“Visions of Languages in Education”

posted by Jürgen Kurtz, Karlsruhe University of Education, Germany

New publication: Doff, Sabine; Hüllen, Werner & Klippel, Friederike (Eds.) (2008). Visions of Languages in Education – Visionen der Bildung durch Sprachen. Berlin, München, Wien, Zürich, New York: Langenscheidt ELT. [MAFF = Münchener Arbeiten zur Fremdsprachen-Forschung; edited by Friederike Klippel, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany]

Public discussion of school education in Germany has been dominated by a move towards purely functional goals. The obligation to compare learning outcomes between schools, regions or even countries may, in many respects, be helpful, but it narrows the teaching in schools. This is particularly true for foreign language teaching. As a consequence, general goals of Bildung, self-formation and the acquisition of cultural knowledge are neglected or even by-passed intentionally.

Therefore, the authors of this volume thought it imperative to redefine the educational goals of teaching English, French, Spanish, Russian, and other languages in schools at the beginning of the 21st century and to ask:

• Why do we teach foreign languages in schools to everybody and what are the aims of doing this?
• What exactly is the contribution of language teaching to the formation of character and the acquisition of cultural knowledge?
• In what way does language teaching support other areas of school education?
• What are the past, present and future visions of foreign language teaching?

Contributors:

a) Visions for Europe / Visionen für Europa

Werner Hüllen: Karl Magers Vision einer Bürgerschule mit Unterricht in den neu-europäischen Sprachen

Herbert Christ: Didaktik der Mehrsprachigkeit: Die Vision eines Sprachen und Schulfächer übergreifenden Lernens

Daniel Coste: Plurilingual Education, Identity, Citizenship

Michael Byram: Education for International Citizenship: Language Teaching and Education for Citizenship – In Europe and beyond

b) Visions for Learners – Learners’ Visions / Lern(er)-Visionen

Katrin Gut-Sembill: Visionen – Ein Antrieb zum Fremdsprachenlernen

Jürgen Kurtz: Life Skills-based Education in Secondary School Foreign Language Classrooms – Cornerstone of a Challenging Vision

Barbara Schmenk: Visions of Autonomy as a Core Concept in Language Education

Helmut Sauer: Von der Lernerorientierung zur Lehrerorientierung: Die Lehrkraft als Schlüssel zu “Bildung durch Sprachen”

c) Visions and Context in Historical Perspective / Geschichtliche Fundamente

Frans Wilhelm: Goals in Dutch Foreign Language Teaching: A Historical Perspective, 1500-2000

Daniel Tröhler: Zwischen Ideologie und Institution: Die Etablierung der modernen Fremdsprachen im Gymnasium Preußens und Zürichs

Christiane Ostermeier: Französisch statt Latein: Der Reformplan Julius Ostendorfs (1823-1877)

Sabine Doff: Was von Visionen übrig bleibt: Frauen, die neusprachliche Reformbewegung und ihr Echo in den Lehrplänen des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts

d) Visions in and beyond the Curriculum / Curriculare Visionen

Stefan Kipf: Schule im Umbruch – Perspektiven für den altsprachlichen Unterricht

Erik Kwakernaak: Fremdsprachenunterricht in den Niederlanden: Ein Fach ohne Identität?

Henry Widdowson / Barbara Seidlhofer: Visions and Delusions: Language Proficiency and Educational Failure

Claire Kramsch / Michael Chad Wellmon: From Bildung durch Sprache to Language Ecology: The Uses of Symbolic Competence

 

 

 

Treacherous Quicksand: Quality Measurement in Foreign Language Education

posted by Jürgen Kurtz, Karlsruhe University of Education, Germany

While working on a new publication, I came across the following statement by H.G. Widdowson (1990: 1): “The effectiveness of teaching cannot be equated with its rational accountability.” This made me think again about what good quality management and quality assurance in foreign language learning and teaching – including the (fuzzy) concept of accountability – is all about. To my mind, it is essential to avoid simplistic equations between standardized tests / test scores and teacher / foreign language teaching quality on the one hand, and between individual test results and the outcome of foreign language and intercultural learning on the other. Equations like these are grossly inadequate to address the complex challenge of improving the quality of learning and teaching in foreign language classrooms. Instead of encouraging practitioners to take a fresh look at their teaching (stimulating, for instance, in-service training), I think they rather contribute to fixing the status quo (and a teaching to the test mentality), i.e. to ensuring stagnation.

Foreign language education in the 21st century is more than skills-based instruction (which does not make it easier at all; see my personal view of foreign language education in Germany on this blog). It embraces language (including literature) and culture as a whole, and it is this educational whole which matters. It cannot be captured by standardized (especially discrete-point) testing.

Accountability? “Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.“ (William Shakespeare). This leaves many questions open to discussion. What do you personally think about all this?

Widdowson, Henry G. (1990). Aspects of Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

‘Lean Production’ in Foreign Language Education: Are We on the Right Track?

posted by Jürgen Kurtz, Karlsruhe University of Education, Germany

Almost 25 years ago, A.P.R. Howatt (1984: 274) described the interrelation of foreign language education and socioeconomic development in the mid-twentieth century in the following way: “Though economic factors facilitate investment in educational development, they do not motivate it, or determine which direction it will take.”

The overall situation has changed dramatically since then. In the new International Handbook of English Language Teaching, Michael Breen (2007: 1071-1072) points out that “[…] governments have mobilized standards of achievement and competencies in education, systems for the accountability of educators, and the new positivism of evidence-based practices. Such measures have been put in place on the basis of two unproven assumptions: that whatever teachers achieved before is no longer adequate and that the bureaucratic surveillance of teachers’ work will improve their students’ performance. More overt consequences […] have been the ‘re-skilling’ of highly experienced teachers into managers and an escalating exodus from the profession. The reason most often given by teachers for their decision to leave is the intensification of workloads entailed in regular testing of students and related accounting and reporting processes. More covertly, assessing a teacher’s worth primarily in relation to national benchmarks of the outcomes of learning include the displacement of teachers’ broader educational aims and the complex interpersonal process of enabling learning to occur.”

It cannot be emphasized enough that the foreign language classroom is not an assembly line on which intercultural communicative competence is fabricated in a rapid ‘plan-do-check’-way (at the least cost). It really is heartbreaking to see how education is increasingly transformed into an economic enterprise by external stakeholders, how commercially exploitable competences and skills are turned into commodities, and how the principles of lean production are applied to schools, leaving very little room for internal change agents to develop what might be called a holistic learning culture (aimed at sustained individual development) in the classroom.  

Howatt, A.P.R. (1984), A History of English Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Michael Breen (2007), “Appropriating Uncertainty: ELT Professional Development in the New Century.” In: Cummins, Jim & Davison, Chris (2007). International Handbook of English Language Teaching. Part II. New York: Springer, 1067-1084.

Teaching Foreign Languages: Mass Production of Standardized Can-Doers?

posted by Jürgen Kurtz, Karlsruhe University of Education, Germany

Article 26 (2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN 1948) states: “Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups […].” It is evident that narrowing secondary school education down to the demands of the global market, and focussing it increasingly on economic utility and the development of standardized foreign language employability skills is only partially compatible with the humanistic approach to education underlying the UN Declaration.

In my view, “the tendency towards rigid control of schooling by a central authority” (H.H. Stern 1984: 428), which elevates intensive monitoring and meticulous evaluation of learning to the status of an educational imperative is reminiscent of early quality management in industrial mass production at the beginning of the twentieth century. It subtly forces teachers to adopt a ‘checklist-approach to foreign language learning and teaching’ which all too often results in test-oriented rather than learner-oriented instruction. Standardized foreign language education? Stronger accountability? More assessment? More control? Holistic intercultural education in high-pressure contexts? What are we headed for? A ‘Brave New World of Education’? This is one excerpt from Aldous Huxley’s dystopia that worries me:

“It’s curious,” he went on after a little pause, “to read what people in the time of Our Ford used to write about scientific progress. They seemed to have imagined that it could be allowed to go on indefinitely, regardless of everything else. Knowledge was the highest good, truth the supreme value; all the rest was secondary and subordinate. True, ideas were beginning to change even then. Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasis from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness. Mass production demanded the shift. […] Still, in spite of everything, unrestricted scien­tific research was still permitted. People still went on talking about truth and beauty as though they were the sovereign goods. Right up to the time of the Nine Years’ War. That made them change their tune all right. What’s the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when the anthrax bombs are pop­ping all around you? That was when science first began to be controlled […]. People were ready to have even their appe­tites controlled then. Anything for a quiet life. We’ve gone on controlling ever since. It hasn’t been very good for truth, of course. But it’s very good for happiness.” (c) (Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, 1932).