Australian Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations.
Harbon, Lesley
Citation
The AFMLTA Medal for Outstanding Service to Language Teaching in
Australia has this day, Tuesday, November 25th, 2008, been paresented to
David Vale in recognition of his services to languages education.
David began his career in languages education in the mid 1960s at
Nuriootpa High School in South Australia. As a young teacher of German,
David quickly displayed leadership potential and soon after gained a
promotion position as Senior Master at Findon High School where he then
spent the next ten years. He subsequently became a Special Senior in
Languages, a role designed to ensure that excellent teachers would
continue to provide leadership, beyond their school, in their specific
curriculum area. It was in this role that David contributed to the work
of the Principal Education Officer in Languages in a number of ways,
e.g. welcoming teachers into his classes on observation of excellent
teaching, assessing colleagues for promotion, conducting school visits
to advise teachers.
David's knowledge and classroom expertise was recognised when
he was selected to join a small team of language educators on a federal
government initiative, known as the Australian Language Levels (ALL)
Project, to develop a national curriculum framework for languages. As a
member of the ALL team, David developed a national profile as a provider
of in-service to teachers of languages and as a co-author of the
materials. In particular, he was responsible for the now famous Pocket
ALL.
David's work in senior secondary education in languages was
extensive, contributing to all aspects of syllabus design and assessment
both in languages in general and in German in particular, including
being the Chief Examiner for PES German for five years.
David's talents in editing were brought to the fore when he
was elected in 1991 to the position of Subeditor and Production Manager
of Babel, the national journal of the Australian Federation of Modern
Languages Teachers Associations. It was in this role that David has
contributed most significantly to the AFMLTA. He worked as Editor
between 1997-2002 and continues to this day as the Production Manager of
the journal. During his time in these roles, David's trademark has
been to produce a high quality journal, both in content and production,
and render it accessible and appealing to classroom teachers.
David is much respected by teachers and colleagues for the strength
of his teaching. Throughout his career and contribution to the
profession, David has been well known for his attention to detail,
particularly his love of grammatical accuracy, his general love of
languages, leadership in the field, and his keen wit.
Lesley Harbon
President, AFM ETA
