ADFL Bulletin
32, no. 3 (Spring 2001): 71-78
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Developing Precollegiate Foreign Language Teachers:
An Overlooked Mission of Foreign Language Departments


LESLIE L. SCHRIER


IN 1941 Stephen Freeman summarized the importance of the preparation of teachers:

The training of teachers is the dominant factor in any educational system, and especially in a democracy. More cogent and far-reaching than curricula or methods or even than content, the formation of the teacher is the key to the success of an educational program. A poor teacher will impart but little to his pupils in spite of the best possible program; while a superior teacher will transcend a poor subject or faulty organization, and with a method all his own, will compel the intellectual development of his pupils. (293)

The implications of his statement are still relevant at the start of this new century. Teacher education is currently the source of considerable discussion. Recent concerns over the nation’s schools and the quality of teaching within them have been converted into questions of who prepares teachers, in what manner, and how well.

As this essay was being written, we were nearing the end of the first presidential race of the new millennium. It is interesting to note that for the first time in modern history the presidential candidates were using the preparation of teachers and education of our nation’s youth as a cornerstone in their election campaigns. The two political parties spent thousands of dollars researching, writing, and disseminating their answers to major problems facing public education today. Both candidates used the term shared responsibility when describing their vastly different solutions to the crisis facing the American public education system.1 The public’s heightened awareness of educational issues may very well be a significant outcome for the presidential campaign, perhaps even more significant than who actually won the election. More important, the belief that there is mutual accountability in education is now firmly embedded in the public conscience. This sensitivity to educational issues is apparent now and will be evident in future tax reform initiatives and other forms of national and local legislation.

In tax-supported institutions of higher education, the foreign language departments, schools, and colleges of education housed within them may already be feeling the ramifications of this mutual accountability. The development of departmental mission statements is evidence of the rise of accountability in higher education. The idea of a university administration’s requiring that its professoriat articulate in measurable terms the philosophy or mission of a liberal arts department was unheard of fifteen years ago; now it is routinely expected.

For several years I have acted in my home institution as a conduit between the Division of Curriculum and Instruction in the College of Education and six foreign language departments in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Departments of Asian Languages, Classics, French and Italian, German, Spanish, and Russian provide the Department of Foreign Languages and ESL Education with students to prepare to teach languages in elementary and secondary schools. This essay is a modest attempt to help chairs of foreign language departments understand how their departments influence the education of teachers. The framework is introduced by a series of questions frequently asked by well-meaning members of the language professoriat when they are writing mission statements for their departments.

Why Care?

The most overlooked element in the mission statement of a foreign language department is the influence the department has on the development of schoolteachers. Further, if this influence is recognized, it is often difficult to get the faculty to care about this issue. In his introductory essay to Preparing a Nation’s Teachers: Models for English and Foreign Language Programs, Donald Gray states his belief that there is no simple answer to the question of why the university professoriat should be concerned with the development of teachers. Nevertheless he answers the question precisely when he says, “Everyone who teaches undergraduates teaches prospective teachers” (2). Supporting Gray’s statement is research by John Watzke. The picture of foreign language instruction in the United States that Watzke paints surprises many in academe, and his most recent findings place the secondary foreign language teacher at the center of the profession (“History” 235). In his analysis he discovers that nearly 50% of the students between the ages of fourteen and seventeen are studying a foreign language. Further, high school language teachers are teaching to a larger and more diverse audience than that being taught in colleges or universities (“Student Transitions” 49). That the greatest number of students studying foreign languages are found in high school rather than in universities should come as no surprise. A 1999 study on the development of critical language teachers provides an example of this phenomenon. It was found that in an Iowa high school there are more students studying Russian in the first three hours of the school day than the total number of undergraduates and graduates enrolled in various levels of Russian courses in three public universities in the same state (Schrier and Everson 138).

The realization that schoolteachers represent the foreign language discipline to the public more than the books of a renowned university scholar, for example, might make some members of the professoriat mindful of the power of the potential teachers in their classes. An astute professoriat realizes that some students will become the very teachers who will have a strong influence on how, or even if, the discipline continues to be studied in colleges and universities. In the proposal by Richard Brecht and A. Ronald Walton for a stronger and more systematic way for the United States to develop competent foreign language speakers, the importance of early language learning is very clear. Watzke’s data confirm their premise as well, when he states that a greater percentage of the public has learned what it means to speak a language from secondary school teachers than from other instructors (“History” 165).

Foreign language departments have a great influence on and obligation toward the teachers they prepare. The course work taken in the major influences how the future teacher constructs what it means to know the target language, culture, and literature and, most important, how it is taught. Being a successful language student, however, is not the same as becoming a competent language teacher. I present an illustration of the complexity of teaching foreign languages in an article suggesting steps toward the professionalization of the teaching occupation (“Prospects”). In that article, I outline the four characteristics desired in future foreign language teachers: proficiency in the foreign language and its cultures; proficiency in the language and culture of the school’s community; expertise in curricular design and its evaluation; and technological sophistication (117). In concert with the aforementioned characteristics are the “Foreign Language Standards for Teachers of Students Ages 3–18+” that the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) is currently drafting. The NBPTS committee is proposing guidelines for defining what accomplished foreign language teachers should know and be able to do in the classroom.2 On the surface it would appear that foreign language departments are concerned only with the skills related to competencies in foreign language speaking and cultural knowledge. However, the acquisition of each of the competencies desired in professional language educators is influenced by the foreign language professoriat during the undergraduate education of the future teachers.

To understand the influence that the foreign language department has on developing these competencies it is helpful to examine research on teacher education. Researchers have isolated three influences on teachers’ content and pedagogical knowledge: the elementary and secondary educational environment, the college major, and the experience of teaching (e.g., Ball and McDiarmid; Shulman, “Knowledge and Teaching” and “Pedagogical Content Knowledge”). In this essay I explore the first two influences because they directly relate to the role college educators have in helping their students develop the potential to become effective teachers.

In general, foreign language teachers come to the profession of teaching having first been excited about learning and teaching foreign languages by their high school language teachers (Bernhardt). The importance of this experience should not be underestimated. Aspiring language teachers decide on their future careers because of the environment created by their secondary school language teacher; that atmosphere sparks a desire to master the language being taught and to re-create the school environment that originally inspired them to learn. Rarely do teachers aspire to model their own teaching on their college experience (8).

The collegiate language major is, however, the primary source of knowledge about the foreign language, literature, and culture, and it does contribute explicitly and implicitly to future teachers’ concept of how languages are taught. The explicit influence comes from the content of the courses required to complete the major. The implicit influence comes from the time the average foreign language major spends sitting in foreign language classes, between 460 and 500 hours. Through this contact future teachers not only learn the subject but also learn implicitly what it means to teach it. Deborah Ball and G. Williamson McDiarmid best express how this influence is developed: “Watching their teachers, [future teachers] acquire specific scripts for teaching particular topics and develop views about what teachers should and should not do, beliefs about what contributes to academic success, and notions about what makes a good class” (446). With these observations in mind, let us examine how the foreign language major helps build language-teaching competencies.

The first characteristic that future teachers should have is proficiency in the foreign language and culture that they will teach. This characteristic might seem obvious to the members of the foreign language department, but it is not a given, as indicated by the exams developed to ensure it. Several states and over 45% of foreign language teacher education programs in the United States have moved to ensure proficiency by instituting licensure standards. These programs use recognized instruments to assess the language proficiency of their graduates or have created their own metrics for ensuring this competency (e.g., the ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview, the Praxis II, or the Simulated Oral Proficiency Interview). It is assumed that the language skills assessed on these exams reflect directly on the preparation or lack of preparation that language teachers receive within their majors.

In a 1979 study of eighty school districts in ten states and twenty teacher preparation programs, secondary school language teachers reported having spent 50% or more of their time in their college major studying literature (Brickell and Paul 173). This course work was not a preparation for their later teaching assignments. The majority of teachers surveyed taught levels 1 and 2, in which language and culture, not literature, are emphasized. Unfortunately, this pattern did not change over time; ten years later a survey of foreign language teacher-preparation programs in colleges and universities revealed that 56% of the 500 responding institutions still placed heavy emphasis on the study of literature (Schrier, “Survey” 110). With these findings in mind, it is predictable that teachers feel that their preparation in the foreign language major did not allow them to achieve the expertise needed to teach language. Higher education has been engaged in debating the integrity and value of existing academic majors for years. A report by the Association of American Colleges on redefining the meaning and purpose of baccalaureate degrees summarizes the problems with academic majors: “The major in most colleges is little more than a gathering of courses taken in one department, lacking structure and depth, as is often the case in the humanities and social science, or emphasizing content to the neglect of the essential style of inquiry on which the content is based, as is too frequently true in the natural and physical sciences” (2). In the foreign language major, a lack of structure and depth means a dearth of the language and culture course work necessary to build content knowledge for teaching a language. This lack of appropriate fit between the college major and secondary school foreign language teaching has led licensing agencies to use tests for assessing teachers’ competencies.

The second characteristic, being proficient in the language and culture of the school environment, directly affects the implementation of foreign language curricula. Recent teacher-education research has emphasized that effective teachers are those who are informed about how their schools and communities value and interpret the roles and responsibilities of learning and teaching (e.g., Copa; Ryan). This attribute of the foreign language teacher is usually implicit; however, it is necessary to make it an explicit priority. With the increased use of native speakers as teachers to seed or augment language curricula and the placement of novice teachers in schools of which they have had little personal experience, knowledge in the ways of the school and its community must be emphasized as essential for instructional success. Teachers who are proficient in the native language and culture of their students and are familiar with the communities within which they work will be more effective in creating and implementing a meaningful curriculum for their students.

The university environment also implicitly influences this attribute. During their collegiate career, students are likely to encounter native speakers as instructors or professors; an MLA survey of foreign language programs found that 75% of assistant professors in the responding programs were native speakers (Huber, “Survey” 17). Consequently, the scripts and views of good language instruction that students observe in their native instructors can influence how those future teachers value understanding the culture of the environment in which they will teach. Further, the effort that the native-speaker instructors make to achieve such an understanding may influence the overall effectiveness of their instruction. This hypothesis could be used to explain the very interesting finding by Bettina Huber that the percentage of enrollments in advanced courses “increases as the number of full-time, tenure-track faculty members increases [. . .] but decreases as the percentage of full-time faculty members who are native speakers increases” (“Characteristics” 25). Teachers who are not familiar with their students’ culture and not completely fluent in their students’ language may have a difficult time explaining their breadth of content knowledge. This means that they may lack the ability to understand their subject on other people’s terms and the ability to influence other people’s understanding within the subject. These abilities are now universally identified as two elements of good teaching (Shulman, “Knowledge and Teaching”; NBPTS).

The third characteristic, expertise in curricular design and evaluation, implies a degree of theoretical and clinical sophistication in the content knowledge. With the variety of language-teaching environments available (e.g., FLES, immersion, and distance), the teacher who is expert in analyzing the learners’ needs and developing a curriculum to meet those needs will be invaluable. Competent curricular development requires that teachers be able to select and implement a language learning and teaching approach, methods, and assessment techniques appropriate for their particular instructional environments.

Unfortunately, few teacher-preparation programs provide this type of preparation (Schrier, “Survey”), so again future foreign language teachers are indirectly influenced by the structure of their major and the design of the foreign language courses they have taken. The collegiate experience, however, has recently come under fire with public calls for accountability within and among higher education institutions. Karen Maitland Schilling and Karl L. Schilling pinpoint the reason why the criticism appears to be valid: “Part of our problem has been that most faculty members are unable to describe, in terms other than vague generalizations, how the curriculum is structured.” Further, Heidi Byrnes identifies the shameful result of not being able to identify the audience of instruction: it is the lack of engagement of the students and the professoriat in the mission of the department. Hence, it is vitally important that the curricula in foreign language departments become models for these future teachers and that their professors be able to articulate the rationale for the selection of the curricular design.

The last characteristic of the future foreign language teacher is technological sophistication. This attribute goes beyond computer literacy. It means the teacher’s ability to understand the power that technology can have in a fully articulated language curriculum. An element in this power lies in technology’s ability to enhance creative development in language learning, over and above the mechanical acquisition of uncontextualized facts. Furthermore, capturing this creative development must be linked to increasing the communicative skills of the language learner: technology must be used to provide the learner with positive links back to traditional sources of information and knowledge (i.e., books and human interaction). I was disappointed to discover that only 41% of future foreign language teachers had any specific exposure to using technology as a technique in foreign language teaching (Schrier, “Survey” 93).

By examining four teaching characteristics we can trace the influences on a teacher’s development and, by extension, see how teachers will present their knowledge to others. The role that foreign language departments play in this process goes beyond providing content knowledge. It is the way that professors organize and deliver the knowledge that provides future teachers with the scripts for understanding the structure and process of teaching language.

What Is Changing in Foreign Language Teaching?

The beginning of the new century finds a transition in the landscape of foreign language instruction in the schools. There has been a gradual shift in who is teaching and learning languages and in which languages are being taught, for what purpose, and through what medium. The classroom is changing physically to accommodate the use of technology in instruction; there is also a change in the language learners themselves, for example, in their ages and backgrounds. As the learners are changing, so are their teachers. In 1993 I predicted that by the year 2010 more than 50% of the current foreign language teachers would be retiring (Schrier, “Prospects” 110). My prediction is being realized at a faster rate than I expected; it is now thought that over 70% of the entire teaching profession will have retired by the year 2005. These retirements are occurring so quickly that ensuring competent replacements is difficult and at best problematic. As a result, in an attempt to guarantee that the great influx of new teachers are highly qualified in content and pedagogical skills, there is a movement to test preservice teachers before they are licensed to teach. The testing of prospective and practicing teachers is gradually taking place in many preparation programs, depending on their state’s teacher-testing practices. As a consequence, the preparation of foreign language teachers is being standardized and foreign language curricula are being revised.

During the last two decades, foreign language has moved from the comfortable existence of being a college prep course to being a required class in the secondary school curriculum. Teachers new to the profession find themselves in an instructional environment that bears little resemblance to the traditional four-year college prep sequence that may have motivated them to pursue advanced foreign language study. The assumption that foreign languages are subjects for academically gifted, college-bound students is shifting to the concept that knowledge of foreign languages benefits all students and should be universally required. Thus many districts and states are mandating language requirements for all their students; this broadening of the curriculum has meant that language teachers have had to adjust their approach to teaching languages to include a diverse group of learners (Tedick et al.).

The focus of curricula and hence assessment has, therefore, also shifted. The most tangible evidence of this change has been in the development of national standards for foreign language instruction. Standards for Foreign Language Learning, developed in 1996, emphasizes early language learning, communication skills, and the inclusion of community resources as well as interdisciplinary approaches in language learning and teaching. These standards are seen as a way to improve instruction by sharing the responsibility of learning among teachers, learners, parents, and the larger foreign language community, which of course includes departments of foreign languages and literatures in colleges and universities. Further, professional teaching standards are being developed and competency tests are being used to ensure that only those who are qualified will enter the classroom. Whereas graduates with little experience of the target culture or success in language learning might earlier have ended up teaching in the classroom unchallenged, prospective teachers now face tests on their content and pedagogical knowledge (Wing).3 Department chairs are realizing that the success or failure of teacher candidates on these exams is an indirect evaluation of their language department.

This transition of language from being an elitist subject to being a required inclusive one means that language teaching at the precollegiate level is changing to reflect the needs of the learner and society. As evidenced in the National Standards, precollegiate language teaching is responding to society’s need to prepare its youth for a future in which language ability and multicultural knowledge will be in great demand. Nonetheless, with more and more language departments downsizing and even disappearing, the ways a university foreign language department chooses to participate in this national change may be linked to its future standing in the university. Byrnes accurately describes the usual path most language departments take when it comes to facing the reality of designing a responsive curriculum. “Ultimately, departments resort to avoidance behavior, best exemplified in the nearly complete absence of comprehensive curricular discussion” (277). The consequence of this behavior is detrimental to the education of undergraduates; the language department is also missing the greatest chance it has to educate and form future colleagues, secondary school teachers.

Who Is Being Taught Languages?

Graduates of foreign language departments who decide to become teachers will have the opportunity to teach in many diverse environments. These new teaching environments include elementary schools, immersion programs, secondary schools using alternative scheduling of classes, and curricula especially designed for heritage language learners.

Realizing the need to make the most of the foreign language abilities of our nation’s youth, several school districts in the nation are offering language instruction beginning in the elementary schools (see Branaman and Rhodes). The different language-learning environment of the elementary school requires that the foreign language teacher be prepared to use different teaching techniques to meet the needs of younger learners. Furthermore, if schools are to prepare our society to be multiculturally literate, teachers must be developing in our youth new communication and interaction skills, second language and culture knowledge, and more positive attitudes toward those who are culturally different. The authors of “Second Language Education in Tomorrow’s Schools” define multicultural literacy as the skills and patterns of behavior, attitudes, and values that characterize a society knowledgeable about and supportive of its diversity (Tedick et al. 69).

Curricular definitions of FLES programs vary within and among school districts; but a FLES program is generically defined as foreign language instruction offered to elementary school students. When and how this instruction is offered and by whom define a school district’s commitment to developing the young language learner. Foreign language instruction in the elementary schools can occur within the school day as part of the daily curriculum before and after school, or during the weekend. The instruction varies from curricula that reflect the instructional goals of the district delivered by licensed teachers to casual programs that are designed by language enthusiasts within the community who have little formal preparation in foreign language instruction. Gladys Lipton, Helena Curtain and Carol Ann Pesola, and Douglas Gilzow and Lucinda Branaman offer overviews of FLES programs.

In immersion language schools, unlike FLES programs, language is a means of instruction, not the object of instruction. For example, in a French immersion school, the student is taught math, science, and reading in French; the object of instruction is the subject taught, not the French language. This form of language instruction is usually used in magnet elementary schools in the inner cities and frequently in suburban schools. Of the two types of elementary school language-instruction environments, only immersion language instruction has generated a research-based model of teacher preparation. Elizabeth Bernhardt and I describe a prototype of immersion teacher preparation that is research-based. Investigations such as those done in the immersion school environment provide useful information that helps isolate the specific preparation needs of the elementary school foreign language teaching environment and gives direction for improvement in teacher-education programs.

In secondary schools the setting for language teaching is more fixed than in elementary schools, but the approach to teaching itself has made some notable curricular changes. Conventional college preparatory classes that emphasized the grammar-translation approach have evolved into language classes that are communicative in design. These classes still teach language as object, but the overarching goal is gradually becoming language for communication. This change is the by-product of the criticism leveled at the foreign language education community by the 1980 report of the President’s Commission on Foreign Languages and International Studies, which urged the profession to teach spoken language more effectively. From the development of the proficiency guidelines of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) in the 1980s to the creation of the Foreign Language Standards in the 1990s, it is evident that the profession is attempting to heed its critics.

At the beginning of this new century, promoting the skills of students whose ethnic background has given them some competency in either cultural literacy or aural skills in their home language has been the instructional and political focus of language planning and education. Currently instructional strategies and material created for use with this heritage language population have been invigorated by government funding to provide the nation with competent speakers of African, Asian, and Central European languages. The most sophisticated approach to educating heritage speakers of Spanish is being developed by the National Foreign Language Center in collaboration with the community colleges and public universities of Virginia. This collaborative model is an attempt to blend the resources of the native and heritage speaker with technology to create an instructional model that is transportable from the community college to the university foreign language departments (Natl. Foreign Lang. Center).

In responding to the needs of the learner and society throughout the nation, teachers are being asked to design curricula to engage heritage language learners in the process of becoming highly competent language speakers. Ana Roca provides a synthesis of the issues related to identifying the student population, developing the teachers and materials, and finally assessing this population of heritage Spanish speakers. Similar work is being fostered for heritage Chinese speakers as well (Wang). Members of language departments who are aware of the surge of interest and funding for revitalizing heretofore lesser recognized and underfunded languages should also be aware that the heritage learner population includes future teachers of these languages.

Who Is Responsible for Teacher Certification?

The development and preparation of foreign language teachers is not solely the responsibility of foreign language departments. Typically, teacher preparation requirements are determined by state departments of education working in concert with practicing teachers, schools, and colleges of education. Teacher-preparation divisions of colleges of education usually require that future foreign language teachers meet standards agreed on by licensing agencies. Included in these licensing profiles are groups of courses created to prepare the future teacher for both the clinical and theoretical issues that interact in the precollegiate teaching environment. Usually, the teacher-preparation curriculum includes concentrations of courses that emphasize educational psychology and human development, foundations of educational systems, pedagogical content knowledge, and clinical experiences of a specific content area. These last two emphases are known as the foreign language education curriculum, and the way this curriculum is composed has a significant influence on the pedagogical preparation of future foreign language teachers because it is within these courses that future teachers become exposed to the pedagogical structures that will guide them in their careers.

The foreign language education curriculum should blend both the theory and practice of language learning and teaching. The courses should be designed to develop in the future teacher knowledge of approaches to teaching languages and cultures in the K–12 environment. The work should also include activities that help form the student’s ability to create and evaluate foreign language curricula as well as practica that provide the novice teacher with fieldwork designed to give useful experiences by observing and teaching in the elementary and secondary school environment. As was emphasized by ACTFL in 1988, the most effective foreign language education curriculum is one that is created through collaboration among university foreign language departments, schools of education, and practicing precollegiate foreign language teachers.

The collaboration between and among the university language professoriat, the practicing precollegiate foreign language teachers, and the school of education is crucial in creating a dynamic teacher-preparation curriculum. The participation of the language department is obvious because it is there that the content knowledge of the future teacher is developed. The language departments can also serve as a valuable source for pedagogical models of teaching. This source is especially necessary when preparing teachers in the less commonly taught languages because of the pedagogical issues involved with learning and teaching noncognate languages and the lack of examples of the teaching of these languages in the precollegiate environment.4

A more universal need for this collaboration, however, is to help assess the effectiveness of the university-based preparation of the teacher compared to the reality of the elementary and secondary classrooms. There is no better assessment metric of a teacher-preparation program than the precollegiate practitioners themselves. Without their input, the foreign language education curriculum lacks validity; as Genelle Morain observes, “Public school teachers hold unparalleled power over the future of foreign language study” (23). This power is diverse; the primary influence is found in their responsibility for introducing students to a foreign language and culture. Additionally, public school teachers influence future teachers by displaying their own satisfaction toward teaching as an occupation. Another way the practitioners affect the novice foreign language teacher or student teacher is as mentors. In their roles as cooperating teachers, the practitioners serve as examples of good teaching, advisers on curricular design, and supervisors of future teachers.

The three elements involved with developing the future teacher are very interactive. The foreign language department is dependent on the school or department of education to provide the foundations of professional education course work, and the school of education is dependent on the foreign language department to provide the content knowledge base for the future teacher. The foreign language department is dependent on practitioners to inspire and mentor preservice teachers. Moreover, the foreign language department is dependent on practitioners to plant in their young students the interest in second languages and cultures. Practitioners are dependent on the foreign language department for their content knowledge development and for the inservice development that relates research on the constructs that influence learning and teaching to the daily classroom practice. This interactive triad is necessary for language teaching and learning to grow.

What’s Next?

All foreign language learning landscapes help mold the beliefs about language learning and teaching that future foreign language teachers bring to their occupation. Isolating desirable teaching characteristics and locating the source of their development can affect changes in foreign language learning and teaching. Locating these influences and fortifying them for the future are extremely important in this century. The reason for this concern is very apparent when the demographics of foreign language instruction are made visible. Many of today’s teachers entered the profession during the period of rapid expansion of the teaching force that accommodated the baby boom. This expansion, which began in the mid-1950s and lasted through the early 1970s, was followed by significant cutbacks in teaching staff during the late 1970s and early 1980s, reductions that fell disproportionately on younger teachers (Natl. Educ. Assn. 35). As I mentioned earlier, a high percentage of current teachers are now reaching retirement age. Because the demand for teachers is increasing once again, we can expect to see younger teachers hired to replace those who will be retiring. This means that in 2001 foreign language teachers will be in great demand and also that the new teachers, because of their numbers, will have the opportunity to influence generations of language learners as no other cohort of teachers has done before them. Foreign language departments will play a significant role in the changing environment of precollegiate language teaching in the new century. The departments will be the primary shapers of new foreign language teachers through the curriculum that composes the foreign language major and the manner in which it is delivered.


Notes


1See algore2000.com/education and georgewbush.com/issues/education for further details.

2In March 2000 the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards released the draft of its standards for teachers of foreign languages K-16.

3Content knowledge is the understanding of a subject that an expert would have in a field or discipline. A teacher must also know the subject and have the ability to see that subject matter from the perspective of the learner. Referred to as pedagogical content knowledge, this body of knowledge is what teachers must have beyond the scholar’s knowledge of content (Shulman, “Pedagogical Content Knowledge”). The key feature of teachers’ understanding that differs from that of other experts is the ability to make their knowledge accessible to students. In order to do so, the teachers segment and structure content. They may tailor content in anticipation of learners’ preconceptions, aptitudes, interests, age, social class, cultural background, attention span, or past difficulties. Teachers may present the new knowledge for students in the form of analogies, metaphors, examples, demonstrations, or simulations.

4For a more detailed analysis on the preparation of teachers in the less commonly taught languages, see Schrier and Everson.


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© 2001 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.

ADFL Bulletin 32, no. 3 (Spring 2001): 71-78


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