National Language Education Policy or a National Language Education Framework? Summary of a...

PerspectivesHEIDI BYRNES, Associate EditorGeorgetown University

THE ISSUE

From Representation at the Federal/National Level to Creating a ForeignLanguage Education Framework

REFLECTING DIFFERENT TYPES OF ISSUESPerspectives has, over the years, taken on a varietyof formats. That topic-driven flexibility character-izes this issue in particular measure. The presentcolumn expands on the customary dialogicalityof Perspectives by drawing its content from a seriesof four panel discussions and a separate invitedconference, rather than from a single position pa-per and its accompanying responses. It enlargesits multiperspectivalism not only because of thegreater number of voices but because their view-points are particularly diverse. In the end, theseformat changes brought about a change in thetopic itself. Originally focused on the theme of“Representing foreign language education at thefederal/national level of the United States,” dis-cussion over a total of five events that took placein late 2007 and early 2008 gradually came toembrace a much larger issue. The column’s titleexpresses that transformation: “From representa-tion at the federal/national level to creating aforeign language education framework.”

Background Considerations

Some background on this evolution is neces-sary to contextualize the column as it is nowpresented.1 In the spring of 2007, as The Mod-ern Language Journal (MLJ ) Editorial Board con-sidered future topics for Perspectives, broad lan-guage educational issues were once more inthe news. An array of documents, reports, andgovernmental actions had expressed heightenedconcerns—yet again!—about the insufficient ca-pacities in foreign languages and international

education in the United States. Representative ofsuch statements were the following: the White Pa-per, released in 2005, of a June 2004 conferenceco-hosted by the Department of Defense and theCenter for Advanced Study of Language at theUniversity of Maryland, College Park, “The Na-tional Language Conference: A call to action”(The National Language Conference, 2005); theAmerican Council on the Teaching of ForeignLanguages (ACTFL) Blueprint for Action on Lan-guage Education, which summarized the proceed-ings at the National Language Policy Summit atthe University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill(January 2005); the U.S. Department of State’s an-nouncement of the National Security LanguageInitiative (2006); the Report of the Commit-tee for Economic Development, “Education forglobal leadership” (CED, 2006); the then just re-leased report by the National Academies (NAS)on the Fulbright-Hays/Title VI Centers, “Interna-tional education and foreign languages: Keys tosecuring America’s future” (2007); papers deliv-ered at a November 2005 conference at Berke-ley, National language educational policy (MLJ ,91.2), and the about to be released report ofthe Modern Language Association (MLA), “For-eign Languages and higher education: New struc-tures for a changed world” (MLA, 2007a; see alsoMLJ , 92.2).

These documents all agreed in their diagnosisof the deplorable situation in foreign languageteaching and learning in the country, the result-ing dismal levels of capacity and attainment, andthe severely negative consequences for many sec-tors of society. Additionally, specific recommen-dations aside, all pointed to greater coordinationamong the various players as indispensable if im-provements were to be forthcoming. Yet, whereand how and by whom the desired coordinationwould and should be undertaken, what its scope

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Perspectives 615

might be, and what processes might realize it re-mained noticeably unexplored.

In fact, a certain tension could be discernedin the documents. On the one hand, pointingto a lack of coordination at the national levelseemed to suggest that action at that level wasdesirable. That would indicate that the long tradi-tion in the United States of leaving educational de-cisions primarily to state or local jurisdictions wasproducing unsatisfactory results. However, thatassessment clashed with the experience that in-novative work originated in states and regionsbecause of local leadership and community in-volvement and that additional layers of bureau-cracy, not to mention federal government inter-ference, were undesirable. On the other hand,the reports unmistakably revealed that the fed-eral government already powerfully affected edu-cational decision making on the part of the statesthrough an array of legislative, funding, and reg-ulatory actions, with favorable and unfavorableconsequences.

In other words, the issue was less whether thefederal government was involved in the states’ ed-ucational work—it clearly was. The real questionswere these: Why had the language field been un-able to stem detrimental actions on the part offederal authorities? Why was the good intendedwith new program and funding opportunities alltoo often obtained at the expense of the welfareand quality of existing programs and activities?Why, in other words, had the language professionnot been able to make its own informed and sub-stantive recommendations in a way that would beheeded in the relevant councils of decision mak-ing? Indeed, did it have a common voice?

Leaving aside many valid and complex expla-nations for this reality, there was one simpleand yet persuasive explanation: The foreign lan-guage profession, quite remarkably, had no as-sured place at the table of language educationpolicy making at the federal level of the UnitedStates. That state of affairs of necessity cedes thepower that comes with representation to otherparties who, though presumably well intentioned,may have interests that are at a considerable re-move from those of the language profession. Or,they simply might not have the required knowl-edge and expertise. In other words, decisions werebeing made on behalf of and for the languagecommunity, not least because there was no insti-tutional “go-to” person or place that was knownto represent that community in a way that waspublicly accepted.

That interpretation was corroborated whenthe highly acclaimed National Academies report

listed among its recommendations that the De-partment of Education “should consolidate over-sight of its international education and foreignlanguage programs under an executive-level per-son who could also provide strategic direction,and consult and coordinate with other federalagencies” (NAS, 2007b, p. 6). As things stand, theTitle VI and Fulbright-Hays program, the biggestprogram in the federal government in supportof language and international studies, which hasover half a century made possible the creation ofinnovative centers delivering indispensable capac-ities in those areas, cannot be expected to meetthe country’s needs. Rather, the country requires“an integrated, comprehensive national strategyfor language and international education that ex-tends from kindergarten through graduate study(NAS, 2007b, p. 1).

From such considerations and circumstanceswas born the focus of this Perspectives issue. Diverseprofessionals, if possible including some outsidethe language field, were to envision forms of insti-tutional representation for the foreign languagefield at the national or federal level that wouldenhance foreign language and international edu-cation capacities (FL/IE) in a comprehensive andsustained way. It was an unusual focus in that rep-resentation or institutionalization at the federal ornational level is not a customary discussion topicamong American language education profession-als. It was also a timely focus: National electionswith the reality of a new administration were al-ready looming on the horizon, the No Child LeftBehind legislation with its often detrimental con-sequences for language studies (see MLJ , 89.2)was up for reauthorization, and diverse legisla-tive proposals had been made that seemed tofurther disenfranchise the language and inter-national studies community. At the same time,the topic’s scope was manageable: The goal wasto imagine models of representation in terms ofstructures and processes rather than to navigatethe treacherous ocean of language education pol-icy making in the U.S. American educational andsociopolitical environment.

From the Charge to the Process: The Panels

With exemplary cooperation from the lead-ership of four professional organizations, I ar-ranged, during the early summer of 2007, fourpanels at the national conferences of ACTFL,the MLA, the Northeast Conference on theTeaching of Foreign Languages (NECTFL), andthe American Association for Applied Linguistics(AAAL). Because AAAL had its annual meeting in

616 The Modern Language Journal 92 (2008)

Washington, DC, I added an invited conference atGeorgetown University on April 2, 2008 as an op-portunity for reflecting on the proposals in theirentirety, for considering their viability and impli-cations, and for charting possible future steps.

I owe an even greater debt of gratitude to thepanelists who contributed their knowledge, theirthoughtful and imaginative proposals, and, notleast, their time to this project, in many casesthroughout its duration. Arranged by conference,the panelists were as follows:

ACTFL (November 2007): Robert Blake, Univer-sity of California, Davis; June K. Phillips, Deanand Professor Emerita, College of Arts & Hu-manities, Weber State University; Paul Sand-rock, Wisconsin Department of Public In-struction

MLA (December 2007): Katherine Arens, Uni-versity of Texas, Austin; Dennis Looney, Uni-versity of Pittsburgh; Catherine Porter, SUNYCollege at Cortland

NECTFL (March 2008): Christine Brown, As-sistant Superintendent, Glastonbury PublicSchools, Glastonbury, CT; Ron Woo, HunterCollege; Helene Zimmer-Loew, Executive Di-rector, American Association of Teachers ofGerman

AAAL (March 2008): Lyle F. Bachman, UCLA;Tom O’Donnell, Chief of Staff for Rep. RushHolt (D–New Jersey); Diane Auer Jones, As-sistant Secretary for Postsecondary Educa-tion, U.S. Department of Education; Ambas-sador Michael Lemmon, National DefenseUniversity; Mary Ellen O’Connell, SeniorProgram Officer, The National Academies

Ahead of each conference, panelists receivedthe following list of desired qualities for for-eign/second language education. It should be:

� long term (not ad hoc);� encompassing the range of language uses

(not merely security-related language learn-ing);

� substantively educational in terms of aca-demic and experiential knowledge regardingthe teaching and learning of languages andcultures (not quick-fix instrumental);

� encompassing all languages (not merelythose deemed priority languages by govern-ment policies);

� comprehensive (not only subsections of theissue);

� attentive to fostering language learningthrough a continuum that spans all educa-tional levels, from elementary school to grad-

uate education (not disjointed efforts at vari-ous points of the educational system);

� open and publicly validated by a variety ofconstituencies (beyond serving only delim-ited groups, such as government security anddefense-based constituencies);

� based on steady funding sources (rather thanbeing on-again, off-again, which is particu-larly destructive for language learning).

Accordingly, forms of representation and/or in-stitutionalization should be:

� transparent (not relying on a stream of adhoc rulings, programs, initiatives, legislativeacts, and programs that make it difficult tosee them as a rational, coherent whole);

� able to respond to future needs by variousconstituencies expertly, expeditiously, and ina publicly visible and validated way (ratherthan short term, narrowly interest driven, andtherefore not conducive to cooperative be-haviors that harness the best of knowledgeand practice);

� authorized to advocate for language learningand use in a range of societal contexts;

� open and publicly accountable in the usualways in which government accountability isestablished and practiced.

As the above points show, the mandate to thepanelists connected two issues: (a) language edu-cation desiderata that would bolster language ca-pacity and (b) issues of representation intended toensure that broad insights language professionalshave gained about the nature of language learn-ing and teaching would inform and shape howthe country conducted its language educationalwork. For purposes of this discussion, focus was tobe placed on the latter issue. Yet, the undisputedgoal was the possibility of securing the benefit ofrich professional knowledge for enhancing edu-cational practice and the hope that, after so muchsoul searching and so many missteps, a more ra-tional, comprehensive, and long-term approachcould at last be taken.

The panelists’ comments wove these twostrands together, sometimes in surprisingly differ-ent ways. They chose to focus more on one thanthe other issue; they interpreted each from differ-ent perspectives (e.g., K–12 and higher education,professional organization and faculty insights,governance issues and accountability concerns,inclusiveness for all languages and support for,until recently, less commonly taught languagesand heritage languages) and brought their dif-ferent professional experience to bear on them.

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They asserted that much broader educational is-sues than those affecting language teaching andlearning were involved. They even questioned theunderlying assumption that a federal presencewas useful or desirable. At the same time, it wasclaimed that a federal presence attending to justsuch concerns already exists. Throughout the pro-cess, they made specific proposals for both inter-related strands, again with diverse foci. Their ex-pertise, their responsiveness to each other withinand across the panels, and their willingness to de-liberate their proposals with their audiences notonly clarified the notion of representation at thefederal/national level; in the end it laid the foun-dation for the shift in topical focus I mentionedearlier—from representation toward a more self-assured statement of what is needed for the kindof language learning and capacity society seemsurgently to demand.

My comments cannot begin to capture the far-ranging discussion that occurred across the fourpanels and the in-depth discussion at the George-town conference. For details on both, I refer read-ers to the project’s Web site (see Note 1). Instead,the column offers three perspectives on the pro-ceedings as a way of capturing their richness andpossible consequences: First, the following sec-tion provides my summary of the most importantpoints raised in the panels. Then, five of the sixseparate commentaries refer to and expand in-depth conversations at the Georgetown confer-ence.

The topics were determined by all conferenceattendees based on the panels’ findings and rec-ommendations: the need for a language educa-tion framework, the need to create a national dis-cussion of diverse voices, the need to assure high-quality teachers, the need to specify the elementsrequiring attention so that a global literacy canbecome an educational reality and, the need fora range of actions on the part of the higher ed-ucation community. These topics are more thanfamiliar to readers. Yet, I believe how they are be-ing connected shows the potential for forward mo-mentum. Martha Abbott (ACTFL), Rosemary Feal(MLA), Sally Magnan (University of Wisconsinand former editor of the MLJ ), Richard Schmidt(National Resource Center at the University ofHawai’i), and Helene Zimmer-Loew (AATG) fa-cilitated the five break-out sessions and reportedon them to the whole group. They are also the au-thors of the commentaries. I thank all authors fortheir multiple and often continuing contributionsto this project. Finally, this introduction concludeswith an interpretation of what these panels haverevealed.

The Panels’ Foci: An Overview

The following list provides central themes fromthe panels:

� There exists a need for a coordinated pres-ence of FL/IE concerns at the federal level,to serve in the role of interlocutor, advocate,and coordinator. That need exists for all sides,various government agencies, the academy,and diverse societal interests (e.g., businesscommunity, nongovernmental agencies thatoperate internationally; think tanks; interna-tional development work). Accordingly, var-ious proposals were made for creating sucha position(s) and coordinating bodies (As-sistant Secretary for International Educationand Foreign Languages, National World Lan-guages Coordinator, World Languages Over-sight Board). Panelists were, of course, awareof the legislative proposal for just such a po-sition in H.R. 5179 (2008), the InternationalEducation Leadership Act of 2008, sponsoredby Rep. Rush Holt (D–New Jersey). Addition-ally, the possibility of a Strategic EducationResources Administrator was suggested as away of emphasizing the degree to which vig-ilant oversight might go a long way towardassuring quality in FL/IE.

� The Department of Education has a cen-tral role to play because these issues are,at heart, educational concerns. An FL/IErepresentation in the department needs tobe embedded in other forms of representa-tion, expertise, and collaboration, not onlyamong government agencies, so that it mayhelp develop, coordinate, and implementan integrated strategy for K–12 and highereducation.

� A policy-focused task force from within theprofession should be formed, with the chargeof creating a strategic plan oriented towardsolutions, not of reiterating well-known prob-lems. Who would assemble such a group withwhat authority, with what time lines, and withwhat funding seemed to be unclear, in con-trast with significant agreement on what sucha strategic plan would look like.

� Reflecting the long-term nature of FL/IE is-sues, a kind of standing coordinating bodyfor policy, akin to a “think tank,” shouldbe created. The National Academies werementioned as a possible model and home forsuch a standing body.

� Similarly, a central location for gathering,evaluating, and disseminating information


about relevant research to the professionand to the public would be highly benefi-cial. Questions pertained to its institutionallocation, its charge, and its participants. TheNational Science Foundation within the Na-tional Academies was mentioned as a modelfor funding relevant research on a long-termbasis, this time with a strong focus on the ed-ucational context of such research.

� Policy and research need the support of adevelopment and implementation center. Itsfunction could be similar to the “EuropeanCentre for Modern Languages” in Graz, Aus-tria, the practice-oriented arm of the Councilof Europe’s language policy on plurilingual-ism (see MLJ , 91.4). Obvious foci would becurriculum and materials development (in-cluding technology-based materials), teacherrecruitment, education, and development,and assessment.

� Although FL/IE issues are, at heart, edu-cational issues, various private/public part-nerships (involving the federal government,foundations, professional organizations, edu-cation, and business communities) can bothsupport and coordinate organizations and in-stitutions engaged in education at the fed-eral, state, and local levels. Conceptualiza-tion, membership, authority and initiative,and goals and mission would have to bespecified.

� Representation must be coupled with formsof reporting in order to assure accountabilityby various parties toward various constituen-cies. Mention was made of a biennial reportoutlining national needs in FL/IE. The For-eign Language Assessment and TechnologyProject is one way of addressing accountabil-ity issues.

� Funding for all proposed activities is a cen-tral concern. Funding needs pertain par-ticularly to research that would evaluateeducational approaches toward FL and IEcompetence in terms of the outcomes oflearning (outcomes assessment) based ondata collected in programs; similarly, fund-ing is needed for implementing and research-ing forms of “continuous improvement” onthe teaching and curriculum side, one of therecommendations of the National Academiesreport. Pooling of existing funds might bemore effective than the past practice of“democratizing” resources across manygroupings. In any case, approaching founda-tions and other entities with funding requestscan present an opportunity for seeking fund-

ing and making a persuasive case for the de-gree to which FL/IE issues concern everyone.

Toward a National Foreign LanguageEducation Framework

While the previous points summarize some ofthe specific recommendations, how these recom-mendations were motivated and justified, howthey were contextualized, and what premises andbeliefs were attached to them offers an intriguingglimpse of what transpired over these months ofdeliberations. What favorable prospects can resultfrom them depends, of course, on how the stepsthe group decided to take at the conclusion of theGeorgetown conference can be realized and howthey will be received.

I view both aspects with some optimism andhope. By moving educational issues pertaining toFL/IE center stage, even as representational is-sues remained part of the discussion, a number ofimportant points were clarified.

First, at the center of concern is a large edu-cational complex that addresses central societalissues in the 21st century: It is the nexus of lan-guage capacities, cross-cultural awareness and sen-sitivities, and knowledge about nations, cultures,and peoples around the world. In other words, ofconcern is the development of global literacies onthe part of the American public. Such a compre-hensive view inherently creates the possibility andthe need for alliances with a host of organizationsand institutions, a possibility that was welcomedby the group.

Second, there was strong consensus about thebenefits of a strong link between K–12 and highereducation. If advanced/professional levels of abil-ity are to become a realizable educational goal—at least for those who wish to pursue it—then theeducational system must find a way of making lan-guage study part of the educational core of K–12 education. A requirement of, say, 4 years oflanguage study prior to graduation from a U.S.high school would set in motion a dramatic chainof events that would challenge all constituenciesbut that would also give enormous benefits toeveryone.

Among the challenges for the FL profes-sion would be to find principled ways of link-ing cultural/international education content withlanguage acquisition in primary and secondaryeducation in order to respond to the argumentof an already overcrowded curriculum. A secondchallenge, but one actually made more manage-able by a core requirement, would be for assur-ing highly competent teachers. A third challenge

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would be to address what it means to foster ad-vanced language learning in an instructed set-ting, particularly at the college level, a challengethat can only be met with carefully articulatedcurricula. Colleges would also have to considerhow third language learning, perhaps of a lesscommonly taught language, can build on previ-ous language learning and can incorporate theliteracy capacities of college-level learners. Takentogether, these moves would, at last, differentiateFL/IE in K–12 and higher education in ways thatrespect and use to greatest advantage the chal-lenges and opportunities inherent in each educa-tional level. The resources needed for what soci-ety seems to demand of its educational system aresubstantial. In light of that fact, perhaps one ofthe most important arguments the FL educationcommunity could then make for a core curricularpresence is that it is most responsive to and mostresponsible toward the interests and demands ofsociety while being fiscally responsible.

Third, over the course of the panels, empha-sis was placed on finding areas of shared interestsbetween the educational sector and governmen-tal agencies. Other countervailing factors aside,collaboration and cooperation require a sharedvenue, something that, in the past, has been diffi-cult to find. With enlightened leadership and thewill to recognize professional experience and re-search evidence, it should be possible to arrive atsolutions that would benefit everyone, even whilespecific interests will likely remain diverse.

Fourth, outreach is in even greater demand to-ward an American public that is coming to un-derstand that language competence and globalliteracy are key educational issues. For example,in a 2006 survey conducted by NAFSA (NAFSA,2006), the Association of International Educators,90% of Americans believe it is important to ensurethat future generations have the skills and knowl-edge needed for a more interconnected world,and 92% indicated that knowledge of other lan-guages offers a competitive advantage in careeropportunities. Such consensus typically refers toeconomic and job issues. The FL community mustwork with that interpretation and must expand itsown understanding of the value of FL/IE for theworld of the 21st century and one’s own role andposition in it.

Fifth, and perhaps most indicative of new direc-tions, discussion revealed a more assured senseof how to go forward. To me that is the deepermeaning of the decision—to state essential fea-tures of a language education framework whosethrust approaches what other countries refer to asa national language education policy. This move

is necessary despite the fact that, historically andculturally, even the need for arriving at a nationalconsensus, much less the creation of a nationalpolicy, has been a taboo subject. This move is nec-essary because the kinds of learning outcomessociety demands cannot be attained otherwise.By involving a broad group of stakeholders whowould jointly lay out the required components,the issue would transcend the interests of theforeign language education community. At thesame time, the FL community would represent,in the broad sense of the word, what it knowsabout high-quality language teaching and learn-ing. Such a framework document would be a par-ticularly meaningful way of being responsive tosociety.

The “what” of the next steps that were pro-posed by the Georgetown conference attendeesis circumscribed in that fashion. For the “where”and the “how,” a promising opportunity has arisento locate the desired encompassing conversationwithin the National Academies, the same insti-tution that produced the report on the Title VIand Fulbright-Hays programs. As a private, non-profit institution that provides policy advice undera congressional charter, the National Academies,which, among other entities, includes the Na-tional Resource Council, also houses within itsstructure a Division of Behavioral and Social Sci-ences, and Education. The division would seem tooffer an ideal environment for the kind of workthe FL/IE community and the other stakeholdersnow need to undertake. Not only do the NationalAcademies contribute a well-recognized reputa-tion for substance and impartiality, but they alsooffer a diversity of formats and fora for bring-ing together diverse groups that yet share aninterest in a particular issue and seek indepen-dent, research-based advice for its resolution (e.g.,“Roundtable,” “Workshop,” “Board”). Dependingon the task at hand, these can be both short-term and long-term environments for collabora-tion. With the help of NAS staff, particularly MaryEllen O’Connell, the senior program officer wholed the Title VI/Fulbright-Hays report and also apanelist, and Stuart Elliott, Director of the Boardon Testing and Assessment, this possibility is be-ing explored by an action group that was formedat the Georgetown conference.

As for the “when,” plans are to create aninitial event by the end of 2008, not least be-cause it would be highly advantageous to havepreliminary, yet foundational work accomplishedas a new administration comes into office. At thesame time, such a timetable provides an incentiveto begin the process of synthesizing research and


previous recommendations about language teach-ing and learning that can be found in numerousreports and documents and to ascertain whetherother organizations would be interested in joiningthe effort. Naturally, a more encompassing and,most important, long-term presence within theNAS structure that would bring together diverseparties, all educational levels, various agencies ofthe government, and private and public entities ofcivil society would require significant and securefunding.

Whether these planned steps can offer the FLprofession the kind of public forum that has longeluded it remains to be seen. For now, the atten-dees at the Georgetown conference and the plan-ning group considering next steps have adopteda cautious optimism. Central considerations arecaptured by these questions: Is this the right timein the right context; are the goals of this initia-tive stated most appropriately; and is this initiativebeing undertaken by the right people to securethe necessary collaboration among groups inter-ested in advancing FL/IE capacity in the UnitedStates? There are good reasons to believe that theinstitutional context of the National Academiescould provide the kind of public, nonpartisan,and highly respected forum that is necessary forsuch a project. In any case, without a frameworkdocument that spells out essential features for thesystem, it is hard to imagine how the kinds ofdemands various sectors of society are making forhigh levels of FL/IE capacity can be attained. Withsuch a framework document, one could begin thelengthy process of guiding FL educational activ-ity at all levels of the system and in all domainsand languages and of allocating and directing re-sources, broadly understood, in a well-consideredway.

NOTE

1 Extensive documentation of the entire projectcan be found at the following Web site: http://www1.georgetown.edu/departments/german/faculty/byrnes/perspectivespanels/. The site also provides numerouslinks to related documents and activities.

REFERENCES

ACTFL Blueprint for Action on Language Edu-cation. Summary of the Proceedings at theNational Language Policy Summit, January10–11, 2005. Retrieved Sept. 5, 2008, fromhttp://www.actfl.org/files/public/Blueprint.pdf

CED (Committee for Economic Development). (2006).Education for global leadership: The importanceof international studies and foreign language ed-ucation for U.S. economic and national security.Retrieved May 13, 2008, from http://www.ced.org/projects/educ_forlang.shtml

H.R. 5179—110th Congress. (2008). InternationalEducation Leadership Act of 2008, January 29,2008. Retrieved May 13, 2008, from http://www.govtrack .us/congress/billtext .xpd?bill=h110-5179

National Research Council of the National Academies.(2007a). International education and foreign lan-guages. Keys to securing America’s future. Com-mittee to Review the Title VI and Fulbright-Hays International Education Programs. Washing-ton, DC: Author. Executive Summary retrievedMay 13, 2008, from http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11841.html. The full report is available at http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11841

National Research Council of the National Academies.(2007b). Report in Brief. International educationand foreign languages. Keys to securing America’sfuture. Washington, DC: Author. Available athttp://www.nap.edu/html/11841/11841_rb.pdf

MLA (Modern Language Association). (2007). Foreignlanguages and higher education: New structures fora changed world . Retrieved May 13, 2008, fromhttp://www.mla.org/flreport

NAFSA: Association of International Educators. (2006).Americans call for leadership on international educa-tion: A national survey on preparation for a globalsociety. Retrieved May 13, 2008, from http://www.nafsa.org/_/Document/_/americans_call_for_leadership.pdf

The National Language Conference: A Call for Ac-tion. (2005, February 1). A call to action for na-tional foreign language capabilities. Retrieved May13, 2008, from http://www.nlconference.org/docs/White_Paper.pdf

U.S. Department of State. (2006, January 5). Factsheet: National Security Language Initiative . Re-trieved May 13, 2008, from http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2006/58733.htm

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THE COMMENTARIES

National Language Education Policy or a National Language EducationFramework? Summary of a Discussion GroupRICHARD SCHMIDT, The University of Hawai’i at Manoa

The United States does not have anything re-motely like an explicit, coherent, and generallyagreed upon national language policy. Unoffi-cially, English is both the country’s national lan-guage (the most widespread language, closelyassociated with national identity) and the taken-for-granted language of government, law, andofficial business, but neither role is explicitly rec-ognized in the Constitution or in federal law, atleast not yet. Spanish is widely spoken through-out the United States and is studied more thanany other language, but there is no national con-sensus about the role of Spanish or any otherlanguage in the United States, whether theselanguages are seen as “second,” “foreign,” or “her-itage” languages. It has been observed by manythat we have a largely implicit policy of linguisticassimilation for language minorities (subtractivebilingualism), combined with a positive stance to-ward foreign language study by English-speaking(“mainstream”) students.

We do, however, have some pieces of a na-tional language education policy, or perhaps thesituation can be viewed better as a collection ofpartly overlapping, partly conflicting policies inthe plural. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) empha-sizes and tests language arts (meaning Englishlanguage arts) and identifies foreign languagesas part of the academic core but does not testthem, leading to a range of mostly unfortunateinfluences on native language, English as a sec-ond language (ESL), and foreign language ed-ucation, which were explored in MLJ 89.2. Thelanguage of the legislation establishing Title VIof the Higher Education Act, now 50 years oldand currently up for reauthorization, establishes14 constituent programs administered by the U.S.Department of Education and frames these pro-grams as essential for meeting both short-termand long-term national needs for internationaleducation, including increasing the nation’s ca-pacity to teach and learn foreign languages ef-fectively. More recent initiatives have been basedmuch more explicitly on a language-as-homeland-security paradigm, including expansion of the Na-tional Security Education Program, establishmentof Flagship institutions for advanced language

study of critical languages, and the National Se-curity Language Initiative (NSLI), announced in2006, which has resulted in new programs suchas STARTALK and significant shifts in existingprograms, such as the promulgation throughoutthe government of a short list of languages (Ara-bic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and lan-guages of the Indic, Iranian, and Turkic fami-lies) considered critical for national security andprioritized in virtually all relevant governmentprograms.

Foreign language educators, institutions, andprofessional organizations have responded in avariety of ways to these recent shifts in policy.Some enthusiastically supported the widely pub-licized 2004 National Language Policy Confer-ence organized by the Department of Defenseat the University of Maryland. (The White Pa-per that followed can be accessed from the Website of the National Foreign Language Centerat the University of Maryland, http://www.nflc.org/policy_and_strategy/.) Others, for examplethose who participated in the 2005 Berkeley col-loquium on National Language Education Pol-icy (reported in this column in MLJ 91.2), crit-icized both the narrow focus on security-relatedconcerns and the weak influence of language ed-ucators on policy making while recognizing thatthe traditional humanistic and literary purposesof language study honored by faculty memberstend to prepare them poorly for communicat-ing with government, business, or the generalpublic on issues of language policy. As the MLAAd Hoc Committee on Foreign Languages ob-served in its 2007 report, “Foreign Languages andHigher Education: New Structures for a ChangedWorld” (summarized in Perspectives in MLJ 92.2),there is widespread agreement in higher educa-tion that defense and security agendas define lan-guage study too narrowly but that the language-as-canonical-literature paradigm and the standardconfiguration of university foreign language cur-ricula that supports it also represent a narrowmodel.

These general trends provided part of the back-ground of one of the discussion groups at theGeorgetown follow-up conference, on the topic


of foreign language policy. The group I moder-ated, which discussed the question of whetherwe need a national language educational policyand, if so, what assumptions, needs, and con-straints should inform it, included the follow-ing individuals: Lyle Bachman (UCLA), RichardBrecht (University of Maryland), Richard Byrne(Chronicle of Higher Education), David Edwards(JNCL), Sam Eisen (U.S. Department of Educa-tion), Catherine Ingold (National Foreign Lan-guage Center), Rick Jackson (National ForeignLanguage Center), Michael Lemmon (NationalDefense University), Mary Ellen O’Connell (Na-tional Academies), Robert Slater (National Secu-rity Education Program), Paul Sandrock (Wiscon-sin Department of Public Instruction), and CastleSinicrope (University of Hawai’i).

On the first issue, of whether a national for-eign language education policy is a desirable goal,there was not full agreement. On the one hand,it was argued that such a policy would be veryimportant for coordination, so that resources areallocated to projects that the field and the coun-try think need to be done. On the other hand,it was pointed out that a bad policy might wellbe worse than no policy, and we should be care-ful what we ask for. Several participants arguedthat groups like these ought not be concernedat all with substantive “public policy,” by whichwas meant going to legislators and having themenact laws and appropriations, or with policiesin the more general sense (e.g., a policy state-ment setting out the aims of a particular groupsuch as the American Council on the Teachingof Foreign Languages [ACTFL] and the ModernLanguage Association [MLA]), but they could fo-cus on providing a framework for the discussionwithin which people could then start talking. Asthe discussion progressed, consensus seemed todevelop that trying to conceptualize a nationalforeign language education framework could beproductive, and the remainder of the discussionwas focused on what such a conceptual frameworkmight be like. Richard Brecht helpfully pointedout that a useful way to start is by considering theparameters of a framework such as assumptions,goals, scope, means, constraints, and mechanismsand identifying the exhaustive options within eachdomain of the framework. For example, specificpolicy concerns could vary in terms of scope fromthe narrowest (e.g., only language > only criticallanguages > only Arabic) to the broadest.

Conceptualizing the broadest goals of a lan-guage education framework may be the first task,but it is in some ways the hardest. For example,if there is broad agreement on language learning

as a component of international education as thegoal, then one can envision an educational pyra-mid, with international education at the bottom asthe broadest term, moving to a focus on languagein its cultural context, starting early, then contin-uing to more advanced levels of language profi-ciency (a model expanded upon by AmbassadorMichael Lemmon in his presentation in the Amer-ican Association for Applied Linguistics [AAAL]panel). Resources could be allocated so that byhigh school there would be a broad-based, glob-ally educated student body with a solid languagebase. However, it was objected that internationaleducation is still too narrow a term and that lan-guage education has to be broader, cannot just be“foreign” but has to be related to the value of bilin-gual persons and immigrants. Other suggestionswere put forth: “global competencies”—it is whatyou hear from the business community and is anumbrella term for other terms such as multicul-turalism or cultural literacies; “global literacies”—suggested in one of the other discussion groups;“translingual and transcultural competence”—assuggested in the MLA report on restructuring theprofession; and “plurilingualism”—as proposedby the European Union. It seems, therefore, thatwe may still lack a shared vision that can besummed up as neatly as national security (in gov-ernment) or global competitiveness (in business),and the fact that my spell-checker rejects most ofthese labels suggests that they are not immediatelymarketable.

Several suggestions were made as to how theassumptions and goals of a national languageeducation framework could be identified. LyleBachman, who was a member of the NationalAcademies 2007 committee that reviewed Title VIand Fulbright-Hays international education pro-grams, reminded us that the committee looked ata number of broad goals that might be candidatesfor inclusion in the framework, such as infusingthe educational system with a foreign languageand area studies dimension, reducing shortages offoreign language and area experts, and support-ing research, education, and materials develop-ment in foreign languages and international stud-ies. Several participants pointed out that there ismuch activity at the state level—a point also madestrongly by Robert Blake in the panel at ACTFL.Multiparty initiatives are being undertaken in anumber of states (e.g., Ohio, Oregon, Wisconsin,and Texas) to assess local economic, social, andcultural imperatives for language skills and to cre-ate state “road maps” for the incorporation of lan-guage education into all levels of the educationalsystem. It may be easier to do such work at the

Perspectives 623

state rather than at the national level, but the ef-forts by a dozen or so states could form the basisfor a national effort.

It was also suggested that certain argumentsneed to be made as part of policy and planning.For example, the whole question of which lan-guages to learn and teach is problematic for theUnited States, but the principle that learning alanguage (any language) makes you a better lan-guage learner for subsequent languages supportsone essential element of an educational policy,namely that every student needs the opportunityto have an effective language learning experience.Getting wider public buy-in requires synthesiz-ing and disseminating evidence-based statementsabout the value of language learning for cognitiveand intellectual development (without oversellingthe principle beyond what the research supports),as well as statements about when to start languageinstruction and other issues.

It seems that approaching policy issues interms of a national foreign language education

framework may be a promising approach, and theeffort should not be limited to supporting specificpieces of legislation. As important as that is and astempting it may be to focus on pieces of the mo-saic of existing public policies that seem to requireattention at a specific time, it is the larger dis-cussion that has not taken place. A well-reasonedand marketable conceptual framework—perhapssomewhat like the Common European Frame-work of Reference for languages that emergedfrom the project “Language Learning for Euro-pean Citizenship” in the 1990s—should be usefulon many levels. However, how do we get such aframework, who should do it, and how will weknow when we have it? This may be the beginningof a much longer discussion, looking at the liter-ature from SLA and foreign language education,looking at what all the states are doing, and net-working among all stakeholders. The imagined re-sult is a consensus statement establishing nationalprinciples, from which public policies mightfollow.

A National Voice for the Language Profession at the Federal/National LevelMARTHA G. ABBOTT, American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL)

Given the fact that education decisions in theUnited States are based primarily on state andlocal policies, any discussion regarding creating anational voice for language education policy mustnecessarily include both “top-down,” or national-level initiatives, as well as “bottom-up,” or state andlocal ones. Although the No Child Left Behind(NCLB) legislation seemingly represents federalinvolvement in education, it is important to re-member that each state sets its own implementa-tion plan for adhering to the legislative require-ments, which means that, essentially, there aremore than 50 versions of NCLB operating acrossthe country. The discussion surrounding a na-tional voice for language education, then, neces-sarily included recommendations that would bothbring the profession together with a commonvoice at the national level and would also guidelocal and state efforts that would reflect this com-mon voice as “bottom-up” initiatives are put intoplace.

The national conversation or “voice” would be-gin with the National Academies Roundtable inorder to establish a consensus in our field for aclear, compelling, and consistent message that fo-cuses on the world of our students and sets forth alanguage education policy that emanates not from

our collective history of lamenting our off-centerplace in the curriculum in schools and universitiesbut, instead, looks forward to meeting the needsof today’s students to be prepared to live and workin a global environment where daily interactionswith those around the world are already the norm.It is the world of today’s students, a diverse groupthat includes not only all forms of heritage learn-ers but also reflects the full spectrum of learningstyles and teaching challenges. It is about creat-ing an environment in which being multilingualis viewed as normal and where monolingualism isviewed as odd. The message that is developed asa result of the Roundtable will need to be carriedto a wide range of venues by the leaders in ourprofession, much in the same way that the profes-sion reached consensus regarding our nationalstudent standards. Specific recommendations todisseminate this “national voice” concerning lan-guage education at the national level include thefollowing:

� Developing a concerted effort to work withour allies in Congress to get ahead ofthe curve in preparing for the next ad-ministration so that we are ready to “hitthe ground running” when newly appointed


federal agency leaders are looking for newinitiatives to brand a new administration.

� Marketing our message to targeted audiencesin order to influence stakeholders, including,but not limited to school boards, state boardsof education, different departments in highereducation, heritage communities, parents,1

social services organizations, and others.� Capitalizing on other educational agendas to

promote the benefits of language learning forall students. The current emphasis on literacy,numeracy, academic readiness, and perfor-mance benchmarks can be incorporated intolanguage program curricula with measurableoutcomes.

� Supporting a national public awareness cam-paign such as Discover Languages . . . Discoverthe World! (www.DiscoverLanguages.org), inwhich the media projects a positive face onwho we are as Americans and makes everycitizen a diplomat. Involve students in thecampaign with the message that the countryneeds them to develop their language skillsin order to build national linguistic capacityto support a wide variety of national needs,from the corporate board table to nationalsecurity and defense needs.

� Sponsoring activities such as a national “readin” for languages or a similar national effortthat gains wide public attention.

� Assembling a national student advisory coun-cil to inform educators and decision makersabout student needs and interests.

� Focusing on global language needs and notlimiting the discussion to specific criticalneeds languages.

As our profession’s message is transmitted intoa national voice with efforts at the national level,simultaneously we need to be integrating thesame message into state and local efforts. Statelanguage organizations can play a key role in thiseffort because they can provide a collective voiceto advocate for changes in language educationpolicy at the state level. Recent efforts by theMaryland Foreign Language Association (MFLA)resulted in the inclusion of language educationin a middle school report issued by the MarylandDepartment of Education. Lobbying effortsby the Minnesota Council on the Teachingand Learning of Culture (MCTLC) to fund aposition at the state level to direct the languageprograms were successful, and the MichiganWorld Language Association (MWLA) advocated

for a high school graduation requirement,which the state legislators passed into law andwhich will take effect in 2016. These are majoraccomplishments carried out by volunteersserving in their state professional associations,and they are responsible for effecting signifi-cant change in state policies. Imagine what wecould accomplish if we harnessed the efforts oflanguage associations across the country andsystematically embraced a common agenda thateach organization would work to implementwithin the states. Using state “peer pressure”(e.g., Wisconsin has internationalized its cur-riculum more than neighboring Michigan), wecould imagine this bottom-up approach leadinggovernors to put pressure on the federal agenciesto provide more funding for the necessarylanguage and international education programsbeing implemented at the state level. Just as theDepartment of Defense, through the NationalSecurity Education Program (NSEP), recentlyfunded state-level symposia in Oregon, Texas, andOhio that involved the education, business, andgovernment sectors to develop state “road maps”for preparing students for the global work world(www.thelanguageflagship.org/roadmaps.html),so these kinds of symposia could be developedin each state. Such efforts, although seeminglyneeding to be initiated in a different way ineach state in order to meet state-specific trade orbusiness goals, could all have the same underlyingthreads of language education policy unitingthem in preparing the global citizen-diplomat asenvisioned in the national discussion.

Finally, in this world of Web 2.0 and the capa-bility of the Internet to share messages instanta-neously, it is more important than ever to makesure that we clearly define our terms and that weunderstand how they may be perceived by others.We need to understand the discourse of othersand make sure that we tailor our message to beunderstood by each audience. We will benefit bydeveloping a strong and coherent message col-lectively at the national level that will transcendstate and local initiatives and have the potentialof ultimately changing the public attitude towardnormalizing multilingualism in the United States.

NOTE

1For more information about ACTFL’s Friends of For-eign Languages program, see www.actfl.org.

Perspectives 625

An Audacious Goal: Recruiting, Preparing, and Retaining High-QualityLanguage Teachers in the 21st CenturyHELENE ZIMMER–LOEW, American Association of Teachers of German

The word “audacious” in the title of my com-ments and especially its noun form has politicalovertones at this time.1 However, it is perhaps themost fitting adjective to describe the long-term,systematic campaign we, along with others en-gaged in the education enterprise, must mount inorder to meet the advanced language proficiencylevels, the intercultural competencies, and theglobal/international literacies required to meetthe needs of the citizens of the United States inthe 21st century.

THE VISION

In recent years, language educators at all levelsof instruction have realized the growing impor-tance of their discipline beyond a requirement forcollege entrance and they are aware of a criticalneed for advanced language speakers in a wide va-riety of fields, beginning with the humanities andinternational studies and extending to careers indiplomacy, interpreting/translating, social work,health, business, tourism, and national security,among others. The core belief of language educa-tors is expressed in the following statement of phi-losophy from the Standards for Foreign LanguageLearning: “Language and communication are atthe heart of the human experience. The UnitedStates must educate students who are linguisticallyand culturally equipped to communicate success-fully in a pluralistic American society and abroad.This imperative envisions a future in which allstudents will develop and maintain proficiency inEnglish and at least one other language, modernor classical” (National Standards in Foreign Lan-guage Education Project, 1996, p. 7). Supportingthis vision are three assumptions about languageand culture, one of which states that language andculture are part of the core curriculum.

THE REALITY

Many Americans support the concepts reflectedin this statement of philosophy and recognize thatwe are living in an ever more diverse society. MostAmericans also realize that languages and inter-national studies play an important role in thepresent and growing competitive economic envi-ronment and in maintaining our national security.

However, the reality of low enrollments in foreignlanguages at all levels of instruction is a sign thatwe have much work ahead to institute languagestudy and international education as part of ev-ery student’s program. Few institutions includelanguage and global studies among their gradua-tion requirements, and articulated curricula fromkindergarten to graduate school are rare, if notimpossible, in our decentralized education en-vironment and mobile American society. Recentstatistics from the Modern Language Association(2007a) show that only 9% of students at the col-lege/university level study a foreign language, andat the advanced level, the percentage is 1.6%. Thisis especially disturbing in light of our need for cit-izens who are proficient at the advanced level.Although the most recent statistics for grades 7–12 (ACTFL survey, 2002b) indicate that 44% ofstudents were enrolled in language classes, it isobvious that few of them continue their studiestoward higher levels of ability.

EXPECTATIONS

How do we achieve this vision? We begin withexpectations about the quality of language teach-ing and of language programs. The first expec-tation is that at every level of instruction, stu-dents have the right to a highly competent teacherwho demonstrates an oral proficiency level of atleast Advanced Low (ACTFL, 1999; for beginningteachers in the most commonly taught languages,the standards set by the National Council for theAccreditation of Teacher Education for accredita-tion of language programs, INTASC, 2002), has aknowledge base that enables the teaching of lan-guage in its cultural context, and is pedagogicallycompetent to teach language and culture at theappropriate age or developmental level.

The second expectation is that language pro-grams are developed, coordinated, and imple-mented as part of “an integrated, comprehen-sive national strategy for language and inter-national education that extends from kinder-garten through graduate study” (see the NationalResearch Council of the National Academies[2007] report “International Education and For-eign Languages”). Otherwise, we cannot producethe cohort of advanced language learners with the


strong international literacy that this nation needsto secure its future.

STRIVING TOWARD EXCELLENCE

Do we have the mechanisms to consistently pro-duce excellent and highly qualified teachers at alllevels of instruction? Is education a profession thatcan mandate high standards universally? I thinknot. In general, professions control entrance andexit of their members, requiring one single pass-ing grade on a national or state examination. Theforeign language field has no such single high-stakes examination for incoming teachers or stu-dents. The Praxis exam allows states to set theirown unique passing scores that fluctuate fromstate to state. There are no universally acceptedexaminations or standards set for teaching assis-tants and the future professoriate.

We lack universally required and accepted stan-dards for schools of education. We have at thistime two accreditation agencies that differ sub-stantially in their requirements. Many schools ofeducation choose the agency that requires thelesser effort and expense for their accreditationprocess.

We allow teachers to practice independentlywithout careful supervision and mentoring by ex-perienced teachers and professors before they arelicensed by the state. There is no consistent or re-quired access to a residency or internship, andstudent teaching can be as short as 30 hours.

Teacher preparation in many of America’s1,200 college- and university-based programs in-adequately prepares the country’s new teachers.Low admission standards, nonpublishing and un-tenured faculty, weak quality control, and curric-ula that are disconnected from actual classroomsituations are among the reasons cited for thiscondition.

TEACHER RECRUITMENTAND PREPARATION

Consequently, our first effort is to strive to-ward making education a profession. We mightbegin with a set of strategies that enables presentteachers at all levels of instruction to identify andrecruit potential language teachers as early aspossible, assist them in finding appropriate col-lege language/education programs, and advisethem as they go out into the world of teaching.The most talented and interested students shouldbe encouraged to layer languages by beginningthe study of a second or even third language at thehigh school and college level. Potential language

teachers are heritage language speakers who arealready fluent in a mother tongue and English andwho might be learning a third or even fourth lan-guage no later than middle or high school. Men-toring should continue throughout college yearsand well into initial practice as classroom teachers.Financial incentives from federal sources shouldalso be available to fund the preparation, espe-cially for those who will teach in shortage areasand low-income schools.

Another much needed and usually effectivestrategy to help language teacher candidates gainhigher levels of proficiency is structured studyand travel in areas where the target language isspoken. Many high schools sponsor exchange orone-way study/travel programs, and there are nu-merous other possibilities for language-talentedhigh school students to visit and attend schoolsin target language countries. Many colleges, butunfortunately not all, offer and encourage a pe-riod of study abroad during undergraduate studytoward the language major or minor. If studyabroad is not a viable financial or time option,future teachers should consider opportunitiesthrough programs such as the Fulbright teach-ing assistantships, which give them the chanceto live, teach, and conduct research abroad foran academic year after college graduation. Ad-ditionally, many languages other than Englishare spoken in communities. These could offervaluable immersion language and cultural expe-riences for undergraduate as well as graduatestudents.

An additional focus of our preparation strate-gies are teachers with alternative certification andthose short-term teachers from foreign countriessponsored by national governments. They are flu-ent in the language of the classroom and knowl-edgeable about the culture of their native country.However, the pedagogy and management of theAmerican classroom and students may be unfamil-iar to them. Some efforts are being made throughprofessional development activities to counteractthat shortcoming, but induction periods are oftenshort or, worse, totally absent.

As the MLA report, “Foreign languages inhigher education” (Modern Language Associa-tion, 2007b) indicated, there is reason to be con-cerned about the growing number of adjunct andpart-time faculty who often teach at more thanone institution and who are therefore unlikelyto participate in faculty development opportuni-ties at their institutions’ teaching and learningcenters. Tenured, experienced faculty, too, wouldbenefit from participating in this form of facultydevelopment.

Perspectives 627

PROMOTING THE PROFESSIONALCOMPETENCE OF PRESENT AND FUTURELANGUAGE TEACHERS

What are the immediate needs to accomplishthis audacious goal? The establishment of a cen-tral agency or organization, the first task of whichis to develop and support a long-term (3–5 years)plan to enhance the competence of languageteachers at all levels of instruction. The plan’s ob-jectives should include the following:

� Encouraging and supporting in-service lan-guage teachers through professional develop-ment to acquire new knowledge in their disci-pline and innovative approaches to learningand teaching and the use of technologies,and to enable them to put this knowledgeinto practice in their classrooms. As agents ofchange and leaders, teachers would make adirect investment in higher quality languageteaching and learning.

� Developing strong and active professionalnetworks for teachers who are often iso-lated in their classrooms and schools. Thiscould strengthen professional unity throughmore powerful and effective communicationwithin the profession and eventually outsideof it with key decision makers and the generalpublic.

� Disseminating more widely the standards forstudent learning K–16, for schools of educa-tion, for entry-level licensure, and for profes-sional certification, as well as the proficiencyguidelines for assessment of language compe-tence that have already established the majorprinciples and instruments needed to furtherstrengthen the professional community.

� Enabling language teachers/leaders to havea greater impact on educational reform pro-cesses in U.S. schools as they demonstratehow to make linguistic and social diversityin our schools and communities work in amulticultural society.

� Supporting collaborative efforts of teachers,students, parents, and principals in schoolsor, at the collegiate level, professors, students,and deans. These will eventually produce anenvironment in which the level of teachingand learning far exceeds what any individualcould accomplish alone.

HUMAN AND FINANCIAL RESOURCES

If we are to achieve higher standards of learningfor all students, we need a focused agenda and sys-tematic financial investment in the recruitment,

preparation, internship/resident year, and con-tinued development of teachers and leaders.Funding would be used to provide mentors forevery new teacher hired each year; incentivesfor expert teachers; sustained, practice-based,and collegial professional development for newand experienced teachers; and advanced studyand study abroad for preservice and in-serviceteachers. An added incentive throughout theteaching profession is a career ladder that rec-ognizes teacher expertise and teachers’ willing-ness to become mentors, coaches, and curricu-lum leaders. Incentives, financial and human, thatsupport mandates must also come from local andstate levels where educational responsibility ulti-mately resides.

CONCLUSION

If key decision makers are unwilling to consis-tently support the teaching of a variety of lan-guages to all students at all levels, I suggest thatprofessional language associations join forces anddedicate their expertise and financial resourcesto move the field ahead. A broad and potentiallypowerful coalition could create the framework de-scribed by Byrnes in her title, seek funding in asystematic way for its plans, and perhaps fulfill thevision described in the national student standards.

We in education are often the targets ofthe whims and financial manipulations of short-sighted school boards, school districts, universityprovosts, and presidents. Our reform efforts havebeen haphazard and erratic, still heavily influ-enced by hierarchical 19th-century industrial-erapolicies and practices, hardly an appropriate envi-ronment for a linguistically and globally preparedsociety.

We must also become more involved withgeneric educational associations that have hun-dreds of thousands of members representingdecision makers and administrators, such as lo-cal boards of education, state boards of educa-tion, state education commissioners, superinten-dents, deans, provosts, and college presidents.Teachers, their associations, students, parents andprincipals—those directly and daily involved withthe education of students—must take a strongleadership role or we will continue to bemoan thefact that so few Americans are capable of handlingthe global challenges of the 21st century.

NOTE

1 I am inspired by the summarizing statement inthe National Commission on Teaching and Amer-ica’s Future publication What Matters Most: Teaching


for America’s Future , 1996. “We propose an audaciousgoal . . . By the year 2006—we will provide every studentin America with what should be his or her educationalbirthright: access to competent, caring, qualified teach-ing in schools organized for success.”

REFERENCES

American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Lan-guages. (1999). ACTFL revised proficiency guide-lines. Speaking . Yonkers, NY: Author.

American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Lan-guages. (2002a). ACTFL program standards for thepreparation of foreign language teachers. Yonkers, NY:Author.

American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Lan-guages. (2002b). Foreign language enrollments inpublic secondary schools, fall 2000 . Yonkers, NY:Author.

Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Con-sortium. (2002). Model standards for licensing be-ginning foreign language teachers: A resource for statedialogue . Washington, DC: CCSSO.

Modern Language Association. (2007a). Enrollmentsin languages other than English in United Statesinstitutions of higher education, fall 2006 . Re-trieved June 13, 2008, from http://www.mla.org/2006_flenrollmentsurvey

Modern Language Association. (2007b). Foreign lan-guages and higher education: New structures for achanged world . Retrieved June 13, 2008, fromhttp://www.mla.org/flreport

National Commission on Teaching and America’sFuture. (1996). What matters most: Teaching forAmerica’s future . Retrieved July 2, 2008, fromhttp://www.teaching-point.net/Exhibit%20A/What%20Matters%20Most%20Exec%20Summary.pdf

National Research Council of the National Academies.(2007). International education and foreign lan-guages. Keys to securing America’s future . Wash-ington, DC: Author. Available at http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11841

National Standards in Foreign Language EducationProject. (1996). Standards for foreign languagelearning: Preparing for the 21st century. Yonkers, NY:Author.

What Is Needed for Global Literacy to Become an Educational Reality?Summary of a Discussion GroupSALLY SIELOFF MAGNAN, University of Wisconsin, Madison

The Georgetown conference elicited manyoverlapping, and highly animated, discussions. Inthis summary, I offer thoughts from the groupasked to specify elements inside the professionthat need attention in order for global educa-tion to become an educational reality. I recognizethe group members in that discussion: Kather-ine Arens, Donna Christian, Dan Davidson, GailGrella, Meg Malone, Cristina Sanz, Leo van Lier,Paula Wasley, and myself, as group leader.

Global literacies, according to the thinking ofour group, are founded in an ability to under-stand and enter into other cultures. As Byrnesputs it in her introduction to this column, theycome through “the nexus of language capaci-ties, cross-cultural awareness and sensitivities, andknowledge about nations, cultures, and peoplesaround the world.” To gain that ability, learnersneed command of multiple languages other thanEnglish. They need repeated sojourns in othercountries, where they interact with a wide rangeof peoples and their cultures. They must reflect oninternational issues and how they relate to diversecultural practices. Global literacies are foundedin, and foster, cross-cultural awareness andsensitivities.

To make global literacies an educational real-ity, first and foremost, there must be a massivecommitment and involvement from the many ed-ucational entities involved in foreign language(FL) and international education (IE). It is im-perative to involve FL teaching and research com-munities and IE communities together in thedecision making that affects the larger U.S. ed-ucational sector. Before we can involve thesemany professional organizations, federally fundedcenters, and other entities, we need to iden-tify them, which is not a trivial matter. Byrneslists many stakeholders that will help us createa mental map of the field (e.g., from our dis-cussion group: ACTFL, MLA, AATs, LSA, AAAL,NFLRCs, LRCs, Calico, Colleges of Education,NCATE). To these professional organizations,our discussion group suggested several additions,both from inside and related bodies outside ourfields: (a) from academia—university libraries(e-resources), university presses, and universitypresidents and chancellors; (b) from nonprofitorganization—developers of open-source tech-nology, such as Moodle, and volunteer teacherprograms, such as Teach for America; (c) fromthe commercial sector—textbook publishers and

Perspectives 629

developers of professional materials, companiesinvolved with translation, interpretation, interna-tional commerce, and all areas associated withmedia competence; (d) from communities—parents, students, principals, counselors, heads ofstate school boards, and voices from individualcommunities, especially heritage groups withinschool districts. This starting list of stakeholdersneeds to be reviewed, expanded especially to in-clude more IE entities, and must be kept up-to-date. The current fragmentation in the FL fieldand the unfortunate bifurcation between FL andIE fields can only be addressed by a more central-ized entity to store and disseminate information.That entity, through the professional alliances itwould represent, might offer a united voice forthe profession on issues of national policy, whichwould serve to foster, regulate, and represent lan-guage and international issues at the federal level.

Our group sought to exemplify the need fora strong national voice by reviewing recent ac-tions that it considered harmful to the advanceof global literacy; for example, the detrimentalconsequences of the No Child Left Behind legis-lation for FL enrollments and IE electives in theschool curriculum; recent changes, discontinua-tions, and lack of availability in some AdvancedPlacements Tests of the College Board; state-leveldecisions that reduce the portability of teachercredentials, which has a massive impact on teacherlicensing at this critical time when we are strivingto get more teachers of less commonly taught lan-guages into the schools. Might these actions havedeveloped differently or been implemented moresatisfactorily if we had a national consensus on FLand IE education informed by the scholarly fieldsthat received the impact of these actions?

Having a strong national voice for languageadvocacy and policy will facilitate the develop-ment of multiple pathways for in-school and life-long language learning. Our group discussedhow the National Standards for Foreign Lan-guage Education are helping schools move stu-dents closer to global literacies. The Communi-ties Standard is particularly important given thatbeing an educated citizen means life-long expo-sure to multilingual settings, language learning,and maintenance and renewal of language abil-ity. In academia, we need to investigate vigorouslydifferent formats and intensity of instruction,both within the United States and abroad (e.g.,variable credits, weekend experiences, language-based trailer sections for courses in other con-tent areas, internships in heritage communities,cross-instruction for languages with substantialsimilarity, such as Farsi for Arabic speakers, time

allowances for study abroad in the curriculum). Inshort, we must remove time and place barriers tolanguage learning while also increasing incen-tives. For all of these programs, it would be helpfulto review the goals and expectations and find waysto convey them clearly and realistically to learn-ers. Using the Internet, there is an opportunityto provide access for more Americans to mate-rial for language learning, maintenance, and re-newal. For distance learners, but also for those inour classrooms, we need to develop materials thatinclude languages and international perspectiveswithin different disciplinary contents and betterways of articulating the five Cs of the NationalStandards with various proficiency measures, suchas the ACTFL Guidelines and the Common Euro-pean Framework and its portfolio.

It is important not to limit our discussion to ed-ucation in the schools and at the undergraduatelevel. Graduate education today has an increas-ing number of individuals and programs with astake in language instruction and research on lan-guage acquisition. Our discussion group notedthe growing number of Language Resource Cen-ters (LRCs) and doctoral programs in second lan-guage acquisition (e.g., within the last 6 years,new programs were created at the University ofWisconsin and Michigan State University), whichadd to established programs in Schools of Educa-tion and to traditional language, literature, andlinguistics departments. The recent MLA report(MLA, 2007) on restructuring foreign languagedepartments poses significant challenges to grad-uate education and puts into question traditionalboundaries in the field, boundaries which needto be reduced as we educate students for globalliteracies of the future (see Bousquet’s commen-tary, 2008, in MLJ , 91.2). As these boundariesare questioned, often in the face of economicconstraints experienced by many institutions, ourgroup worried about the sustainable ecologies oflanguage departments. How can the academy ofthe future nurture small fields, such as Turkic lan-guages, when administrative units are becomingincreasingly integrated, often for financial rea-sons? How does the way administrative units areconstructed influence how academic disciplinesconstruct knowledge and learning? What will newPh.D.s look like in the complexity of fields that un-derlie global literacies? Might these questions bean avenue for reconsidering the interdisciplinar-ity of graduate education?

This questioning led our group to consider theearlier suggestion that the National Academiesmight provide an institutional environment forcreating the kind of national voice we are seeking.


It would appear that we need a voice that is biggerthan the bounds of the current academic frame-work. This body must also facilitate the researchthat lies within the mission of the university. Ourgroup mentioned only a few of the many crucialareas in need of exploration: advanced-level ac-quisition, learner interlanguage, learner interac-tion in school versus target culture contexts, andlearning third and fourth languages. It is hopedthat the federally funded LRCs will stimulate suchresearch and that mechanisms can be found tocreate synergies among research teams comingfrom them and from academia more broadly.Such research teams might best involve mem-bers from various instructional levels and learningsituations.

It was clear from our group’s discussion thata list of elements for making global literacies aneducational reality would be very long and alsocomplex in the overlapping and overarching na-ture of its components. The group concluded with

the recommendation to continue exploring thedevelopment of a framework for sustained na-tional discussion of language policy. More specif-ically, it suggested creating a policy-focused taskforce primarily from inside the profession withthe charge of creating a strategic plan oriented to-ward addressing some of the most pressing issuesof FL and IE education today. Such a task forcecould report to a newly formed national bodythat could give voice to future discussion about itsfindings.

REFERENCES

Bousquet, G. (2008). A model for interdisciplinary col-laboration, Modern Language Journal, 92, 304–306.

Modern Language Association (MLA). (2007). Foreignlanguages and higher education: New structures for achanged world . Retrieved July 2, 2008, from http://www.mla.org/flreport

How Can the Educational Community Come Together on Language Issues?Notes From the Discussion GroupROSEMARY G. FEAL, The Modern Language Association

I am pleased to summarize the group discus-sion on higher education that took place at theGeorgetown conference. Those of us who partici-pated in this group jointly created the frameworkI outline below, and my role was limited to mod-erator and rapporteur.

We first asked ourselves, “Where do the mem-bers of the language education communitygather?” We noted that we tend to belong to pro-fessional associations such as the Modern Lan-guage Association, the AATs (American Associa-tion of Teachers of French, of Spanish, of German,and so on), the American Council on the Teach-ing of Foreign Languages, the American Associ-ation for Applied Linguistics, and other groups,most of which also belong to the Joint NationalCommittee for Languages (JNCL) and the Na-tional Council for Languages and InternationalStudy (NCLIS). JNCL is an educational policy as-sociation, and its affiliated organization, NCLIS,performs advocacy on behalf of its members. Wenoted that the professional and advocacy associ-ations to which we belong play a crucial role indetermining how languages are taught, how thepublic perceives languages, and how legislatorsfund languages.

We then asked ourselves how the key play-ers in higher education could be motivated tochange their language education and policy prac-tices. On the campus level, administrators (deansand provosts) should provide leadership—andincentives—to language departments and pro-grams so that the necessary transformations canoccur. For example, campuses must invest suffi-cient resources in language departments to en-sure a broad and deep set of curricular offerings.The teaching workforce needs to be supported sothat all of its members participate in construct-ing and delivering a well-articulated instructionalprogram. Another way to encourage change inthe language community is by providing training,such as summer seminars or study- and research-abroad opportunities for teachers. As a commu-nity, we need workshops conducted by outreachteams that come to campuses and bring new lan-guage pedagogy to those who can apply it locally.

Another important aspect of language learningat the postsecondary level is the global techno-logical infrastructure. The group discussion fo-cused on the need to gain access to informationand to set up infrastructures for disseminating in-formation, publications, and so on. The isolated

Perspectives 631

language classroom should be a thing of the pastnow that the technological revolution has shrunkthe distances among countries, languages, andpeoples.

To facilitate change, the language communityshould seize the rhetoric of the moment on out-comes assessment and use it to good advantage.Setting goals for student learning and measuringlanguage competence and advanced proficiencymay help strengthen awareness of our central rolein the undergraduate curriculum. Colleges thatrecognize the importance of study abroad willmost likely want to support language programsthat structure their international programs so thatstudents are expected to reach high levels of pro-ficiency and to engage in post-study-abroad workon their return to the home academic institution.

One way to engage others in supporting theteaching of languages is to reach out to our col-leagues on campus and to encourage them tosupport multilingualism as an educational goal.When faculty members in other departments takelanguage requirements seriously, when they payattention to the linguistic dimensions of the sub-jects they teach, and when they promote studyabroad and advanced language learning for theirown majors, those of us in language departmentsget tangible support for our intellectual enter-prise. In turn, when we collaborate with our col-leagues across campus by team teaching and guestlecturing, planning events, and helping themuse languages other than English in their work,we find ourselves and our departmental missionstrengthened.

If we want to make language teaching the bestit can be, we must invest in programs that provideappropriate teacher training and development.We should expect high standards of proficiencyfrom language instructors at all levels. Those of uswho teach in language departments at institutionswith schools of education must collaborate withour colleagues who prepare the nation’s teach-ers. Those planning a career in teaching need tolearn how to construct curricula for the 21st cen-tury, to tap into the technological infrastructure

that connects local learners to global communi-ties, and to make sound pedagogical decisions.

Our discussion group recommends that col-leges and universities strengthen their foreign lan-guage entrance requirements. Elite institutionsare privileged to be able to require virtually anylevel of preparation they wish from applicants.What better way to recognize the importance offunctioning well as global citizens than to requiredemonstrated proficiency in languages other thanEnglish? If more students arrived at the postsec-ondary level with significant language training,the pipeline of learners would be running closerto capacity. Those who know one nonnative lan-guage find that learning a second (or third orfourth) becomes easier. Students who want tostudy less commonly taught languages would havea superior preparation if they came to college withseveral years of significant language study behindthem.

The higher education community needs tobe more involved in the primary and secondaryteaching world, as some of the recommendationsoutlined above imply. We also need to reach outto heritage language teachers, to those who teachEnglish as a second language, and to bilingualeducation specialists. It is only in concert withour colleagues throughout the educational systemthat we can hope to make our goal a reality: “nochild left monolingual.”

What kind of umbrella structure could bringtogether the diverse educational communities in-volved in issues related to language teaching andlearning, literary and cultural studies, and themany other fields in which we work? The ideaof a roundtable under the aegis of the NationalAcademies is a possibility well worth pursuing. Wealso believe that national summits, such as theone that produced this discussion-group docu-ment, should be staged on a regular basis. Finally,a revitalized JNCL–NCLIS might provide an ap-propriate setting for collaborative research andadvocacy. We need multiple sites where membersof our diverse community can come together toreflect and to take action.

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