|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
OVER the past ten years or so in which I have discharged my duties as TA supervisor-language-program coordinator (LPC) and committed myself to foreign language methodology, acquisition, and teacher training, I have witnessed a number of significant developments regarding TA supervision and language-program coordination. While most of these have been positive, one recent development stands out as decidedly negative. I find it a cause for concern and in need of immediate, remedial action by the profession. It is the redefinition of the TA supervisor-LPC position from the professor series to the lecturer series. Accordingly, I intend here to
Two major descriptive studies have been undertaken that focus on the TA supervisor-LPC. Each provides information that directly or indirectly helps shed light on the number of TA supervisor-LPCs engaged in their duties as lecturers. The first, published by Schulz in 1980, notes that 8% of the supervisory work force consisted of lecturers. The second, conducted by Erwin in early 1989, reveals that the figure had leapt to 20.4%. 1
My own analysis of job listings that appeared in the MLA Job Information Lists (where the overwhelming majority of new positions are advertised) shows that the popularity of slotting TA supervisor-LPCs into the lecturer series appears to be growing. Table 1 presents data taken from the combined October and December issues of the 1987–89 MLA Job Information Lists. Data have been separated according to the professor series or the lecturer-nonprofessor series, for unless an advertisement specifically called for an individual to be hired in the professor series, it was assumed that the academic rank to be awarded would be outside the professor series. Moreover, the distinctions between “lecturer,” “instructor,” and related terms (such as staff associate, program director, and the like) are too insignificant to warrant their own categories for the purposes of this study.
These data point to an unacceptable and relatively high percentage of lecturer positions among positions advertised for TA supervisor-LPCs. While it may be difficult to compare these data directly with those provided by the Schulz and Ervin studies and while the data for 1988 reveal that only 27% of TA supervisor-LPC positions were assigned within the lecturer-nonprofessor series, the percentages are far too high-be they 7, 27, or 47. I submit that the three-year average of 43% of TA supervisor-LPC positions being staffed by lecturers is excessively high and that the profession needs to turn its attention to the implications of this trend.
The trend toward greater numbers and percentages of lecturers at the expense of appointments in the professor series could hardly be happening at a more ill-advised time, for over the past decade the field of language methodology and acquisition has realized significant improvements in the quantity and quality of its research. Propelled into the 1980s by the President's Commission on Foreign Language and International Studies, the profession gained further credibility with ACTFL's coming-of-age as a viable, professional organization and its establishment of research priorities (published in its Proceedings in 1981 and updated at its 1989 annual conference) and with the emergence of the AAUSC (American Association of University Supervisors and Coordinators of Foreign Language Programs). The profession of foreign language methodology, teaching, pedagogy, and acquisition now stands on the brink of even greater contributions to what is known about more effective teaching and learning of foreign languages.
The timing of this trend toward lectureships seems all the more ill-conceived in view of the growing number of advanced methods courses offered by foreign language departments. At the University of Illinois, for example, where the French, German, and Spanish departments offer a methods track for the PhD, such advanced courses are offered each semester in at least one department. In fact, these departments collaborate with others to sponsor a program of doctoral studies specifically geared to the graduate student who wishes to focus on foreign language acquisition and teacher training. This program is known by the acronym SLATE (second-language acquisition and teacher education). Not only do these advanced methods courses draw full-time students enrolled at the university, but they serve as alternative, attractive in-service opportunities for schoolteachers from a wide geographic area. Given, then, the geometric progression and explosion of knowledge currently ongoing in foreign language acquisition, it seems logical for universities to offer advanced methods courses and special-topics courses in areas of foreign language methodology and acquisition. As I recently noted at this year's AATG/ACTFL conference in Boston, it now makes about as much sense to maintain that in one methods course a student can learn all that there is of importance to know about foreign language methodology and language learning as it does to maintain that by taking one course in French, German, or Spanish literature a student could learn all that there is of importance to know about those literatures.
The shift toward lectureships also seems illogical at first glance, since each year more and more language-department graduates earn their doctoral degrees in methodology and applied linguistics rather than in the traditional fields of literature and linguistics (Benseler 315). (Even our model of the research-oriented university, the German university, had established Lehrstuhle for foreign language pedagogy as far back as fifteen years ago-a clear endorsement of the legitimacy of the academic enterprise engaged in by such professionals.) Any casual analysis of job advertisements found in the MLA Job Information Lists will show that more and more institutions of higher learning are also searching for graduates whose doctoral work has been completed in the areas of methodology and applied linguistics instead of in the traditional areas. It may very well be only a matter of time before the largest and the best PhD-granting institutions in the country are those that offer a methods and applied linguistics track to the PhD, not just the traditional tracks in literature and linguistics.
Given these developments and considerations, one must ask whether the assignment of TA supervisor-LPCs to the lecturer series is really an effort to strip them of the power and prestige that they might otherwise have had at the expense of those professionally committed to literature and philology and linguistics. Is the old guard doing all it can to keep methodologists in their place and to safeguard the power and prestige of the literary and philological enterprises that represent the two traditionally unassailable pillars of foreign language PhD programs and that dare not receive serious challenge from a competitor deemed unworthy of equal academic footing? My suspicion is that the trend toward lectureships for TA supervisor-LPCs is hardly a chance occurrence. Many colleagues in the established fields of literature and philology obviously feel threatened by the growing numbers of “new language people.” For them, the concept of the lecturer series as somehow being appropriate for methodologists represents a bill of goods easily bought by administrators and quite effective in keeping language people in their place. I submit that it is time for the profession to cease this sort of academic discrimination-for its own good and, more important, for the good of its students. It is time for the profession to broaden its notion of the elite, of power, and of legitimate, professional activity within the field of foreign languages and literatures.
If one can proceed from the assumption that the timing of this trend toward lectureships leaves much to be desired, the next logical questions may very well be, What are the advantages, if any, of lectureships for TA supervisor-LPCs, and how did they come to gain prominence and attractiveness in the first place?
The answers given to both questions are usually very similar. It is often maintained that it is too difficult, if not virtually impossible, at many institutions for the person charged with supervisory and coordination responsibilities to gain tenure. Many departments and colleges have been stung by the experience of having hired faculty members who performed well in their supervisory and coordination responsibilities, yet who, as a result of being overburdened by these duties, failed to realize their potential for research in their linguistic or literary fields of specialization and who were subsequently denied tenure. They have, therefore, rationalized the decision to hire a lecturer instead of a professor as the one that best meets the interests of their institutions, departments, and newly hired staff members.
Other allegedly pragmatic reasons typically offered for redefining the position into a lectureship include
I find these arguments lacking in persuasiveness and sufficient academic merit. Arguments in favor of the position as part of the professor series seem to make eminently more sense and are advanced below.
The most important reason is research. Lecturers are not expected to contribute to the research agenda or research contributions within the profession. As a result, lecturers are
Instead lecturers are inundated with teaching and coordination and supervisory responsibilities and given little or no meaningful support to realize sustained personal growth in their fields. No contributions to the profession are expected of them. Deprived of such support, many lecturers are forced to become supermen or superwomen in order to contribute to or even to remain abreast of research developments. Others who do wish to contribute but cannot may experience significant frustration and morale problems.
If lecturers are unable to function as meaningful contributors, participants, and perhaps even recipients in the profession's research agenda, then the TAs under their supervision may suffer from a lack of knowledgeable and informed sources about current and past research. Moreover, the quality of language instruction received by undergraduates may not be the best it could be. And do not our students deserve only the best we can give them? Certainly TAs and undergraduate students associated with professors whose professional goals and research are intricately intertwined with ongoing developments in the field are more apt to profit from collaborative endeavors with them.
Certainly another deleterious effect of the move toward more lectureships for TA supervisor-LPCs is the perpetration of long-held biases against the legitimacy of academic enterprise engaged in by methodologists, for it is quite obvious that most lecturers will not ordinarily have the time to carry out any research even if they so desired. The mere appearance of job advertisements calling for TA supervisor-LPC positions to be staffed by lecturers rather than by professors only reinforces negative views of the methodologist as one who has no legitimate business functioning within the academic community of foreign language departments.
Continuity within the program represents another reason for designating the TA supervisor-LPC in the professor series. Lecturers are rarely eligible for tenure and receive renewable contracts instead. Anecdotal evidence clearly suggests that lecturers are more apt to relocate and apply for positions that offer the prospects of tenure and the added prestige of the professor series than are their counterparts who already enjoy the greater prestige, research possibilities, and reduced teaching loads in the professoriat. Departments for whom continuity of operations and methodological orientation are primary concerns may wish to give serious consideration to this issue, for what talented scholars will be more tempted to apply for a two- or three-year renewable contract as lecturer when they can apply for a tenure-track position instead?
Another argument for the creation and proliferation of appointments in the professor series is to cease immediately the shameless exploitation of lecturers. An advertisement in the April 1989 issue of the MLA Job Information Lists for a lecturer in Spanish is a typical illustration: “Teach eight courses of lower-division Spanish, supervise second-year TAs and lecturers, assign classes … PhD preferred, salary $22,446”-and this in a state known for having one of the highest costs of living in the nation!
It seems ironic also that institutions that pronounce the benefits of lifelong learning through an education in the liberal arts and sciences should create working conditions that effectively preclude their own faculty members from aspiring to the kind of physical, spiritual, social, and intellectual growth they tout as the reward of such an education.
The observations, recommendations, and warnings contained in this article have not been advanced out of self-interest. My own position at the University of Illinois is secure. My work and my area of professional commitment enjoy the respect of most of my colleagues. It is out of sincere concern for the profession that this warning is sounded.
The trend toward lecturers must be reversed. It must be given immediate, serious attention by the profession. A statement issued jointly by the MLA or the ADFL and the AAUSC, much like the one printed regularly in the MLA Job Information Lists on the use of part-time faculty, would seem to be in order. Such a statement could focus attention on the potential damage to academic programs caused by a proliferation of lecturers in the position of TA supervisor-LPC.
If our commitment to a quality liberal arts experience (realized in significant part through foreign language learning) is sincere, then the more prudent way to ensure its continuation will be through the installation of tenured and tenure-track methodologists in the professorial ranks. The same logic, good sense, and rationale that apply to the slotting of literary scholars and linguists into the professor series should apply to methodologists as well. Failure to do so may mean that we unnecessarily jeopardize the quality of our educational enterprise and that we differ only marginally-if at all-from Berlitz, Inlingua, or other language-learning institutes. It dare not be forgotten that the mission of academia involves far more than training people to perform a skill- it is to educate our students, to make them sensitive to the power and beauty of the word, to contribute to the processes of critical thinking and cultural understanding, to liberate them from ethnocentric mindsets, and to invite them on and equip them for a journey of lifelong learning and growth.
This article has argued that the trend toward employing TA supervisor-LPCs as lecturers is not desirable. Rather than empowering and encouraging, it disempowers and discourages. It is not a favor but an insult to the professional integrity of methodologists. It does not accord methodologists the same professional rights, courtesies, and privileges as are accorded other members of the academic community, but it brands them as second-class citizens instead. Put briefly, the trend is a mistake. It is incumbent on us to correct this mistake forthrightly and to prevent its proliferation, lest serious damage be sustained by our profession and the students we serve.
The author is Associate Professor of German at the University of Illinois, Urbana. This article is based on a paper presented at the 1989 annual convention of the Modern Language Association in Washington.
1 Schulz and Ervin's studies featured response rates of 53% and 52%, respectively. Schulz's questionnaire involved 196 respondents, Ervin's, 63.
Benseler, David P. “Doctoral Degrees Granted in Foreign Languages in the United States: 1988.” Modern Language Journal 73 (1989): 315-31.
Ervin, Gerald L. “TA Training and Supervision in Foreign Languages: A Diachronic Perspective.” Critical Issues in Foreign Language Instruction. Ed. Ellen Silber. Forthcoming.
Lalande, John F., II. “Advancing the Case for an Advanced Methods Course.” Issues in Language Program Direction. Ed. Sally Sieloff Magnan. Vol 1. Boston: Heinle, 1990. 149–64.
President's Commission on Foreign Language and International Studies. Strength through Wisdom: A Critique of U.S. Capability. Washington: GPO, 1980.
Proceedings of the National Conference on Professional Priorities. Yonkers: ACTFL, 1981.
Schulz, Renate A. “TA Training, Supervision, and Evaluation: Report of a Survey.“ ADFL Bulletin 12 (1980): 1–8. [Show Article]
| Year | Percentage of Positions Advertised | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| In Professor Series | In Lecturer-Nonprofessor Series a | Total | ||||
| 1989 | 55 | (12) | 45 | (10) | 100 | (22) |
| 1988 | 73 | (25.5) | 27 | (9.5) | 100 | (35) |
| 1987 | 45 | (18) | 55 | (22) | 100 | (40) |
| 3-year average | 57 | (55.5) | 43 | (41.5) | 100 | (97) |
| The numbers of positions used to calculate the percentages appear in parentheses. | ||||||
| a Advertisements that called for a person to be hired at either one rank or another were split according to the ranks in question. Thus, if a person could have been hired as either a lecturer or an assistant professor, half the position was counted in the lecturer column while the other half was counted in the professor column. | ||||||
© 1991 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
|
|---|
|
|
|
