution. Each of these covers a range of activities. Like any faculty member, an LPD will be more active in some of these areas than in others, and the distribution of activities will vary with experience, institutional needs, shifting professional interests, and so on.
Teaching and Program Direction
The most obvious part of an LPD’s work is the administration of the language program. In addition to the pragmatic duties of arranging classes, schedules, materials, and so on, LPDs must also set standards for the language courses and maintain an acceptable level of consistency across sections, while still encouraging instructors’ autonomy and individual judgment. Additionally, the LPD may teach outside the language program, including advanced undergraduate or graduate classes in applied linguistics, language, and pedagogy.
What is less visible is the background work that informs high-quality programs. Byrnes (“Constructing”) distinguishes between those programs that substitute a textbook or a methodology for a curriculum and those whose curricula are thoughtfully constructed in response to student needs and educational aims. A reflective, needs-sensitive approach to the development of intellectually grounded curricula is among the most critical contributions that LPDs can make to departments; but if they are to develop and maintain programs that incorporate the department’s intellectual aims, they must be engaged with currents of thought that bear on their work. They must remain abreast of current research and theories in second language acquisition as well as contemporary theories and methods for the teaching of oral interactional skills, reading, and writing. They must be familiar with theories and practices of language assessment and with the literature on learner variables in language learning. Additionally, they must be active readers within the target culture and literature in order to inform their own perspectives, design intellectually grounded courses, and identify texts for student reading and as background reading for instructors. Finally, as technology plays an increasing role in education, the LPD needs to approach new technologies with an educated and critical perspective, to be aware of technology-based resources and materials, and to make appropriate choices among them. None of these activities loses its importance once a program is established. Rather, the LPD must constantly revise the program to keep it congruent with the evolution of the target language and culture, theories of language acquisition and teaching, new technologies, materials, and institutional and student needs.
Training and Supervision of Instructors
The LPD is charged with providing the training and supervision necessary to ensure competent instruction and acceptable convergence among sections, whether they are taught by TAs, experienced lecturers, or some combination of the two. TA training, however, goes well beyond mere supervision. A 1993 study of TA training (Gorell and Cubillos) revealed that TA training was directed much more toward the needs of institutions than toward preparing graduate students to be self-reliant and knowledgeable practitioners. However, in an increasingly tight job market and at a time when theory and knowledge about second language acquisition and teaching are rapidly expanding, it is no longer sufficient to train TAs to follow a single method or approach (Freed and Bernhardt; Azevado; Guthrie). Rather, TA education must prepare future professionals to reflect knowledgeably on the theoretical and pragmatic underpinnings of teaching practice and on the intellectual content of courses and curricula (Rifkin; Barnett and Cook; Pons; Kinginger). Thus the training course must cover topics such as theories of second language acquisition, the history of language-teaching methods in the United States, an introduction to relevant fields of research, and a sense of the critical discussions now shaping the profession. Additionally, as increasing numbers of employers look for candidates with some knowledge and experience in technology-supported instruction, TAs must become familiar with new technologies and be prepared to think critically about their influence on teaching and learning. These demands require a conscientious LPD to stay abreast of developments in the field and to select topics and readings wisely so as to make the most effective use of the limited training time.
Beyond the training course, the LPD must supervise instructors’ work, observe their classes, and provide feedback on their performance. Depending on the size of the program, this can be among the most time-consuming activities of the LPD and is also among the most difficult jobs to do effectively. While it is relatively easy to give an instructor a laundry list of good and poor practices, it is difficult to provide feedback that facilitates positive change. Moreover, the LPD’s goal is not to train instructors in a method but is to help them build on their individual strengths, reflect intelligently on their practices, expand their range of classroom strategies, and become effective, self-reliant teachers. Supervision and mentoring thus require a broad view of teaching; they require LPDs to see beyond a single method, to distinguish between personal bias and real problems in teaching performance, to hear the perspectives of teachers, and to give feedback in a way that is congruent with their values and commitments. Finally, if the department is committed to integrated curricula, the LPD must also communicate this aim to language teachers, encourage critical reflection on the intellectual content of courses and lessons, and model the kind of teaching that follows from this commitment.
Professional Engagement and Service
Some administrators argue that LPDs should be discouraged from professional engagement beyond the language program itself, for fear that if LPDs are so engaged, they will neglect the language program. However, a sustained and narrow focus on administrative detail, without further intellectual and professional engagement, inevitably stunts the growth that is critical to an LPD’s effectiveness. Like any other faculty member, an LPD relies on a professional community for intellectual stimulation, fresh perspectives, and creative ways to address problems. LPDs who contribute actively to their institutions and to their larger professional communities gain authority and expertise that can only strengthen their work in their home departments.
LPDs can contribute in many ways to a faculty and to an institution. Many LPDs serve on campus and departmental committees, participate in outreach to schools and civic organizations, organize special events, and establish networks with colleagues in other languages to share perspectives and bring fresh ideas to their own programs. Depending on their training and interests, they may forge alliances with faculty members in other disciplines to strengthen the support for language teaching. If they are fully integrated into departmental life, they bring their expertise and perspectives to departmental discussions, including discussions of curricular development. But LPDs also need to be engaged with a larger professional and intellectual community and to participate in intellectual conversations beyond their institutions. Through participation in professional organizations, conferences, and the like, LPDs are better able to orient the language program in interesting directions, to bring contemporary perspectives into TA training, and to keep the department informed of significant developments in the field.
Depending on the appointment structure and the terms of the LPD’s employment, professional engagement may include research and publishing; these should be encouraged. Substantial research literatures have provided models, defined areas of inquiry, and established a range of research methodologies in applied linguistics and second language acquisition (Kramsch, “Constructing”). Thus, research and publication provide an excellent opportunity for an LPD to contribute to existing knowledge in the field and to engage with a professional community. A publication record raises the LPD’s standing in the profession, thereby strengthening the department’s profile; but beyond this, it validates the LPD’s expertise in the field and enhances the person’s leadership locally. Additionally, at a time when teaching excellence is mentioned in virtually all academic job announcements, a nationally recognized LPD is better positioned to write authoritative letters of recommendation for graduate students entering the job market. The LPD may even play a role in attracting graduate students who seek to combine literary and cultural research with the teaching of language, culture, and linguistics.
In 1995 the American Association of University Supervisors, Coordinators, and Directors of Foreign Language Programs (AAUSC), recognizing the academic rigor of LPDs’ training and the expertise the position requires, issued a statement of policy on the hiring and promotion of LPDs (appx.). The statement recommends tenure-track appointments and underscores the importance of fully integrating the LPD into the faculty. While there are very strong arguments for ladder-rank positions and while many LPDs do occupy tenured or tenure-track positions, a ladder-rank appointment is not always feasible. Even when the position is authorized, departments need to be realistic about their institutions’ requirements for tenure and about the likelihood that young scholars, publishing in a field that is unfamiliar to most of their colleagues, will receive fair consideration at the time of a tenure decision. Even a highly gifted LPD may have professional interests that are not convergent with the institution’s requirements for tenure. For example, if the institution (or the department) has a long and inflexible policy of refusing to consider textbooks in tenure decisions and the LPD’s primary interest is in writing instructional materials, defining the position as a tenure-track appointment creates serious risks both for the LPD and for the ultimate stability of the position.
The most frequent alternative to a tenure-track appointment is a lectureship—an appointment that, as typically structured, poses enormous problems for the integration of the LPD into the faculty and severely curtails the possibilities for professional and intellectual development.2 It is true, however, that many institutions allow a certain amount of flexibility in negotiating the terms of a lectureship. The terms of lecturer appointments differ greatly from one campus to another, and ladder faculty members are often unfamiliar with the limitations and the possibilities of these appointments; therefore, a department that is considering hiring an LPD as a lecturer should seriously investigate the possibility of creatively structuring the appointment so that the new faculty member can work effectively with colleagues in the department and be challenged intellectually and professionally. In this context, it may be useful to review some of the most pervasive and problematic differences between lectureship and tenure-track appointments and to consider their effect on an LPD’s work.
Inclusion
As a general rule, institutions do not mandate the full inclusion of lecturers in departmental life. Yet without full inclusion, including a presence at departmental meetings and a voice in departmental affairs, it is impossible for an LPD to engage in constructive give-and-take with other faculty members. Fortunately, departments often have considerable autonomy in how lecturers are integrated, even when the dominant institutional practice tends to exclude them. Before an LPD is hired as a lecturer, the department should explicitly confirm its commitment to include the LPD as a full colleague.
Security of Employment
The importance of secure employment on an LPD’s effectiveness can hardly be overstated. LPDs on annual contracts are simply not in the best position to develop stable programs or to interact on an equal footing with ladder faculty members. Some institutions, recognizing the need for stability in undergraduate programs, have a lecturer series that carries the possibility of security parallel to tenure. If a tenure-track appointment is impossible or unfeasible, every effort should be made to ensure stable, long-term employment for LPDs once they have demonstrated their competence and professional commitment.
Teaching Load
Typically, the teaching load for lecturers is much heavier than that of ladder faculty members. It is made even heavier by a preponderance of language classes, which typically meet four or five times a week. Furthermore, language classes usually require a great deal of grading of homework, compositions, quizzes, and the like. If content is to be central to the courses, teachers must take the time for background reading and for preparing literary or cultural texts to be used in class, just as they would in more advanced classes. LPDs are responsible not only for performing these functions in their own classes but also for making sure that they are performed effectively, with a minimum amount of disruption to the studies of graduate TAs, in other classes as well. All this increases the time devoted to teaching and concomitantly decreases the time available for engagement with contemporary professional and intellectual issues.
Institutions can lighten the load of non-tenure-track LPDs by allowing course release for administrative duties. Additionally, LPDs can be assigned to teach advanced language courses or courses in their field of specialization that meet two or three times a week instead of regularly adhering to the intense schedule of language classes. Many LPDs do teach courses outside the language program, and there are some who successfully direct the language program without teaching in the language sequence. The time gained in these ways can be invested in research, professional development, and curriculum building.
Leaves and Sabbaticals
One of the most serious shortcomings of a lectureship is the lack of provision for regular periods of intellectual renewal. Ladder faculty members, who know the importance of such periods for their own intellectual growth, must recognize the handicap that their absence imposes on lecturers. At some institutions, it is possible to build regular sabbaticals into a lecturer’s contract. Where this is not possible, LPDs should be encouraged to seek funding to support leaves of absence.
Access to Travel and Research Funds
At many institutions lecturers have limited access or no access to funding for travel and research. This poses a serious obstacle to their engagement with professional and intellectual conversations in their field. The LPD is often the only faculty member in the department who deals with issues of language acquisition, curriculum development, pedagogy, and so on. Without access to a professional community, it is extremely difficult to stay in touch with currents in the field and to bring fresh perspectives to the language program and the department. Recognizing this, some institutions pay for LPDs to attend one or two professional meetings a year, even when the LPD is not presenting a paper. Similarly, the opportunity to engage in research and writing, even when these are not requirements of the position, offers the LPD a voice in ongoing professional conversations.
Review-Reward Structure
Like any other faculty member, LPDs should be subject to periodic review with predictable rewards for excellent performance. The absence of mandated review of lecturers may, on the surface, appear to be a rare advantage of the position, but the lack of a reward structure parallel to promotion implies that as long as lecturers’ work is good enough to warrant continued employment, further accomplishment is without value to the institution. Such disinterest in the quality of an LPD’s work reflects a demoralizing disregard for the quality of language programs and will inevitably undermine the work of the most committed professional. LPDs who take pride in their work and do it excellently must be recognized and rewarded.
It should be clear from the foregoing discussion that a well-qualified and committed LPD can offer a great deal to a department and to the profession by working with faculty members to build intellectually substantial, integrated curricula at all levels of instruction, by helping to prepare graduate students for entrance into an increasingly tight job market, and by remaining engaged with a professional community whose conversations and perspectives may be relevant and useful to the institution. However, the LPD’s success in these activities will depend largely on whether the appointment structure encourages and validates professional and intellectual growth while it values excellent teaching and program administration. If the LPD is without an equal voice in departmental affairs, has a low-status and unstable appointment, and is hindered through lack of time and resources from active participation in professional and intellectual discussions of national and local interest, nobody should be surprised if language programs stagnate and lack intellectual substance. Departments that are willing to invest in the strength and intellectual substance of their language programs must back up their commitment by integrating the LPD into the department as a full colleague and by actively supporting the intellectual growth that the position demands.
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AAUSC Statement of Policy on the Hiring of Language Program Directors
Whereas the AAUSC recognizes the diversity of needs and constraints existing at institutions of higher learning across the country, the issue of hiring candidates as language program directors needs to be addressed.
Because the majority of students enrolled in foreign language departments in major institutions of higher learning are taught by graduate teaching assistants, who are often inexperienced, or by instructors, who may be new to the institution and not on tenure track, it is absolutely essential that specialists (also called “coordinators” or “supervisors”) direct the language program. Fields of expertise of language program directors include applied linguistics, foreign language pedagogy, linguistics of the target language, and occasionally literature of the target language, all with preparation and experience in supervision. These fields have theoretical bases, are intellectually rigorous, and have numerous outlets for research findings, including prestigious, refereed journals and presses. Every department is broadened and strengthened by the presence of such scholars on its faculty.
It is the policy of the AAUSC that all faculty members hired as language program directors to supervise TAs and instructors receive a tenure-track appointment at the assistant professor level or receive faculty status and tenure for senior appointments in line with the policies of the hiring department concerning other tenure-track areas of specialization.
Language program directors should have all the rights and privileges as their colleagues in rank, particularly with respect to raises, promotions, and tenure. In recognition of their additional work load and their impact on a department, language program directors should have a reduced teaching load compared with non-supervisory faculty.
Two exceptions to this policy may occur:
1. At universities with enrollments so high that the director needs help with each course, the course supervisor may be non-tenure-track. We recommend a language program director at the senior level in this case.
2. The hiring of ABDs or recent PhDs with a specific time limit for employment is acceptable on the condition that the candidate is to work closely with an established scholar in an apprenticeship position, which will strengthen this person’s professional training.
