Reframing my practices: reconsidering post-secondary World Language education

ABSTRACT

As our post-secondary landscape evolves to address the needs of the next generation of learners and future educators, it is important to explore the potential conflict between the teaching methods employed by teacher educators and what we ask our pre-service teachers to enact. Amid the challenges facing many teacher preparation programs (including World Languages) are a changing student population, declining enrollments, limited budgets, teacher shortages, and overall changes in post-secondary education. The need for curricular change in post-secondary programs is long-standing. Publishing accounts of our classroom practices contributes to the professional dialogue and knowledge base, modeling for our future educators the application of best practices in our profession. This self-study explores the classroom practices of one experienced World Language educator, using the National Standards for Foreign Language Learning and TELL project as frameworks, and contributes to a gap in the research on post-secondary World Language teaching and teacher development.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher evaluation for language learning (TELL criteria)
• High-Leverage Teaching Practices (HLTPS)
• World Language teacher development
• self-study
• post-secondary teacher effectiveness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christina Huhn

Christina Huhn holds a PhD in Foreign Language Education from Purdue University and is an Associate Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages, Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Her teaching focuses on beginning language learners and teacher preparation, and her scholarly work focuses on teacher preparation programs, program assessment, and the potential impact of the National Language Standards in post-secondary environments, and technology in language education.