“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

 

 

 

Philip Zimbardo’s “The Lucifer Effect” – How to Resist Questionable External Influences in Everyday Foreign Language Classroom Practice

posted by Jürgen Kurtz, Karlruhe University of Education, Germany

Social psychologist Philip G. Zimbardo is perhaps best known for his “Stanford Prison Experiment”, a world-renowned simulation study of the psychological and behavioral effects of imprisonment carried out in 1971. The study had to be terminated after only a few days because the situation in the basement of Stanford’s psychology building created inhumane and unacceptable dynamics between the male college students who participated voluntarily as either guards or prisoners. As is well known, the experiment showed that students participating as guards became increasingly authoritarian, cruel and sadistic, while their ‘prisoners’ became increasingly depressed and rebellious, showing signs of extreme stress. In The Lucifer Effect, Zimbardo (2008) attempts to unearth “how good people turn evil” by coupling a detailed review of the “Stanford Prison Experiment” with a rigorous analysis of the real-world situational dynamics and the appalling, inexcusable behavior of some of the American soldiers and military police officers that became apparent in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq a few years ago. Zimbardo argues convincingly that the destructive or ‘evil’ instances or patterns of behavior surfacing in Abu Ghraib were to a large degree predictable, and, more generally and rather worrying, that certain social settings and situations are likely to influence and transform normal, everyday people in ways that are detrimental, or as was the case in the Abu Ghraib prison, even scandalous and barbarous.

In my view, this book is a ‘must-read’, especially (though, of course, not only) for educators, school administrators and education policy makers, because it provides readers with a number of eye-opening insights into the origins, dynamics and sometimes extremely negative and occasionally even fatal consequences of human behavior in complex social settings and situations, especially in high-pressure contexts. As Zimbardo (2008: 445) points out, “[...] human behavior is always subject to situational forces. This context is embedded within a larger, macroscopic one, often a particular power system that is designed to maintain and sustain itself.” In order to fully understand how and why people behave and act the way they do in a certain (institutional) context, it is therefore essential to view not just the individual person, but the specific situation and the power system in the background, as these factors determine behavior in a number of often subtle ways as well (see also Kurt Lewin’s field theory).

How does this relate to foreign language education in the 21st century? It would be absurd, of course, to compare classrooms with prisons, teachers with prison guards, and learners with ‘inmates’, etc. But does this mean that what teachers do to foster foreign language learning is not subject to situational forces, and not influenced by the political / administrative system of the day? And should we not keep in mind that particularly from the point of view of the pupils, there is by definition an asymmetrical distribution of power in any classroom setting?

Research on foreign language teaching and learning has been dominated by psycholinguistic paradigms for many years, focusing primarily on the cognitive processes involved in target language instruction, but the foreign language classroom is much more than just a ‘society of individual minds’ (see Minsky 1986). It is an institutionally organized social microcosm which is also embedded in a larger setting – in a macrocosm of the socio-political, socio-economic and educational ‘systems’. This ‘mega-system’ is extremely powerful, and in recent years has wielded a massive influence on individual teachers that increasingly (at least partially) runs counter to the promotion of Bildung and Erziehung in foreign language classrooms, i.e. to academic and personal development in a holistic sense. Teaching to the test is just one example (for a more detailed discussion see my personal view on foreign language education in Germany today on this blog).

Zimbardo’s most recent book which deals with contexts and aspects of human behavior that are definitely not comparable to foreign language classroom settings is nevertheless thought-provoking. He encourages readers to think about “how to resist influences that we neither want nor need but that rain upon us daily.” (2008: 446). “Learning to resist unwanted influences” (2008: 446) is probably a recommendation too vigorous with regard to foreign language education, but teachers need to be aware of the influences exerted by the ‘mega-system’. They should distinguish carefully between what is based on research and what is predominantly politically and/or economically motivated by influential stake-holders and specific interest groups, and then rather base their foreign language instruction on scientific facts and expertise.

Minsky, Marvin (1986). The Society of Mind. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Zimbardo, Philip G. (2008). The Lucifer Effect. Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. New York: Random House.

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.