The Professional Development of Foreign Language Instructors in Postsecondary Education
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PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
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THE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE INSTRUCTORS IN POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION
The teaching of foreign languages in postsecondary education is carried out by a heterogeneous group of instructors: tenure-track professors and graduate teaching assistants whose training is most frequently in literary and cultural studies; and non-tenure-track instructors, often native speakers, with Master’s or Ph.D.’s in literature and cultural studies or linguistics. The initial professional development of these instructors takes place within the framework of graduate programs, when these instructors serve as teaching assistants and, in most cases, receive formal preparation in teaching undergraduate language courses. The ongoing professional development of these instructors once they have assumed faculty positions is usually left to the devices and initiative of the individual instructor. In isolated cases, ongoing professional development may be provided by a university-wide language center or through a centralized office of instructional development. Because of the foundational role played by teaching assistant professional development programs in the preparation of foreign language instructors, this review will focus primarily on research on graduate-level programs. Although to a lesser degree, the review will also address research on the professional development of language program directors, faculty who oversee the preparation of teaching assistants, and other faculty, in particular those in adjunct and non-tenure-track lecturer positions. E A R LY D E V E L O P M E N T S
As Schulz (2000) and Hagiwara (1976) observe, publications on foreign language teacher education before the 1950s focused primarily on secondary school instructors. With the postwar increase in undergraduate enrollments as a result of the GI bill and the dramatic increase in foreign language enrollments brought on by the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) in 1958, foreign language departments at research universities began to rely almost exclusively on the use of teaching assistants to conduct introductory foreign language courses. This use of teaching assistants, most of whom were fresh out of college and had never taught before, thus served as the catalyst for N. Van Deusen-Scholl and N. H. Hornberger (eds), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2nd Edition, Volume 4: Second and Foreign Language Education, 269–280. #2008 Springer Science+Business Media LLC.
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LINDA VON HOENE
research and discussion about the formal preparation of postsecondary foreign language instructors. Publications from the mid-1950s to the early 1980s on the professional development of postsecondary instructors focus primarily on the need to establish systematic preparation for teaching assistants and provide recommendations for doing so. In this period, a number of articles discussing best practices emerge in journals such as the Modern Language Journal (e.g., Dalbor, 1967; Remak, 1957), Foreign Language Annals (e.g., Ervin and Muys
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