Reflecting on the use of the professional standards for accomplished teaching of languages and cultures.

Scarino, Angela

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The evaluation of the Professional Standards Project (PSP) highlights its success both as a set of resources that provided the catalyst for professional conversations and learning (see Scarino, A., Liddicoat, A.J., Crichton, J., Curnow, T.J., Kohler, M., Loechel, K., Mercurio, N., Morgan, A-M., Papademetre, L., & Scrimgeour, A., 2008) and the National and State processes of facilitation of these conversations and learning, as well as the classroom-based investigations undertaken by teachers. For the Australian Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations (AFMLTA) the PSP provided the necessary National and State processes for inviting teachers of languages to begin to experiment with using the professional teaching standards that had been developed by them, as the profession, for the profession (DEST, 2005). As such, it became a common activity for all State/Territory MLTAs that allowed for ongoing learning about the actual use of the professional standards.

The papers in this edition of Babel highlight different dimensions of the use of the professional standards in the professional learning of teachers of languages. Kylie Farmer highlights the value of including classroom-based investigations in the process; their value resides, firstly, in giving teachers an active role in experimenting with ideas in their own particular and unique contexts, and, secondly, in inviting teachers to consider and reconsider data or evidence from their own classroom in making a difference to students' learning. Sherryl Saunders describes the value of using the professional standards as a framework for ongoing professional learning in one particular state, namely, Queensland. She highlights the way in which the professional standards capture the complex and varied nature of teachers' work and the way in which this needs to be recognised in any professional learning. Robyn Moloney highlights the value of using the professional standards and, in particular, their language-specific annotations, in the pre-service education of teachers, as a way of bringing intending teachers into the profession. Lesley Harbon describes the value of further work (funded again by the Australian Government), both in continuing the process of introducing teachers of languages to the professional standards, and in elaborating on the assessment dimension of professional learning as the area identified by teachers themselves as the area in which further learning is warranted.

These accounts confirm that the professional standards and the accompanying language-specific annotations are of value to teachers of languages. Furthermore, the PSP has provided a valuable opportunity for teachers to begin to relate them to their own professional practice at both National and at State/ Territory levels, for both in-service and preservice education, in relation to pedagogy and, in the next phase, in relation to assessment. These accounts, however, do not necessarily do justice to capturing the complexity of the process of teacher learning. This is particularly the case when the goal is to effect change in teacher practices that will strengthen student learning. The complexity is multidimentional and relates to

* professional conversations as teachers compare practices with each other and reference these experiences to developments in the field

* the actual work of teaching itself (as language teachers or language teacher educators)

* the complexity of effecting change and gathering evidence of change in practices and change in student learning.

This relationship between learning, change in teachers and learners, and actual evidence of this change is never linear and neat.

As one who has been and continues to be intimately involved in the development of the professional standards themselves (DEST, 2005) and the Professional Standards Project (Scarino et al., 2008) and allied projects including the Intercultural Language Teaching and Learning in Practice (ILTLP) Project (Scarino, A., Liddicoat, A.J., Carr, J., Crichton, J., Crozet, C., Dellit, J., Kohler, M., Loechel, K., Mercurio, N., Morgan, A-M., Papademetre, L., & Scrimgeour, A., 2007) and the project to develop a guide for the teaching and learning languages (Scarino & Liddicoat, 2009), I would like to engage in a moment of reflection. In so doing, I shall focus on two aspects: first, the professional standards themselves, and second, teachers, their lifeworlds, their interpretations of meaning, and effecting change.

THE PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS

In developing the professional standards we recognised that the work of teachers was complex, holistic, and personal. We also recognised that teaching languages involved being a teacher of Language (capital L) and languages in general, and being a teacher of a specific language. In order to capture the complex, holistic, and personal nature of teaching language, we developed a single, overarching standard. I highlight this because of a concern that, in focusing on particular aspects of our work as teachers of languages (and of the professional standards themselves), we risk losing a sense of its complex, holistic, personal nature. We described the standard as follows:

   Being an accomplished teacher of
   languages and cultures means being a
   person who knows, uses and teaches
   language and culture in an ethical and
   reflective way. It involves continuous
   engagement with and commitment
   to learning, both as a teacher and as
   a life-long learner. It means more than
   teaching knowledge of languages
   and cultures and includes teaching
   learners to value, respect and engage
   with languages and cultures in their
   own lives and to interact with others
   across linguistic and cultural borders.
   It means creating a culture of learning
   which approaches language, culture
   and learning with respect, empathy,
   commitment, enthusiasm and
   personal responsibility.

Accomplished languages and cultures teaching is reflected through the following dimensions.

* education theory and practice

* language and culture

* language pedagogy

* ethics and responsibility

* professional relationships

* awareness of the wider context

* advocacy

* personal characteristics.

(DEST, 2005, p. 1--my emphasis)

These words were carefully chosen. They put the person first. Language and culture are next with an emphasis on knowing, using and teaching. The point here is that it is not a question of either knowing or using or teaching, but all three simultaneously. We then highlight learning above all, both student learning and teacher learning in the sense of developing self-awareness. We then highlight the importance of working respectfully in and with the diversity of languages and cultures in our social and professional lives. As teachers of languages we are per force working with and across multiple languages and cultures. It is in this sense too, that teaching languages is personal; our multilingual capability is an integral part of who we are, the identities that we bring to teaching and what we seek to develop in students. We invoke a culture of learning to render again the holistic, culture-building nature of our work in a context of ethical values, dispositions and responsibility. In various ways, we highlight that this is a continuous process. As with professional standards developed in other learning areas, we then identify a set of dimensions that form this complex, holistic and personal teaching. Important as they are, they each contribute only an aspect of being a teacher. All the dimensions are to be kept in play simultaneously in the work of an accomplished teacher, and it is this that provides the challenge.

In developing language-specific annotations for the professional standards, we sought to capture the distinctiveness of teaching particular languages (Chinese, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish) in Australian education, in contemporary times. This means that in Italian, for example, we sought to highlight the reality of the way Italian culture now permeates Australian culture and vice versa for Italians living in diaspora in Australia. The contemporary reality of the Italian language in Australian education now is different from what it was 30 years ago because the worlds of Italian students, both those with and without home backgrounds, are very different and this must be captured in Italian language learning in Australian schools. Similarly, for each of the specific languages for which we developed annotations, we have sought to capture its contemporary distinctiveness.

In the ongoing work of using the professional standards it will be important to return to these integrating features which we sought to build into their formulation.

Teachers, their lifeworlds, the interpretation of meaning, and effecting change.

The professional standards recognise that teachers are central to students' learning and, as outlined above, they seek to render teachers' work in teaching languages as complex, holistic, and personal. Just as in one of the ten modules in the PSP materials (see Module 3 in Scarino et al., 2008), I highlighted the importance of understanding learners and their lifeworlds, so too for teachers (see Goodson & Numan, 2002 and Goodson & Hargreaves, 1996). This idea of the lifeworlds of teachers is not simply a question of recognising teachers' cultural backgrounds as integral to their teaching. More than this, it is recognising that teachers--all of us--are social and cultural beings, who bring to teaching their trajectory of professional and life experiences, their conceptions (and misconceptions), their ways of seeing people and the world, their knowledge, expertise, beliefs, values, expectations, and judgments. Each teacher's trajectory of experiences is ever-developing, dynamic, and unique. What he or she makes of these experiences is also unique and contributes to how he/she sees himself/ herself and his/her work in interaction with others. It is this trajectory of experiences and what teachers make of them in their lives and work that come into play in shaping professional practices, as well as teachers' ongoing reflection and their professional engagement with others. It is all this that was being shared in conversations, agreements and disagreements in the PSP. This is what Marilyn Cochran Smith and Susan Lytle refer to as 'stance'.

   In our work, we offer the term ...
   stance to describe the positions
   teachers and others who work
   together ... take toward knowledge
   and its relationships to practice.
   We use the metaphor of stance
   to suggest both orientational and
   positional ideas, to carry allusions
   to the physical placing of the body
   as well as the intellectual activities
   and perspectives over time. In this
   sense, the metaphor is intended
   to capture the ways we stand, the
   ways we see, and the lenses we
   see through. Teaching is a complex
   activity that occurs within webs of
   social, historical, cultural and political
   significance.... Stance provides a kind
   of grounding within changing cultures
   of school reform and competing
   political agendas. (Cochran-Smith &
   Lytle, 1999, pp. 288-289)

All this forms part of the PSP, the part that is less visible but that makes the project itself challenging and intellectually and emotionally charged (see Baumfield & Butterworth, 2007 and Goldstein, 2002 on the complexity of collaborative conversations in professional learning). It is, in fact, the basis of all professional learning and, indeed, the act of teaching itself.

The PSP and work in general on the professional learning of teachers of languages set within the framework of the professional standards needs to be considered within the reality of teachers and their lifeworlds. Doing so means that the goal of the project and of professional learning generally is less about changing teachers and more about understanding who they are, what they currently think and do in their particular contexts, and work towards gradual change that values who they are and where they are situated. It means that we need to understand better the connection between the kind of language learning we are seeking to encourage, that is, new conceptual work, and its connection with the practical. It means recognising and understanding the interpretive nature of teaching and learning for teachers and for students.

Teacher learning in the context of the professional standards involves a living and dynamic process of coming to understand in all our interactions (teachers with learners, teachers with teachers, teachers with researchers), how we negotiate the interpretation of meaning in relation to our practices and the practices of others. In so doing, we develop the capacity to continuously explore our own ever-developing understanding, knowledge and practice, and that of others. Thus, learning becomes a process of coming to understand the meanings we make of knowledge and practices according to our ongoing, dynamic trajectory of experiences. In hermeneutical terms, Gadamer (2004) describes the development of understanding as follows:

   ... reaching an understanding on the
   subject matter of a conversation
   necessarily means that a common
   language must first be worked out
   in the conversation. This is not an
   external matter of simply adjusting our
   tools; nor is it even right to say that
   the partners adapt themselves to one
   another ... To reach an understanding
   in a dialogue is not merely a matter
   of putting oneself forward and
   successfully asserting one's point
   of view, but being transformed into
   a communion in which we do not
   remain what we were. (Gadamer
   2004: 378-79)

It is this kind of ongoing project of understanding, our own and, reciprocally, that of others, shared through professional conversations, that the professional standards support.

CONCLUSION: UNDERSTANDING THE INTERPRETIVE NATURE OF TEACHING

We need to understand better this complex, holistic, personal, interpretive nature of teaching, focused on meaning within linguistic and cultural diversity. Indeed, this is the very focus of our learning area. And, in so doing, we need to be ever mindful that choice, agency, and responsibility reside always with teachers.

REFERENCES

Baumfield, V. & Butterworth, M. 2007 Creating and translating knowledge about teaching and learning in collaborative school-university partnerships: an analysis of what is exchanged across partnerships, by whom and how. Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice. 13, 4, 411-427.

Cochran-Smith, M. & Lytle, S. 1999. Relationships of knowledge and practice: teacher learning communities. Review of Research in Education, 24, 249-306.

DEST. 2005. Professional standards for accomplished teaching of languages and cultures. Canberra: Department of Education, Science and Training.

Gadamer, H.G. 2004. Truth and method. New York, Continuum.

Goldstein, L.S. 2002. Moving beyond collaboration: re-describing research relationships with classroom teachers. Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice, 8, 2, 155-170.

Goodson, I.F. & Hargreaves, A. (Eds) 1996. Teachers' professional lives. London: Falmer Press.

Goodson, I.F. & Numan, U. 2002. Teachers' life-worlds, agency and policy contexts. Teachers and Teaching, theory and practice, 8, 3/4, 269-277.

Scarino, A. & Liddicoat, A.J. 2009. Teaching and Learning Languages: a guide. Carlton South, Victoria: Curriculum Corporation.

Scarino, A., Liddicoat, A.J., Crichton, J., Curnow, T.J., Kohler, M., Loechel, K., Mercurio, N., Morgan, A-M., Papademetre, L., & Scrimgeour, A. 2008. Guidelines for Investigations. Professional Standards Project Languages--Professional Learning Program. Canberra: Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Reltaions. Retrieved 31 May 2009 from http://www.pspl.unisa.edu.au/doclib/ guidelines_investigations.pdf

Scarino, A., Liddicoat, A.J., Carr, J., Crichton, J., Crozet, C., Dellit, J., Kohler, M., Loechel, K., Mercurio, N., Morgan, A-M., Papademetre, L., & Scrimgeour, A. 2007 The Intercultural Language Teaching and Learning in Practice (ILTLP) Project. www.iltlp.unisa.edu.au

Associate Professor Angela Scarino is Director of the Research Centre for Languages and Cultures at the University of South Australia, She can be contacted at angela.scarino@unisa.edu.au