Abstract

FL specialists continue to discuss what Byrnes calls "the intellectual contributions college foreign language curricula can and must make when literary study is no longer the near-exclusive focus of study". Such FL curricula and programs could benefit from faculty development and preparation for in-house curriculum development; and from a greater ability to engage in "program support and preservation" activities in the public domain.

1. Introduction

According to many authorities (e.g. Byrnes, 1997), US post-secondary FL curricula are presently in a period of curriculum reconstruction. There is perhaps a sense of change now versus a sense that things were for a long period of time previously not changing; or, perhaps, that changes which were long overdue are now under way. One reason why such change is possible and is happening, Byrnes suggests, is that there is a better understanding and conceptualization of the cognitive aspects of SL learning in instructed settings. Along with this, there is also a better conception of how FL syllabuses may be organized when not focused on structures, let along on concerns with the literatures or high cultures of the target language communities. Both of these two lines of development are to be found in work associated with the increasingly loose term "task-based". At the same time, movements for curricular reform originating in the secondary sector, emphasizing "standards" or, to some extent, outcomes, are also in play, and these imply a greater emphasis on the community and the culture of the target languages, some of which are also heritage or immigrant languages of the US (e.g., Valdes, 2000). Overall, there is also hope that the FL research community, focusing now more on languages than literatures, can inform and assist such change. In this paper, I will argue that insofar as such changes are hoped for and predicted in a time of decreasing state support for education in general (e.g. Engel, 2000) and post-secondary FL education in particular, it will be necessary to consider (to continue to consider/ ref) changes in associated FL teacher roles, and even more important in the long run, changes in FL education curricula.

2. Faculty development and in-house curriculum development

Even within the post-secondary FL community, there is a major status and work conditions difference between, on the one hand, the academics —professors, with their research responsibilities and (decreasingly) tenure—and, on the other hand, the instructors. The latter generally are only responsible for teaching, carry a heavy load of classes, often are not tenured or tenurable, and usually are paid less than the profs. In my part of the FL world, it is these individuals who carry the principal load of implementing any of these curricula we are talking about today. Yet precisely because of the problems associated with the "traditional" FL curricula and their concomitant FL teacher education curricula, many of these individuals have not received much relevant coursework concerning language instruction or its supporting empirically-based concepts. In addition, and more seriously in fact, the working conditions and the reward systems of those in Instructor or Lecturer positions (not to mention TAs) provide no support for the consumption of or action upon research; and they often have no say in the adoption of new curricula. One might accordingly wonder whether they have any particular commitment to the use of one curriculum or syllabus over another; their own needs and capabilities seem likely to speak in favor of those curricula they are most accustomed to and which require least additional effort to deliver. In general, though plenty of bright spots exist, I feel that, without blaming these individuals, we should be pessimistic about the possibility of these reform efforts alluded to at the beginning of this paper being implemented in a substantial and long-lasting way, given the circumstances many of our Instructional staff find themselves in.

There is as yet little widespread movement to institutionalize at the department level the very limited possibilities for professional development the Instructor position typically offers. The position of Professor typically carries a requirement for research which allows and indeed insists upon some individual professional development (though it is old-fashioned in not fostering a collaborative and reflective response to jointly shared professional practice). As more FL professorial faculty shift over from a concern with literature to a renewed concern for language and culture (or perhaps retire), perhaps even the older model for professional development will work for such professors, many of whom have or can pick up relevant research skills. But what of the Instructor position? Unless alternative models for the role of teacher are made available and supported by department and college administrations, I suggest that much of the curricular reform efforts will go the way of so many other reform efforts in the history of US education and in the history of FL education.

One possible model from which to reconstruct this role is a teacher-researcher model for the Instructor position; in which instructional faculty, like others in the academy, are supported in and required to contribute some of their work responsibilities to research. Here I wish to advocate not more resarch that is "academic" (in the pejorative sense of the word), but research that is directly integrated with practice, in this case, curriculum development and instructional practice. One might call this "in-house program development and evaluation" research, and since it should have a local, problem-solving orientation, action research is another name it might go by.

3. Program support and preservation activities

FL programs in the US continue to be under attack by state governments, even if the federal govenment is putting a few dollars into the pot. At the same time, and less surprisingly given the perception of no national advantage, ESL teachers in the US often work under dismal conditions (cf. Crookes & Arakaki, 1999, inter alia). Discussions of this and advice to the teacher on what action could be taken form a tiny proportion of our professional literature, and usually appear in the margins (TESOL Matters rather than TESOL Quarterly, ADFL Bulletin rather than Modern Language Journal, in-house publications (e.g., Crookes, 1990) as opposed to refereed journals. Perhaps in association with this pattern, support and working conditions for S/FLT have got worse, not better, in the last decade. Far more attention, in other words, needs to a variety of aspects of the real-world contexts of S/FL instructional programs (besides the continuing attention needed to pedagogy and SL learning research). Not only will no research be taken up, there won't even be programs in existence within which the proposed new curricula will be implemented, unless attention is given to preserving FLT institutions.

Now one of the aspects of S/FL instruction concerning which we are more aware these days is its political nature. At one level, this is to be seen in the fact that language policy and planning is a revitalized domain of academic inquiry (e.g., Huebner & Davis, 1999) and it plays a greater role in the curriculum of FL teacher education than before. First, this is an outgrowth of the trials and tribulations of bilingual education in the US and Canada. Second, the attention to English as a language of linguistic imperialism has made this political dimension more salient for the ES/FL community. And third, at least with respect to research and publications emanating from the UK, it has been the result of responses by applied linguistics to British Government attempts to impose standard English on users of other varieties of English in the so-called National Curriculum.

In addition, we give more attention, now, not only to the macro-political context of our work, but also to the micro-political aspects of it; the growth of attention to critical pedagogy or to radical pedagogies in general in FL education (perhaps this is greater in the ESL community) is another aspect of this. While it is we, the teachers, who engage in micro-politics with our students in our own classrooms, and perhaps, in the more radical programs, take action to improve the world in collaboration with our students, I wonder if FL teacher education curricula in general have really moved as far as perhaps they might in this area. In particular, I am going to suggest that we need to do more to give our students, who are the next generation of FL teachers, what they need to preserve the jobs and programs we are assiduously developing curricula for. Language planning cannot be left to the politicians; the skills needed not only to plan but to preserve and support programs, must be provided to and inculcated in the next generation of FL teachers. This, then, is the literature I wish to turn to, and from which I will draw a few key points for general discussion.

3.1 The literature of program funding, support, and preservation

I believe that the literatures of program funding, support, and preservation have some valuable information which can be mined to the benefit of FL programs and FL teacherr education. A substantial part of this literature (mainly in the domain of higher education) has developed under the term "institutional advancement", a definition of which (Rowland, 1986, p. xiii) I will use to refer to the whole area in question:

3.1.1 The post-secondary FL program advancement literature

There is an extensive literature of higher education fundraising, in turn a subdomain of fundraising in general. It has its own section in the Chronicle of Higher Education; Rhodes (1997) is a good recent overview.

Illustrative of the kind of position I think it would be advantageous to have more widely accepted in FL and ESL programs is a point to be found in (Schneiter & Nelson (1982). This brief introduction to the area lists 'the 13 most common fund-raising mistakes', of which #2 is: "thinking that fund raising is for fund raisers only" (Schneiter & Nelson, 1982). This may not mean that everyone goes out and asks for money, but it does mean that everyone in an organization (in this case, a school or educational program) is oriented to the need to raise funds. This doesn't necessarily mean make a profit, either - but present and run the program in a way that makes it easier for the program to be funded.

The US post-secondary FL program advancement literature appears mainly in ADFL Bulletin and in Profession (with more fragmentary progress reports, perhaps, in MLA Newsletter), as opposed to in MLJ or FLA. Useful historical perspective is provided by Pincus (1996), who reminds us that the US post-secondary FL community was well-supported, financially, at the beginning of the 60s. Cuts began in the early 70s, a downturn lasting till around 1980 (as is also confirmed from FL enrollment figures in Huber, 1996); the current phase of cuts centers on the early 90s for most parts of the FL post-secondary community.

One approach to organizing advocated in this literature is visibility (Rote, 1999) enhanced by the FL programs or departments "assuming a leadership role on campus" (p. 10) which means, according to Rote, becoming all-round good at the job. But it also includes doing public relations (PR), and creating alliances notably with powerful programs such as Business or Engineering (Melton, 1994, Rivers, 1994), or in creative ways merging or altering language-related programs. Another approach to organizing in this literature is a traditional one—unionization, which can, for example, be used to move part-timers to full-timers with contracts and union protection (as reported by e.g., Sullivan, 1998, and Warhol, 1997).

Post-secondary FL education, as a sector, tends to see fundraising as mainly getting a good share of the funds that the university itself raises. Recent FL discusisons reflect the importation of business concepts into the academy (Byrnes, 1997; Lindenberger, 1998; Sullivan, 1998). For example, Loughrin-Sacco (1996, p. ?):

In this sector, Diment's (1998) report is a good example of what we need more of: narratives of actual actions taken in the face of crisis. These provide the basis for a list of heuristics for more or less direct action.

3.1.2 The (secondary) bilingual education/ESL sector

The literature of the bilingual education/ESL sector emphasizes organization, which emerges from the way many such program got their start: parent or community organizing. One tangible example of the latter was TESOL's task force [insert name of it here] and its report (McGroarty, 1998). In it, Mary McGroarty reviews how to advance the language needs of minority communities when teachers, academics, and community members work together; she also considers some of the obstacles which exist to such partnerships. These partnerships, she writes,

The further up the institutional ladder, from elementary to graduate school, the more tenuous are the links to community; or, to put a positive spin on things, the wider is the community served. In most parts of the US, state FL program support and funding comes from the immediate taxed community school board district, so community links are more direct at the elementary and secondary level. Universities, if public, may serve an entire state. In contrast, post-secondary FL programs are accustomed to agitating for support within their own institution, rather than the local community. In bad times, their senior administrators may lobby state legislators directly as a group, rather than in respect to the legislators' responsibility for a particular locality. In good times, at least, much of this will be out of sight of the regular post-secondary FL instructor. The processes involved are certainly not something such individuals were provided with formal input on in their teacher education classes. Partly because of this, as well as its comparative rarity in the main academic publications, I would like to highlight one specific example from the ESL literature.

Pamela Ferguson has provided a vivid and fast-paced account of her efforts at Yakima Community College a few years ago to rescue an ESL program (serving Mexican immigrants) from the ax. This program was already acting in line with the general mandate of community colleges, and the author comments, "The community comes to our college". Ferguson had been implementing a critical pedagogy in her class, and at the same time had been involved in the community college's efforts to lobby their legislators. She writes,

3.1.3 Implications for FL curricula and FL teacher education curricula

There is plenty of empirical research as well as advice concerning how communities and educational institutions may relate (e.g. Shirley, 1997; and for fundraising and community organizing in general see e.g. Mondros & Wilson, 1994). It could be very useful for more of us concerned with FL programs to know more about fund-raising. It's hard to raise money without contacts, visibility, and an organization. Direct action gets the goods in a crisis, and gets you visibility, but wouldn't it be good to have the support and funds you need to prevent things getting to a crisis?

A general answer is, find allies and make partnerships; since the old implied alliance between institutions of public education and the public has been derailed, and FL programs, not to mention ESL programs, are among the first to be jettisoned as the ship of public education sinks in the waters of reaction.

More specific answers can be extracted from reports of actual cases, such as the one documented by Ferguson. A useful list of actions that could be taken in support of funding of a program of this kind could be compiled from her account, many, though not all of which, are "common sense" to FLT specialists. For FL teachers and administrators to implement them, even if they are relatively obvious, with the kind of rapidity and effectiveness that Ferguson managed, might be difficult, because they are not part of the way we have been trained to act, and not part of our regular job descriptions. In addition, a key advantage that Ferguson had, that a more standard FL program might not have, was both the possibility of a community partnership and a curriculum that implemented it.

Ferguson's program used a critical pedagogy; and this is important. Most FL curricula do not involve students in action to improve their immediate circumstances, other than the presumed individual benefitst of educational qualifications. Critical pedagogy implies students taking joint action to act on the world in order to improve this. Other lines in curriculum theory, particularly those associated with service learning and experiential learning would also have these sort of connections (e.g., Eyring, 1991; Power & Khmelkov, 1999; Zlotkowski, 1998).

Important lessons for us are drawn by Ferguson from her experience: She says,

There is a need to extend FL and ESL instructor's skills and sense of their responsibilities so that they can persuade their relevant communities that what the instructional program has is something the community needs (and will support, with votes or money). Alternatively, FL and ESL language instructors need to be ready to respond to community demands and use them to support their program or department (heritage languages being the easy / paradigm example here). The skills needed to keep programs alive are not complex, but the need as a whole is too important (and too time consuming) to be left to program administrators alone.

In short, there are things that need to go into our teacher education curricula that have immediate preservation value. They aren't there at present - will be they be there in the future? And if they're not, will we be here in the future?

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[1] An earlier version of this paper was presented as part of the Colloquium: Constructing College Foreign Language Curricula: Research and Practice, AAAL Vancouver, March 11-14, 2000.