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OUR ability as a national community to meet the social, political, and economic challenges of the next several decades largely depends on how well we in the broad field of foreign language education prepare the graduates of our academic institutions to face the communicative demands of these challenges. As we know, our success will depend in part on how well we prepare primary and secondary school foreign language teachers. One way we have been working toward meeting the challenge of teacher preparation has been through public discussions in journals and at conferences.
Most of these discussions have been intellectually engaging. Some have been motivating. For example, the foreign language teacher education project organized by the Modern Language Association and funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities provided several institutions with the opportunity to begin developing exemplary foreign language teacher education programs.
This project, which took place during the 1995–96 academic year, brought together members of three groups: primary and secondary school foreign language teachers, university faculty members who teach foreign language courses to future teachers, and faculty members in teacher preparation programs. From one perspective, these groups appear to be parts of the same larger culture. They share an interest in both learning and learning through other languages and literatures, and they realize this interest primarily through teaching. However, on closer inspection it becomes clear that consequential differences separate the three groups and form distinct, sometimes impenetrable borders. For example, although each group includes teachers, there is a great deal of variance among groups in age, educational background, experience, and reasons for teaching a foreign language. Few would disagree that teaching a university language class is quite different from teaching in a FLES program.
In addition to varied social identities, roles, and responsibilities, the groups have different understandings of what constitutes schooling. Each has different cognitive scripts and expectations for what form viable educational goals and intellectual endeavors. These differences can sometimes be difficult to discern. For example, there might seem to be a common set of expectations when there is collective agreement on, say, the need for articulation. But when groups begin discussing the issue, they find that the frameworks they use to define the concept and to judge the relevance and coherence of other contributions differ, sometimes radically.
All three groups probably agree that expertise for the foreign language educator includes the following: knowledge of the subject matter, knowledge of teaching in general, and knowledge of how to teach the linguistic, literary, and communicative dimensions of the foreign language in ways that promote optimal student development. However, it is unlikely that the groups agree on the specific components and intellectual importance of these domains.
Thus, as when people from different cultures attempt to work together, the members of these groups find that although they share a common language, they often talk past one another. Even after much discussion, they may leave the table feeling that those from the other groups “just don't understand.” And while some would be delighted simply to concede difference, it is not in our collective best interests to allow the conversation to dissolve, however amicable the dissolution may be. For foreign language education programs to thrive, we need to find ways to extend the conversation, to overcome obstacles, to work toward creating cross-cultural synergy.
I offer an examination of the domains of knowledge, contextual conditions, and communicative abilities that are crucial to creating and sustaining meaningful interaction among diverse academic communities seeking solutions to common issues, here, the improvement of foreign language teacher education. In my estimation, the degree to which these elements framed the discussions of my MLA project team at the University of Georgia significantly influenced the direction of our work and set a likely course for our future collaboration. I focus on several of the most important using my team's experience to exemplify promises and pitfalls. I conclude with a few suggestions for how we might build on these experiences and move forward.
Three domains of knowledge are necessary to building successful long-term task-based encounters among groups. The first is the development of self-knowledge and understanding. For our project team this domain included negotiating the program or department's mission, identifying available resources and ways to procure others, designing and implementating programs of study that followed from the stated goals, and creating alliances among the group members so that individual participation in the group both enhanced and was enhanced by the participation of others.
The Georgia team was fortunate that two of the three groups involved in the MLA-NEH project, including my own, were also involved in program and department restructuring as part of a university-wide semester-conversion project. Neither group began the restructuring project with much enthusiasm; the thought of the considerable time commitment was overwhelming. However, a year later, we came to realize the enormous benefits of our extended discussions. For example, we became more aware of our programmatic, departmental, and university-wide histories and our roles within them as scholars. We designed organizational frameworks, articulated program goals, restructured old courses, created new ones, and defined our roles and our responsibilities for carrying out our ideas. We used this group-specific knowledge to educate other MLA-NEH team members about ourselves when we entered into our intercultural conversations.
Not all the MLA-NEH project participants, however, were so fortunate. The team member representing primary and secondary school foreign language teachers had not had and did not anticipate having the opportunity to engage in such discussions with other members of his own group. In fact, although he was the head of the foreign language department at his high school, because of teaching schedules it was difficult for him to meet regularly with his department colleagues, let alone to meet with the other thirteen foreign language teachers in his school district. During our year-long project, these teachers gathered officially only at our open project meetings, and then only a handful came. When they spoke, they spoke as disparate individuals who had only a vague idea of their colleagues' professional identities and teaching situations. Thus the collective voice of primary and secondary school teachers was far less strong than those of the other two groups. This imbalance was clearly reflected in the project discussions.
A second knowledge base needed for successful intergroup task-related encounters involves the development of a basic understanding of who the other is in the other's own words and on the other's terms. This point is significant, for while I am sure we all think we have at least a working knowledge of the other, we usually learn what we know about others by standing inside our own groups and looking out. Consequently, we tend to interpret others actions in the light of our own beliefs, values, and theoretical perspectives. Learning about the other in ways that facilitate cross-cultural understanding is like learning other languages. It entails learning new meanings for familiar-sounding terms, new ways of talking about familiar activities, and new discourses for framing an unfamiliar world.
In our project conversations, we found out a great deal about one another. We discovered that although we are all bound by the profession of teaching, each group holds different attitudes about the role of teacher and is subject to different consequences for holding these attitudes. We also discovered that although we all use terms like language, literature, culture , and communication , there are some notable differences in how each group defines them. Equally significant was the realization that the organizational structure of each group is, in its own way, “path dependent” (Passell 60). That is, who we are and what we do are not necessarily based on a best set of theoretically grounded principles about language and language learning. Rather, the plans we devise and the programmatic choices we make are often determined by small random events in the past that force us to make certain choices in the present—choices that in the long run may be difficult to change. This insight helps to explain why the language department at my institution offers so few applied linguistics courses, even though they are considered a significant part of the program of study for students in teacher education. Despite department members' theoretical leanings and desires to please, the fact that twenty-two are literature specialists and only four are applied linguists has made it difficult for the department to do otherwise.
Finally, successful intergroup engagement depends on task knowledge, which includes having a clear understanding of common goals and purposes and knowing both the specific questions to be addressed and the criteria for evaluating the data gathered to answer them. Our team arrived at this point at the end of the academic year 1995–96. Having spent much of the year getting to know ourselves and one another, we were ready to set the agenda for the next year's activities. However, we found that this task, like the others, was not easy. Several group members from the language department thought it most important to address issues such as language placement exams and articulation between university and high school programs. The primary and secondary school teachers had concerns about class size and block-schedule teaching. The teacher education group wanted to discuss classroom instructional practices in both high school and university programs.
While the few primary and secondary school teachers involved in the discussion were receptive to most suggestions from the other groups, this openness was not reciprocated, at least not initially. Some participants from the language department were reluctant to involve themselves in issues related to teaching conditions in primary and secondary schools. Language department members also displayed some reluctance to address their own instructional theories and practices. And while members of the teacher education group were willing to work on some primary and secondary school issues, they showed little enthusiasm for the suggested focus on placement exams and articulation. Before the new academic year begins, two team members will put together a list of topics for next year's gatherings. This task will not be easy, since some other team members have stated that they may not return to the table if certain issues are given more significance than others.
Our struggles to come up with a set of questions for future discussions have left little time for us to work on finding common ground for judging the relevance of our conclusions. I am sure that this task will be as difficult as the others, given our different perspectives on what count as reasonable and defensible knowledge claims.
While the three domains I have discussed—knowledge of the self, of the other, and of the task—are critical to successful intergroup communication, they are not sufficient for it. In addition, there are several contextual and behavioral conditions that can affect the success of such encounters.
First, while there will almost never be one time or place that suits everyone, it is important that intergroup meetings be scheduled at mutually convenient times and in mutually nonthreatening spaces. The team held open discussions on the same night of each month at a local high school. While this generally worked for the six team members, it did not work as well for other participants. Thus we have decided to try a few different arrangements next year so that we can include more voices in the discussion.
Second, at least in the initial stages of intergroup meetings, when the stakes are the highest, there needs to be a nonpartisan discussion leader. Because intergroup talk is fragile, there is a chance that the conversation will break up at almost every discursive turn. Someone may say something that others insist is insulting. Another may resist giving up the floor, regularly interrupt, or talk over others. Where power is asymmetrically distributed among the participants and where the consequences for directing future discussions are significant, the possibility of communication breakdown is high. To avoid a complete shutdown, there should be at least one participant who has no group-specific interest in the consequences of the talk, who is skilled in mediating and resolving conflicts, and who is adept at keeping the talk moving while helping participants save face. There was no such person on our team, and although a couple of us attempted to mediate and to help move the talk along from time to time, our group allegiances often got in the way. Consequently, we had our share of breakdowns and misunderstandings, not all of which were resolved by the year's end. I am sure that each of us feels varying degrees of ambivalence about resuming our conversations in the fall.
Third, the number and status of the participants invited to be a part of the conversation is significant. Clearly, the more equal the group representation is, the more equal each group's authority to direct the tasks and the talk about the tasks is. In our project team, there was a fairly significant disparity in the number and status of each group's members. The project team included four representatives from the language department, all of whom were full professors; one representative from teacher education, who was then an assistant professor; and one representative of primary and secondary school teachers, who had at one time been a student of one of the language professors. Consequently, the power to make decisions about such matters as discussion topics and turn length varied considerably among the three groups. Some of us participated in the discussions far more often than others did. This pattern in turn influenced the direction our discussions took, and thus some interests were given far greater consideration than others.
Fourth, for intergroup work to be successful, the members must possess at least a reasonable degree of empathy. They must be sensitive to the perspectives of others. University-level teachers often treat primary and secondary school teachers as culturally, linguistically, and intellectually inept. Such “deficiencies,” the university teachers insist, can be rectified only through assimilation into their own more civilized discourses. Within the university, faculty members in the school of arts and sciences often treat their counterparts in the school of education with similar disrespect. The unwillingness to understand and value the ideas others bring to the table makes any attempt at collaboration difficult. This tension, which was always lurking in the corners of our project conversations, was most visible in our discussion of the final report. When one team member commented that the voice of teacher education was misrepresented in the first draft, others suggested that instead of changing the report, the concerned member should write a response. This suggestion led to a heated debate on the construction of meaning, the politics of representation, and the process of marginalization. In the end it was decided to incorporate some of the discord into the final report.
Finally, all participants must be willing to put aside their group-related agendas and to embrace the commitment to working together. Our collective survival in foreign language education depends on our willingness to communicate across our cultures, to move beyond citing differences and agreeing to disagree. Likewise, we must persevere in the face of repeated communicative missteps. In our collaborative explorations we are forging new ground. Thus we cannot expect the outcomes to look familiar, to be what we already have. Neither can we expect the journey to be a smooth one. But we should expect that those who are committed to making it work will come back to the table no matter how uncomfortable the talk gets. And we should encourage those who find the process of intercultural explorations too disturbing or who cannot see beyond their own cultural borders to stay away, at least until some initial groundwork has been done.
As I have mentioned, plans have been made to continue the team activities we began as part of the MLA-NEH project. It is unclear, however, how many of the team members and the others who occasionally joined in the conversations will continue to participate. It is to be hoped that those who are sincerely interested in constructing a model teacher education program or who simply enjoy the discussions, however unruly, will come back. There is no conclusion to our work together on the MLA-NEH foreign language teacher education project. Nor should there be, since the process of collaboration is an unending, dynamic one.
In closing, I would like to raise two concerns about foreign language education, both of which, while not born from my participation in the project, were nourished by it. First, if foreign language learning programs are to thrive at all levels, from elementary schools to university graduate programs, we need to spend time building networks of support within our larger communities, expanding ownership, getting others talking about the importance of foreign language learning. This work is vital; the number of high school and college students who do not study a foreign language or who drop foreign language study after completing the required sequence is distressingly high. Data from a recent survey of foreign language enrollments in high schools across the United States (Draper) show that only thirty-eight percent of all students in grades 9–12 are enrolled in foreign language courses. Of greater concern are the findings that seventy-two percent of students taking Spanish and fifty-four percent of the students studying French or German stop after the second year of high school study. By the fourth year, only fourteen percent of those students who began the study of German or French remain, and only ten percent of those studying Spanish last until then. These percentages are particularly startling given that we are talking about less than forty percent of the high school population.
I do not have national figures for university programs. However, I do have some figures from this past year at my institution. There were about seventy-three percent fewer students in second-year French and Spanish than there were in first-year courses. The difference between first-year courses and advanced courses (i.e., courses beyond the second year) increased to about ninety percent. That is, the number of students in advanced Spanish or French courses was just ten percent of the number of students in the first year. It is likely that we would find similar conditions at other institutions, given what students have reported about their language study (Hall and Davis). It should be of great concern to us that so many students in the United States do not study a foreign language and that those who do fail to continue long enough to gain a working knowledge of the language (Draper 3). This is a serious situation. We must begin addressing in systematic ways what we are and are not doing both in our classrooms, particularly those of us who are involved in the first two years of language instruction, and in our communities that helps sustain these conditions.
My last concern has to do with the notion of articulation. This concept has framed almost every professional discussion I have had in foreign language education, including the discussions in the MLA-NEH teacher education project. However, over the course of my involvement in foreign language education projects, I have become increasingly uncomfortable with this word. Let me explain. As I have mentioned, some team members raised a concern about articulation between the high school and university programs. This concern became a focus of several conversations. Interestingly, every time the word was brought up, the subsequent talk was reduced to a discussion of grammar. When was the subjunctive taught? Why was one tense taught before another? What are the grammar points being tested on the new placement exam? And so forth. Attempts to move toward a discussion of the theoretical stances embedded in such questions or toward pedagogical and other concerns were for the most part unsuccessful. These experiences have led me to wonder why it is that we spend so much time talking about something whose conventional meaning is so tied to issues of grammar sequencing that its mere mention makes it almost impossible to talk about anything else. Even if we allow for the conventional use of the term, why are we still concerned about when we teach various grammatical aspects of the language? Surely there is more than enough grammar for several years of language study. And no research that I am aware of has ever shown that learning something multiple times in multiple ways is harmful to anyone's intellectual health.
It seems to me that the concept of articulation has lost its usefulness for the field of foreign language education. Instead of uniting the disparate voices in action toward a laudable goal, its use often entangles us in issues that are beside the point. What can we do? If we are truly interested in expanding, indeed transforming, the dialogue on foreign language teacher education, we must begin to examine and reflect on the various ways we are using the word and the consequences the varied uses engender in our public discussions. Who uses the term, in what forums, and for what purposes? What are the concerns raised in discussions on articulation, and where do the discussions eventually lead? Such close scrutiny by all interested parties will not only help us develop common ground for understanding what we hope to do when, for example, we argue for the need for articulation across language programs. It will also help us identify concerns that are not being given the attention they deserve. In addition, we must be willing to extend the boundaries of our conversations. At the very least we must collectively formulate new concepts, new symbolic tools, and new questions, ones that address our current needs at the same time that they push us to think past those needs. Seeking the answers to such questions as, What is multicompetence? and, How does our understanding of the learning processes frame our understandings of communication, language, literature, and culture? is likely to lead us to new theoretical and pedagogical territories that have remained largely unexplored by most of us in the field. The successful transformation of foreign language education will depend on our collective ability both to respond to and to create new challenges, new ideas, new questions, and new modes of research to help answer those questions. I look forward to continuing our explorations.
The author is Associate Professor in the Department of Language Education at the University of Georgia. This article is based on her presentation at ADFL Summer Seminar East, 27–29 June 1996, in Columbus, Ohio.
Draper, Jamie. Foreign Language Enrollments in Public Secondary Schools, Fall 1989 and Fall 1990 . New York: ACTFL, 1991.
Hall, Joan Kelly, and Jackie Davis. “Reflections of Classroom Learners of Foreign Language on Language Learning.” Voices from the Field . Ed. Trisha Dvorak. New York: Northeast Conf. on Lang. Teaching, 1995. 1–32.
Passell, Paul. “Why the Best Doesn't Always Win.” New York Times Magazine 5 May 1996: 60–61.
© 1997 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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