Main Events

Preparing Language Teachers for the 21st Century:
Sixth International Conference on Language Teacher Education

May 28 - 30, 2009 at The George Washington University, Washington, DC
Overall Schedule | Pre-Conference Workshops | |Plenary Speakers | Symposia | Special Guests

Complete Schedule is online here

Second Language Teacher Education in Times of Change
Jack Richards
The Regional Language Center
Second language teacher education (SLTE) is affected by two factors: a rethinking of its knowledge base and instructional practices as a response to changes in our understanding of the nature of teacher learning, as well as external pressures resulting from growing demand for language teachers world wide. These factors are examined and their implications discussed for theory and practice in SLTE.
Thursday May 28, 5:00 pm

The Moral Lives of Teacher Educators
Bill Johnston
Indiana University
The work of preparing language teachers is not a merely technical matter—it is best conceived as a complex task with profound moral dimensions. Johnston explores the moral landscape of language teacher education and the moral dilemmas that teacher educators face in their day-to-day encounters with students and others.
Friday, May 29, 9:15 am

A Sociocultural Perspective on Language Teacher Education
Karen E. Johnson
Penn State University
Johnson examines the epistemological underpinnings of a sociocultural perspective on human learning and address the enormous potential this perspective has to reorient how the field of Second Language Teacher Education understands and supports the professional development of L2 teachers.

Teacher Cognition and Communicative Language Teaching
Simon Borg
University of Leeds
Understanding the relationship between teachers’ beliefs and practices is an established theme in language teaching research. Borg examines this theme with specific reference to communicative language teaching (CLT). The findings of research into what teachers say and what they do in relation to CLT will be examined and the implications of this work for language teacher education discussed.
Saturday, May 30, 3:45 pm

Special Guests

Symposia

Friday, May 29
10:30 am - 12:30 pm

Social Networks in Language Teacher Education: Using Wikis, Facebook, and Wimba
Roberta Z. Lavine, University of Maryland; Rebecca Oxford, University of Maryland, Margaret Ann Kassen, Catholic University of America; Julie Chen, University of Maryland, Ali Fuad Selvi, University of Maryland; Chien-Yu Lin, University of Maryland, Oscar Santos Sopena, Catholic University of America

A discussion of social networking in teacher education highlighting two projects: creating a professional community between methods courses at two universities with Facebook and Wimba, and how TESOL MA students developed a learning strategies Wikipedia-like site (Stratepedia). We will also address the implementation of such projects, their advantages and disadvantages, and research findings.

Pursuing Professional Development in China: Standards for Teachers of English in Primary and Secondary Schools (STEPSS)
Speakers: Yafu Gong, senior research fellow, China National Institute for Educational Research (CNIER); president of National Association of Foreign Language Education (NAFLE); team leader of STEPSS.
Xiaotang Cheng, professor and dean of the School of Foreign Languages and Literature at Beijing Normal University; member of National English Curriculum Standards writing team.
Shaoqian Luo (Sheila), professor of the School of Foreign Languages and Literature at Beijing Normal University; team member of STEPSS.
Respondent: Donald Freeman, Director of Teacher Education and Associate Professor of Education at the School of Education, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA; international advisor to STEPSS.

Topics discussed will include  English Language Education (ELE) in China, the  writing of Standards for Teachers of English in Primary and Secondary Schools; strategies and methods for operationalizing Standards for Teachers of English in Primary and Secondary Schools, and suggested solutions to the challenges of teacher education and evaluation based on these standards.

Sharing Responsibilities for Tomorrow's Teachers: Schools and Universities Working Together
Speakers: Paul A. Garcia, Univ. of South Florida; Jennifer Eddy, Queens College; Mary Curran, Rutgers University, and Marcela van Olphen, University of South Florida

The basic challenge of teacher preparation that we raise is,“How do we get ‘there’ from ‘here.’” In this session, we formulate this issue of “Town meets Gown” by offering experiences in shared responsibilities between IHEs and LEAs for pre-service and in-service language teacher education. Professors Curran, Eddy, and van Olphen will each offer insights into their local responses, and an overview of practicum activities for Chinese language teachers in New Jersey, Backward Design and supervisory followup, and the role of technology for assisting both the pre-graduation major and the graduate inservice teacher, respectively. Each contributor will pose a specific answer to “How do we get ‘there.’” Audience reaction is invited, as we seek to develop a list of desiderata for demonstration projects as the varied responsibilities of divergent language teaching models at the K-12 level lead us away from the improbable task of “covering everything” in a 3-credit (or even 6-credit) methods sequence.

Fostering Development of US LCTL Teachers: A STARTALK Perspective
Organizer: Catherine Ingold, National Foreign Language Center

STARTALK is a federal project under the National Security Language Initiative, which offers intensive summer programs for students and teachers of critical languages. In the first two years of the program, STARTALK has provided teacher training to more than 1700 prospective and practicing teachers of Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, Persian and Urdu. This symposium will draw on STARTALK experience to discuss the life cycle of a teacher from recruitment and preparation, through certification and retention, to mentoring and professional development. Following the four major themes of the conference, presenters will explore 1) the knowledge base of prospective teachers of less commonly taught languages, 2) the social, cultural and political contexts in a teacher’s career, 3) collaborations fostering professional development, and 4) the impact of STARTALK on teacher education programs in the United States.

Teachers Crossing Borders: Preparing for increasing diversity in the public schools
Katarina Brito, D.C. Public Schools; Linda Fink, New Teacher Center; Tammy Hertel, Lynchburg College; Elizabeth Smolcic, The Pennsylvania State University, & Tom Tasker, The Pennsylvania State University
The cultural gap in the United States between school children and their teachers is wide and growing. Today, the majority of teacher candidates in education programs are white, female and monolingual while their learners are frequently culturally and racially diverse, and often bilingual (National Center for Education Statistics, 2003; Sleeter, 2001; Taylor & Sobel, 2001). The demographics point to a growing disparity in life experience, background and values between schools and students. Understanding how public school teachers learn about diversity and then transform their teaching practices to be inclusive of language and cultural diversity is a critical need in teacher education. In a teacher education program, how can teacher-learners transform their monolingual and first culture life experience to move towards some degree of intercultural competence (Byram, 1997)? This session will explore the learning activity that novice ESL teachers undergo as they became border-crossers in a TESL preparation program which includes a short-term international immersion experience. Concomitantly, it will provide a framework to discuss specific pedagogical practices and the impact on teacher knowledge and development. The experiences of teacher educators who have taught in the program over the past five years will be offered to describe specific intercultural learning and teacher mentoring practices. In particular, discussion will focus on the second language and cultural learning within an immersion situation, teaching practice with second language learners and the overall program design. Actual experiences in the program will be complemented by the findings from a longitudinal research study into the developmental process of teacher learning that followed a cohort of teachers over a one year period. Specific questions to be addressed include:

• What are the critical elements of an international immersion experience for teachers that support the development of effective instructional practices for ELLs?
• How do teacher-learners transform their monolingual and first culture life experience to move towards intercultural competence?
• How do the activities of the teacher preparation program afford, or alternatively impede teacher learning?
• What teacher preparation practices might be adapted and implemented within more “traditional” teacher preparation programs to help teachers to interact in a multilingual and multicultural world?

Going Glocal: Local Knowledge as a Critical Resource in Language Teacher Education
Judy Sharkey, University of New Hampshire, Amparo Clavijo-Olarte, Theresa Austin

What is the role of local knowledge in the professional knowledge base in this time of globalized teacher education reforms and standards? This symposium addresses the questions, tensions, and promises of infusing teacher education practices and programs with community-based pedagogies in an era of increased standardized curriculum and testing. Abstract
"Going Glocal" is balancing local needs and strengths with global realities. This symposium applies this concept to language teacher education with a collection of three papers followed by an interactive discussion with the audience. The first paper is an ethnographic study examining how prospective ESOL teachers used their own experiences learning Spanish to understand the processes and challenges of second language development. Three teacher cohorts were part of the one-year project that took place at a University in Massachusetts. Data collection included field notes, classroom videos, interviews and teacher-produced projects. Three main themes are highlighted: 1) the participants’ growing awareness of significant educational challenges faced by their ESL learners as they themselves face the challenges of developing identities and language learning in content area literacy. 2) How the participants used “funds of knowledge” (Gonzalez, Moll & Amanti, 2004) to conceptualize and enact “community;” and 3) the participants’ struggles to envision inclusive practices in the face of statewide standardized testing. The paper concludes with implications for preparing educators in multilingual communities. The second paper shares insights generated by an assignment that required pre-service teachers to investigate the literacy cultures and practices promoted by three mega-libraries in Bogotá, Colombia. The assignment was part of a graduate course on literacy for language teachers at a University in Bogotá. Students investigated how new city libraries have become social and cultural spaces for the community. EFL teachers sometimes think of English as a subject rather than a language practice. Thus, they may overlook the invaluable teaching and learning resources of local literacy practices. By considering libraries as local, explicit practice where language is used for a variety of purposes and users are engaged in multiple

Friday, May 29
3:15 pm - 5:15 pm

Critical Approaches: Countering the Normalizing Gaze in Language Teacher Training
David I. Hanauer, Gloria Park, Sharon Deckert & Lisya Seloni

The aim of this session is to generate discussion of critical approaches to ESL teacher education. This session will offer philosophical, pedagogical and practical critiques of the powerful effects of the forces of standardization in ESL teacher education and offer alternative ways of conceptualizing and conducting teacher education.

Teaching Content to ELLs: Collaboration between Universities and Schools
Speakers: Joan Kang Shin and JoAnn Crandall, University of Maryland, Baltimore County; John Quinn, Roberta Giradri, and Christopher Browder of Howard County Public School System

Presenters discuss their perspectives on collaboration between a university education department and public school system to design and implement a new federally funded professional development program to help secondary content teachers improve English language learners’ performance in math, science, and social studies.  Voices from teachers, administrators, and professors are highlighted.

Not everyone is going to be best friends : Challenges and opportunities for collaborations that benefit English language learners
Megan Madigan Peercy, Melinda Martin-Beltran, Ali Fuad Selvi,University of Maryland; Catherine Novak, Catherine Kenny,Prince George's County Schools; Tamara Gaudreau

Collaborators from three arenas (1. Three university-based language teacher educators, 2. A district ESL coordinator, and 3. An ESL-mainstream co-teaching pair) share their experiences collaborating together, promoting collaboration, and studying conditions that support collaboration within their school district and classrooms. They also discuss new collaborations that have emerged from their work together.

What Language School Directors Seek in a New Foreign Language Teacher
Scott McGinnis, Defense Language Institute; Karen Decker; Kathleen Diamond; Deidre Doyle, & Frederick Jackson
Program directors of three proprietary language schools describe their teaching situations and discuss the professional preparation, experience, and attitudes that they look for in hiring and retaining language teachers. A discussant will respond in view of the needs of government agencies that utilize such schools and needs of the students.

Many foreign and second language teachers spend parts of their professional careers teaching adult students in private or proprietary language institutes. This symposium brings together program directors from three long-established language schools in Washington, D.C. to describe the teaching situations at such schools and to discuss the kinds of professional experience, preparation, and attitudes that they look for in hiring and/or retaining language teachers. The discussion will focus upon prioritizing the kinds of knowledge, attitudes, skills and abilities (cf. Freeman 1989, 1993, 2002) that these program directors seek in their teachers, and will also extend to such pragmatic issues as satisfying the needs of particular clients, operating within a budget, and meeting the criteria for institutional accreditation, including the provision of opportunities for inservice orientation and development to teachers in the schools, who often represent many diverse backgrounds and cultures. Case studies and specific examples will be used wherever possible, including teachers of English as a Second Language and foreign language teachers of more commonly taught, less commonly taught and rarely taught languages Following the remarks by the three presenters, a discussant with experience representing the needs of government agencies to these schools and counseling and advising students enrolled in language classes at these and other institutions. In the last half of the symposium, following the presentations, a moderated open discussion among presenters and the attending participants will take place, with the aim of reflecting on the presenters’ stated practical priorities for teachers in proprietary language education institutions and the potential implications that those priorities may suggest for university teacher education programs. The symposium will be of interest to language teacher educators, teachers, and supervisors of language teachers.

A Model for Teacher Educator Communities of Practice : A Virginia Consortium

Kathryn Murphy-Judy, Virginia Commonwealth University; Rebecca Fox, George Mason University; Laura Franklin, Northern Virginia Community College, Susan Hildebrandt, Longwood University; and Judith Shrum, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
In this symposium format, five teacher educators who represent a growing consortium of Virginia Language Teacher Education programs and institutions, will present the rationale, history, technological affordances and projects of their collaboration. These educators and administrators meet regularly at state and national conferences to identify major issues facing Virginia language education and teacher preparation, to share information, and to design timely projects that address top problems (e.g., teacher recruitment and retention, state-level buy-in, technology integration, language skill improvement). More regular communication is carried out through a wiki, which affords constant communication and subcommittee interactions. The group has invited all Virginia post-secondary FL teacher educators to join the group and participate in its wiki. Moreover, it has elaborated a growing template of FL teacher education programs, recertification courses and offerings, study abroad programs for teachers, replicable best practice recruitment efforts, and easily updated workshop and conference listings. In recognition of the need for teacher educators to acquire and maintain their own technology skills and integrations, the wiki showcases new affordances in the service of 21st century language teaching and learning. As we will discuss in this presentation, it is essential that teacher educators not only know but also demonstrate how these new tools work in communicational and instructional arenas. Some of the endeavors are of a political nature, availing ourselves of members' connections to state, national and international movements. One of our major efforts is to create and facilitate FL teacher recruitment and retention. We have identified some service learning opportunities for undergraduate FL learners that we will use to encourage students to consider a teaching career. Strategies, like the DC FL teaching fair, that have worked in the past may be revived and disseminated. We offer, then, a model for teacher educator communities to constitute themselves and to use service learning, communities of practice, and technology to promote 21st Century language educator learning and professional development. Our presentation will showcase the consortium's successes, difficulties, and possibilities.

Saturday, May 30
9:30 am - 11:30 am

Challenges in Promoting a Learner Centered Perspective in Teacher Education
Joan Rubin, Joan Rubin Associates; Anna Uhl Chamot, The George Washington University, Martha Nyikos, Indiana University; Virginia Rojas, ASCD

After extensive research on expert language learners (for reviews of this research see Cohen and Macaro, 2007, Griffiths, 2008, and Johnson, 2005) over more than thirty years, language teacher educators began focusing on how to educate student teachers so that language education can be more learner centered. This effort has further evolved into a major focus on helping learners be in control of their learning. Promoting this paradigm has not been easy since it involves a major shift from the long-standing teacher-fronted paradigm working with all the attitudes and experiences associated with it (see Viera, Flavia, in JALT Language Learning, for a discussion of constaints). Four teacher educators (Anna Uhl Chamot, Ginny Rojas, Martha Njikos, and Joan Rubin) with extensive and widely varied experience in teacher education (working with student teachers at primary/secondary and university levels, adult education, and self-access centers) will discuss the following issues:

1. Most effective educational practices and processes in promoting a more learner centered perspective
2. Constraints encountered in helping teachers integrate a more learner centered perspective
3. Successful practices identified in addressing or overcoming these constraints
4. Specific issues in helping teachers work with individual differences in a classroom setting
5. Measures used to assess success in enabling teachers to promote more learner control.

Each question will be discussed in turn by all four panelists and then the floor will be opened for questions and discussion for a hour.  

Globalization of a Language Teacher Education Program: EFL and ESL
Fernando Fleurquin, University of Maryland; Heather Linville, Joan K. Shin, Adriana Val

This symposium offers perspectives from four teacher education programs at a university language center. From face-to-face pre-service training to online in-service professional development, these programs are diverse in audience, objectives and delivery. However, all programs adhere to certain underlying principles of teacher reflexivity, cross-cultural communication, and new media literacy development.

Responding to the Needs of Language Teachers: Reconceptualizing Professional Development
Sarah Catherine Moore, Center for Applied Linguistics; Emily Evans, Jennifer Himmel, Ari Sherris, Lisa Tabaku

This symposium outlines how staff at The Center for Applied Linguistics, develop, implement, and reconceptualize professional development for language teacher education based on responding to needs. Presenters represent varied divisions within CAL and bring diverse backgrounds and expertise, including: K-12 mainstream and ESL; foreign language; adult English acquisition; language assessment.

Alternative Certification
Christine Brown
(TBA)

Saturday, May 30
1:00 pm - 3:00 pm

Teacher Beliefs, Teacher Practices, and Coaching to Improve Performance
Miriam Met
Who is a good teacher? Who wants to be a good teacher? Why aren’t all teachers good teachers? How can teacher educators use coaching to empower pre-service and in-service teachers to self-assess their performance and direct their own progress toward continuous improvement of their instructional practices? In this session you’ll have an opportunity to examine recently developed descriptors of highly effective language teachers, learn more about what works (and doesn’t’ work) in changing instructional practices, and become familiar with some of the strategies associated with cognitive coaching.

Using the European Portfolio for Student Teachers of Languages to Improve Collaboration
Speakers: Anne-Brit Fenner, Department of Foreign Languages, University of Bergen, Norway; Cecilia Nihlén and Lena Börjesson, Department of Education, Language and Literature Unit, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
A presentation will be made of the research carried out in Norway and Sweden on the use of European Portfolio for Student Students Teachers of Languages (EPOSTL). Investigations have been made about the use of EPOSTL as a tool to improve the collaboration between university and mentors in schools.

Addressing Teacher Training Challenges in Federal Language Programs
Lead Presenter:  Douglas Gilzow, Foreign Service Institute
Other presenters: Lea Christiansen, Grazyna Dudney, and Barbara DeBoy

The U.S. Government‘s foreign language training institutions provide the linguistic skills needed by federal workers for national defense, intelligence, diplomacy, and other areas.  Since they deliver training, these institutions must provide the particular foreign language skills needed on the job as specified by the military or federal agency. This is the characteristic that makes Government language training quite different from most foreign language education programs at colleges and universities. It is also what makes each government language training program unique. 

A panel of officials with teacher training responsibilities at four of the major federal language training institutions will discuss their challenges and solutions. The panel includes personnel from the Defense Language Institute (DLI), the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), the Intelligence Language Institute (ILI), and the National Cryptologic School (NCS).

Mentoring Apprentice Language Teacher Educators: Apprenticeships in Action
Rebecca Oxford; Michael Wei; Donna Bain Butler, Chien-Yu Lin

The Language Teacher Educator Apprenticeship Model (L-TEAM) mentors doctoral students to become highly productive “apprentice” language teacher educators (LTEs), surpassing ordinary doctoral RA/TA roles. We demonstrate the practical model, built on work by Vygotsky; Alexander; Lave and Wenger; and Brown et al. Audience participants share experiences in language educator professionalization.
The first hour presents the overall model, theoretical sources, practical examples of L-TEAM, guidelines for implementing the model, and outcomes. The second hour engages the audience members in discussing their own experiences with professionalizing future LTEs, particularly those with teaching and research assignments.

Teacher Development Related to Heritage Speaker Students: Perturbing Assumptions and Possible Solutions
Kim Potowski, University of Illinois at Chicago; Maria Carreira, California State University at Long Beach; Scott McGinnis, Defense Language Institute; Joy Peyton, Center for Applied Linguistics

Four presentations will identify the major linguistic and affective differences between heritage speakers and traditional second language learners, and explore options for improved teacher development in working effectively with heritage speaker populations. Presentations will last one hour, leaving another hour for group discussion and generation of action items.

Preparing Teachers for Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Classrooms: Perspectives and Possibilities
Clea Schmidt, University of Manitoba, Canada; Joy Peyton, Center for Applied Linguistics, Antoinette Gagne, University of Toronto
This symposium explores the professional learning of teacher educators in the process of teaching ESL pedagogy; the empowerment of teachers through collaborative dialogue about intercultural school-based incidents; and the preparation and integration of immigrant teachers for whom English is an additional language in the K-12 teaching force.

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