preservice and inservice teacher education in the nineties: the issue is instructional validity

PRIORITY= TEACHER EDUCATION Preservice and Inservice Teacher Education in the

Nineties: The Issue is Instructional Validity Lorraine A. Strasheim

Indiana University

The Emergence of Teacher Education Up through much of the early twentieth cen-

tury, “a teacher with general training was put in- to the language classroom,” or the classroom of any other discipline in the curricula of the schools, “and expected to survive” (Kelly, 10, p. 279). Teacher education was general education in the belief that the ability to teach was inherent in scholarship and that therefore “learning a subject was equivalent to learning how to teach it” (Kelly, 10, p. 280). Teachers were “licensed” to teach by the superintendents of school districts or county superintendents, more often then not, after oral interviews, but sometimes after written examinations; they could teach only in the district or county doing the “licensing.”

Two perceptions emergent in the late nine- teenth century, however, became firm convic- tions in the early twentieth. The first was that quality instruction in the schools could not be achieved until teachers became specialists in the disciplines they taught, the second that teaching in the schools was “a professional activity demanding a professional training” in teaching perse(Kelly, 10, p. 278). The conclusion was that teacher education, above and beyond general education, was a critical need. Teacher com- petence had surfaced as an issue. In the teacher education programs that evolved,

Lorraine A. Strasheim (WT, Indiana University) is the Coordinator for School Foreign Languages at Indiana University, Bloomington.

although they were not fully established until almost mid century, (Kelly, 10, p. 279), at least two decades after states had assumed teacher licensure, the discipline-specific professions were charged with two major responsibilities: 1) the areas of teacher specialization, what were to become teaching majors and minors in colleges of liberal arts, the humanities, or arts and sciences; and 2) the professional preparation of undergraduate teachers primarily in the form of so- called “methods” courses in schools of education.

How has the foreign-language profession met its two prime responsibilities in teacher education? How are emergent trends, developments, needs, and research to shape the discharge of these responsibilities in the future?

Undergraduate Teaching Majors and Minors In many ways the profession has made

remarkable progress in preparing undergraduate teacher-candidates as foreign-language specialists. In 1942, as teacher education programs were in the process of becoming established, the certification and programs in nineteen states called for only two years of language study. Ten more states required three years of study or somewhat less. Almost all the states, in an en- vironment in which certification agencies determined the credits needed but colleges and universities determined what courses these credits represented, counted high-school experience in the total credits demanded (Freeman, 6, p. 4).

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Today teacher education programs are approved by state departments of education/public instruction. Licensing defines the credits to be earned in categories such as “language,” “literature,” and “culture.” Teaching majors of 36 hours or more require almost all of the work at the 300-400 course level.

Teacher testing has become a dimension in teacher education. As early as 1948, contending that “neither a college degree nor a specified number of semester hours are any guarantee of adequate training for teachers,” Stephen A. Freeman made an unheeded call for oral and written examinations of teachers-candidates (Freeman, 7, p. 263). What Freeman knew, of course, was that even as teacher education programs in foreign languages were being established, the language needs identified in World War I1 were already in the process of radically chang- ing the goals and emphases in foreign-language instruction and the skills needed to implement that instruction. About two decades later, one of the outcomes of the so-called “Audiolingual Revolution” was another call for teacher testing. In the mid sixties, Qualificationsfor Secondary School Teachers of Modern Foreign Languages (Paquette, 14, pp. 50-52), and Guidelines for Teacher Education Progmms in Modern Foreign Languages emerged (Paquette, 14, pp. 20-22). They were two projects of the Foreign Language Program of the Modern Language Association produced in cooperation with the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Educa- tion and Certification (NASIYI’EC) and endors- ed by almost two dozen professional associations. The documents had tremendous impact, but widespread use of the M L A Foreign Language Proficiency Tests for Teachers andAd- vanced Students, yet another project of the MLA’s Foreign Language Program, never came to pass. In the 1980s, however, teacher testing was an idea whose time had come. A confluence of an emphasis on competency-based education and an emergent “Proficiency Movement” in the profession which led to the collaboration of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) and Educational Testing Service (Em) on the development of skills tests and rating scales for performances on these tests, first in the form of the ACTFL/ETS

Oral Proficiency Interview, has resulted in extensive adoption of required tests for emergent preservice teachers, both within degree-granting institutions and as a part of the state licensing processes.

Required teacher-candidate language testing has given rise to concerns for the instructional validity of teaching majors and minors which neither the profession nor college and university foreign-language departments are accustomed to considering, however.

The first concern with instructional validity stems from the nature of the tests required. As Magnan has pointed out, whether the testing be within the college or university or at the state level for licensing, degree-granting institutions may find themselves in court facing students contending that their instruction has not prepared them for the tests required (Magnan, 12). This is particularly true in the instance of speaking tests. College and university catalogues would tend to support this kind of contention, for the “language” courses in the teaching major and minors show a heavy preponderance of linguistics, phonetics, structure, and composition offerings with few, if any, conversation courses required and little or no reference to skills development. And the argument that is sometimes advanced in this context-that students should have overseas study experience before taking their speaking tests-is simply a tacit admission that there is little or no attention to this skill in the courses required of teaching majors and minors.

The second of the concerns with the instructional validity of undergraduate teaching majors and minors derives from the language needs of teachers in the “real” world of the schools. Free- man was really raising this issue in the late forties when he protested that the “heterogeneous, unstandardized courses.. .accepted for the teaching major and minor” were of “little value in preparing a teacher” (Freeman, 7, p. 261). In the mid sixties, as the NASLYTEWMLA Guide- lines were being promulgated, Joseph Axelrod posed the same basic question when he asked if there was any way in which the language program for the perspective teacher should differ from the one designed for the non-teacher (Ax- elrod, 1, p. 5). It was as if Axelrod could foresee

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that the “minimum,” “good,” and “superior” teacher competencies in the NASDTEWMLA Guidelines document were never to be translated into “undergraduate teaching minor,” “undergraduate teaching major,” and “graduate teacher” in the programs offered in language departments. Fortunately, however, Bernhardt and Hammadou addressed the issue far more concretely and forthrightly in the 1980s. They called for research responses to the questions “What is the relative distribution of skills necessary for effective language teaching?’’ and “What kinds of abilities with the language must teachers be able to exhibit?” to get at the c m of the matter: “HOW relevant are most undergraduate foreign language major courses to the daily professional lives of public school foreign language teachers?” (Bernhardt and Ham- madou, 2, pp. 295-296) The research proposed by Clark and Clifford, the correlating of the ACTFL/ETS Oral Proficiency Interview rating scales with actual teacher performance (Clark and Clifford, 3), if extended to all the ACTFL/ ETS skills tests as they evolve, could go a long way toward answering some questions the profession should have faced two or more decades ago.

Answers as to what skills and abilities in the language are really needed in the classroom could lead to the definition of realistic language competencies for the undergraduate teaching minor, the undergraduate teaching major, and the graduate teacher. But if these competencies or skills do not become goals driving the course design and instruction in the language program, the end-product will simply be more hypotheti- cal guidelines, more research in limbo.

One “midstream correction” while the needed research is in progress might be to devise a teaching major, replete with required conversation courses which are not simply ill-disguised composition or structure courses, as the only program for all. It would be only fair after all these years of the converse and it just might have a positive effect on the instruction across the board.

Graduate Teacher Language Education While preservice teachers may or may not be

aware of the adequacy of their language skills,

inservice or graduate teachers are very clear as to what their needs and interests are. But they are also fully aware that they cannot find the language and culture courses they want at the graduate level. Many wind up settling for a master’s degree in education, with only the minimum hours required for the professional license, simply because graduate courses are so scarce. They will take linguistics and literature courses if they must but no more than is ab- solutely demanded. Graduate language courses are difficult to find in the summers and late afternoons when teachers are available; many have to “shop around” college and universities to take anything that is offered and “counts” as transfer credit.

The ever-lengthening school year and the ever- escalating costs of colleges and universities pose hardships for teachers expected to spend two months or more away from their families for a course or two. Teachers would not begrudge the time if it were filled with intensive, two-week, immersion experiences. Colleges and universities need to experiment with this kind of format, offering teachers choices among three or four short courses. “Weekenders” should also be explored in this content. In the long run, there will prob- ably be as many non-credit as credit participants if the short, intensive courses address teachers’ needs and interests. And one has only to ask to find out what they are.

The language-specific associations, the AATs, need to use the pre- and post-workshops in con- nection with their annual meetings to provide intensive language and culture experiences, in cooperation with colleges and universities offering credit whenever possible.

Study abroad is also critical for the inservice teacher. But the teachers who need overseas experience the most cannot capitalize on the programs offering financial support because these programs require self-study plans of which these teachers are not capable. The profession should lobby for month-long overseas study opportunities with some structure as those provided by the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) Overseas Institutes of time gone by, not for full funding but, rather, for matching funds. In the summer of 1990, for example, the Indiana Uni- versity Department of Spanish and Portuguese


will be experimenting with a comparable kind of format, a two-week immersion for inservice teachers in Mexico. Plans call for matching funds from Indiana foundations and businesses, formal studies of culture and civilization, home stays, frequent cafe conversations with native- speaker staff, and even some time built in for searching out realia and teaching aids. This two- week course may do more for teacher skills than any three-credit course meeting two hours a day over an eight-week period ever has.

Inservice teachers can tell us what their needs are if we can only learn to ask and to listen to their replies. The graduate rigor and vigor of the graduate courses that emerge is up to us. But, in the process, we have to investigate new course- scheduling patterns that fit the lives of busy professionals.

The Methods Component In the earliest days of teacher education pro-

grams, methods courses were general methods offerings for the prospective teachers of all disciplines. In the forties, as foreign-language methods courses emerged, for then, as now, few colleges and universities had enough students to warrant language-specific offerings, the widespread professional use of GrammarTmlation made it the focus of methods of instruction. The century-old approach was the dominant one in the secondary-school textbooks of the day. Although there were some adherents of the Direct Method in the schools, they were, by and large, trained by the publishers of materials using that approach. The Direct Method never gained extensive acceptance because it demanded language skills far in excess of those acquired in the teaching majors of the time.

When Audiolingualism swept the profession in the early sixties, it was a sweep fostered by a number of interrelated factors: the funds available from NDEA, the “hype” in the public media and the professional literature, the emergence of textbooks utilizing the approach and, most of all, by the fact that estimates are that in the first seven years of NDEA’s existence, one- third of the total foreign-language teacher population in this country’s secondary schools attended summer, overseas, and academic-year NDEA Institutes to learn to speak the languages

they were teaching and to teach them audio- lingudy (Axelrod, 1, p. iii). “One-true way” had replaced another (Strasheim, 16, p. 45). The first approach had earned its status as a “one-true way” by longevity, the second via intensive professional-and federal-promotion. But, despite the fact that the profession had come by its “one-true way” mentality honestly, Audio- lingualism was to hold classroom sway less than two decades.

Throughout the roughly one-half century history of foreign-language methods courses, the offerings have been, as Larsen-Freeman has characterized them, situation-oriented, training teachers to one particular model of teaching or teaching methodology (Larsen-Freeman, 11). In many respects, “methods” was amisnomer, for teacher-candidates were, as Combs has said, taught how to “act” themethod. The problem was that they had to be able to ignore everything else in the classroom in order to keep their minds on “roles” they had neither fully conceptualiz- ed or mastered (Combs, 4, p. 132). This was particularly true of Audiolingualism, for the focus was on the strategies and techniques of the pre- reading period-the “mechanics” of teaching pronunciation and intonation, introducing and drilling dialogues, and conducting pattern drills, and there was little direction as to how to “act” after the first half of the first semester of the first year. Kelly made an observation in the late sixties that has enormous implications for a profession in a technological explosion, noting that the language laboratory was meant to replace the teacher as a drillmaster, but teachers did not have the sophisticated skills necessary to deal with “students who were prepared to go beyond what the aids could give them’’ (Kelly, 10, p. 274). Neither their language nor their methods experiences were preparation.

But, in the 1970s, as Audiolingualism should have been gaining momentum, classroom teachers in the schools, faced with declining enrollments and the need to recruit their classes from a broader segment of the total student population, demoralized by the failure of “one- true ways,” and influenced by the emergent research on learning styles and preferences, ex- ercised that professional decision-making of which we hear so much today. Like Higgs, they


found eclecticism “a logical imperative” (Higgs, 8, p.8). They began to “mix and match” strategies, techniques, and activities from every con- ceivable methodological source. They no longer had the “belief that the infallible method exists,” a belief that Hollerbach had deplored when he called upon the profession to recognize the individuality of teachers and the diversity of foreign-language instruction in the United States (Hollerbach, 9, p. 102). Westphal had already recognized this individuality and diversity; in 1979, she identified eclecticism as “the most widespread approach” (Westphal, 17, p. 141).

The problem has been that the eclectic teaching styles that have evolved have often been random and haphazard rather than the coherent and logical wholes in consonance with teacher personalities and student learning styles Finoc- chiaro called for when she asserted that “our methods should be eclectic” (Finocchiaro, 5, pp. 7-8). As Westphal pointed out, the concentration has been on variety, but while that variety “may result in students’ enthusiasm, it cannot ensure their balanced cognitive-affective-creative growth” (Westphal, 17, p. 142). And it is this kind of eclecticism many prospective teachers are learning in the multiple field experiences they have with education courses prior to the methods course, in conjunction with the methods course, and during student-teaching. As Zeicher indicated, field experiences represent “a complicated set of both positive and negative consequences” (Zeicher, 18, p. 41). And, although Richards and Crockes fear that teacher-trainees may be inducted to old and con- servative practices, certainly a possibility, the profession also has to fear some of the new practices as well. As Richards and Crockes argue, “practice does not necessarily make perfect: what is needed is good practice’’ (Richards and Crockes, 15, p. 22).

While a few die-hard methodologists may per- sist in what Higgs has called “the quest for the Holy Grail” (Higgs, 8), that is, examining and reexamining the traditional and nontraditional methodologies and infinite variations on them to see if yet another “one-true way” will make itself known, teachers will not readily give up eclecticism. Even as they listen to and review the methodologies, they are extracting a strategy

here, an activity there. And although textbooks are eclectic today, teachers, more often than not, prefer to “individualize” that eclecticism to their own teaching styles.

The need for the development of logical and consistent wholes in the eclecticism that is to be implemented argues for the evolution of methods courses which are finally really “teacher education” in that, as Larsen-Freeman describes, they are individual-oriented with an emphasis on hypothesis-generating and decision-making skills (Larsen-Freeman, 11). As Combs asserts, the stress has to shift from “learning how to teach” to “becoming a teacher” (Combs, 4, p. 131). “Teacher training” or “learning how to teach” has to become a component of the teacher education that is offered, giving students options in strategies, techniques, and activities, always with clear ex- planations of the goals and objectives to be realized -the implication of choices - in the process of moving from presentation to drill to application. The purpose is not to indoctrinate or convert anyone to any single methodology; it is rather to help each individual to develop his or her own teaching style, one that will certainly be eclectic but, hopefully, one that will also be a logical and coherent whole contributing to students’ cognitive-affective-creative growth. As the prospective teacher “tries on” strategies, techniques, and activities, that person will also be developing his or her own belief system, a critical factor in the evolution of an effective teacher as recent research shows (Combs, 4).

Within this context, the field experiences that accompany the methods course have to be more fully integrated with it. Mills calls for teaching prospective teachers clinical observation, “struc- tured, intense, systematic viewing and recording of significant information about classroom en- vironments and events” (MiUs, 13, p.5). She cites routines, management, schedules, organization, norms, rituals, and the character of instruction as possible emphases. Within this framework, too, critic teachers have to be persuaded that they should not try to remake student-teachers in their image but rather give them some freedom to test their own teaching ideas. Part of the dif- ficulty of dealing with model teachers and model programs is that, subsumed within their iden-


tification as such, is the idea that replication or “acting out” will achieve the same results and we know that this is not true.

The processes involved in helping teachers to evolve integrative, individual, eclectic teaching styles call for some content emphases to be established in undergraduate and graduate methods offerings. Should the emphasis in undergraduate courses be on levels one and two, given needs, to provide options for the presentation, drill and application phases? Should the graduate course stress curriculum design, teaching the advanced levels, skill testing? Which teaching skills are most critical at the preservice level? At the inservice level? What information should be presented as overviews, what in depth, in the undergraduate course? In the graduate course? How can there be provision in the graduate methods course for meeting teachers’ personal needs and interests?

The 1990s demand individual-oriented methods courses, courses that educate, not train, teachers, offerings designed to give prospective teachers the wherewithal to evolve their own personal belief systems and teaching styles and ex- perienced teachers opportunities to refine and expand theirs. Individual-oriented approaches, with the planning for undergraduate and graduate courses done simultaneously and col- laboratively to complement each other, may well finally persuade preservice and inservice teachers alike that a teaching career really is a continuum of self-development, that they can be profes- sionally up-to-date without being coerced into using strategies, techniques, and activities which they cannot seem to conceptualize and with which they are never really comfortable.

If the goal is professionalism, we must learn to trust teachers as decision-makers in their classrooms, departments, schools, and school districts, as well as in their discipline-specific organizations and associations. Paternalistic and prescriptive approaches to teachers in the schools are no part of professionalism. What is emerg- ing is the “Foreign-Language Teachers’ Lib Movement .’ ’

The 1990s The American Council on the Teaching of

Foreign Languages has assumed a positive and

assertive role in the so-called “Proficiency Move- ment.” What it must do now is formulate along- range plan in which the “pieces” of its endeavors, like eclectic teaching styles, are organized into a logical and consistent wholes, integrating the necessary research, the definition of teaching minor, teaching major, and graduate teacher competencies, and the design of new language programs and new kinds of methods courses, providing for research as needs arise at each new juncture. In preparing a long-range plan in teacher education that encompasses the language component, the methods component, the testing of teacher competency, all supported by research, ACTFL would do well to look at the model of extensive networking and professional involvement that went into the Foreign Language Program of the Modern Language Association three decades ago. Language specialists of every kind must be involved, but there must also be representation from those in professional education, those in state licensing commissions, those accrediting college and university programs, and teachers, teachers, teachers - from the elemen- tary school, the middle or junior high school, and the high school, with membership ratios determined by the student populations represented, and with representation from every kind of school - not just large urban com- prehensive schools. Before the products of any phase of the program are promulgated, they should be subjected to the interactive scrutiny of at least 300 to 500 people in regional meetings. Only involvement “breeds” commitment.

Conclusion There are those who wish to extend teacher

education programs and lengthen the time required for them. Shouldn’t we really try improv- ing the quality, the validity, of the instruction that exists first? Editor’s note: Readers may wish to refer to the February 1988 issue of Foreign Language An- nals, which reports the results of a three-year project by ACTFL to develop guidelines for Foreign Language lkacher Education Programs. This effort was modeled closely after that of the Modern Language Association of three decades ago and involved wide-scale representation of the professional educators to which the author


refers. Three regional meetings were held during 1987 for discussion and scrutiny of these guidelines prior to publication for reaction from FLA readership.

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REFERENCES Axelrod, Joseph. TheEducation of the Modern Foreign Language Teacher for American Schools. New York, NY The Modern Language Association of America, 1966. Bernhardt, Elizabeth and JoAnn Hammadou. “A Decade of Research in Foreign Language Teacher Education.” The Modern Language Journal 71 (1987):289-299. Clark, John L.D. and Ray Clifford. “The FSI/ILR/ACTFL Proficiency Scales and Testing Techniques: Development, Current Status, and Needed Research.” 1-18 in Albert Valdman, ed., Proceedings of the Symposium on the Evaluation of Foreign Language Proficiency. Bloomington: Indiana University Committee on Research and Development in Language Instruction, 1987. Combs, Arthur W. “New Assumptions for Teacher Education.” Foreign Language Annals

Finocchiaro, Mary. “A Look at Our Profession: Common Concerns, Common Dreams.” 1-12 in Alan Garfinkel, ed., The Foreign Language Classroom; New Techniques. Selected Papers from the 1983 Central States Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Company, 1983. Freeman, Stephen A. “Introduction.” 3-5 in F. Andre Paquette, ed., “Guidelines for Teacher Education Programs in Modern Foreign Languages - An Exposition.” The Modern Language Journal 50 (1966).

“What About the Teacher?” The Modern Language Journal 33 (1949):255-267. Higgs, Theodore V. “Introduction: Language Teaching and the Quest for the Holy Grail.” 1-9 in Theodore V. Higgs, ed., Teaching for Profi- ciency, the Organizing Principle. The ACTFL Foreign Language Education Series. Lincoln- wood, IL: National Textbook Company, 1984.

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Hollerbach, Wolf. “Reaction: Teacher Educa- tion.” 102-103 in Dale L. Lange, ed., Proceedings of the National Conference on Professional Priorities. Hastings-on-Hudson, NY: The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, 1981. Kelly, Louis G. 25 Centuries of Language Teaching. Rowley, MA: Newbury House Publishers, 1969. Larsen-Freeman, Diane. ’‘Training Teachers or Educating a Teacher.” 264-274 in James B. Alatis, Peter Strevens, and H.H. Stern, eds., Applied Linguistics and the Preparation of Second Language Teachers. Washington, DC: George- town University Press, 1983. Magnan, Sally Sieloff. “Legal Caveats on Com- municative Testing for Graduation Requirements and Teacher Certification.” 45-49 in Albert Valdman, ed., Proceedings of the Symposium on the Evaluation of Foreign Language Proficiency. Bloomington: Indiana University Committee for Research and Development in Language Instruc- tion, 1987. Mills, J.R. “A Guide to Teaching Systematic Observation to Student Teachers.” Journal of Teacher Education 31 (1980):5-9. Paquette, F. Andre, ed., “Guidelines for Teacher Education Programs in Modern Foreign Lan- guages - An Exposition.” The Modern Language Journal 50 (1966). Entire Issue. Richards, Jack C. and Graham Crockes. “The Practicum in TESOL.” TESOL Quarterly 22

Strasheim, Lorraine A. “What Is a Foreign Language Teacher Today?” The Canadian Modern Language Review 33 (1976):39-48. Westphal, Patricia B. “Teaching and Learning: A Key to Success.” 119-156 in June K. Phillips, ed., Building on Experience - Building on Suc- cess. The ACTFL Foreign Language Education Series. Skokie, IL: National Textbook Company, 1979. Zeicher, K.M. “Myths and Realities: Field-Based Experiences in Pre-Service Education.” Journal of Teacher Education 31 (1980):45-55.

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preservice and inservice teacher education in the nineties: the issue is instructional validity

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