Introduction 簡介
Increasingly leaders across public and private sectors are recognizing the rise of Asia as one of the central facts of the twenty-first century. China, with its tremendous economic growth and emergence as a social and political leader in the region, is fundamental to this shift. Given these changes, the task of increasing the number of American students who can demonstrate a functional proficiency in Chinese is undeniably urgent. Interest in learning Chinese is steadily growing among American youth, but the number of existing school programs is small and the present infrastructure to meet this demand is weak.
In order to address this disparity between need and limited capacity for Chinese language, Asia Society convened a meeting in April 2005 in New York City. Based on a background paper prepared by Vivien Stewart and Shuhan Wang, and incorporating the discussion and input of the meeting participants, a report was published and released. This article is an excerpt of the report, Expanding Chinese Language Capacity in the United States: What Would it Take to Have 5% of High School Students Learning Chinese by 2015? (pp. 8-13). The entire report is available online at www.internationaled.org.
Chinese Language Teachers 華語文教師
Teachers hold the key to making or breaking a program. Owing to the non-alphabet-based orthographic system of Chinese, which is also undergoing rapid linguistic changes, the teaching of Chinese language is particularly demanding in the United States. As is true with any language-teaching professionals, to become a Chinese-language teacher requires specialized, rigorous training and ongoing professional development.
The shortage of qualified Chinese-language teachers is the major roadblock to building efficient pipelines for Chinese-language programs in the United States. Interested schools do not offer programs because they cannot find teachers, and Chinese speakers have not undergone training for certification as Chinese-language teachers because traditionally there has been no market for them. In this area, we need to take unconventional approaches, building supply and demand simultaneously.
Depending on their linguistic background, different groups of prospective teachers have different needs in terms of teacher preparation, as do teachers of different grade levels and different types of language programs. Although there are shortages of instructors for tertiary programs, the K–12 educational system is the site of a more severe bottleneck. To meet the growing interest by schools in offering Chinese language, there must be a systematic effort to create a pool of qualified teachers through several means.
Teacher-Education Programs 師資培訓課程
Although the number of universities and colleges that offer Chinese-language programs is increasing, only a handful of institutions provide a full-fledged teacher preparation program in Chinese language and pedagogy. To date, Chinese-language teacher-education programs that are accredited by the National Council of Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) include only those at University of Iowa, New York University, Ohio State University, and University of Massachusetts at Amherst. There are no data available on how many of their graduates become certified Chinese language teachers. Nor is there information regarding the number of graduates who major in Chinese language and culture in colleges of arts and science, who go on to become certified Chinese-language teachers.
Developing accredited teacher-education programs in languages like Chinese requires collaboration among teacher and language organizations, local and state educational agencies, schools of education, and other colleges within institutions of higher education. There are other approaches to creating a supply of qualified teachers of Chinese. One such example is New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education, which offers a joint M.A. program that combines Foreign Language Education and the Teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). This program has proven popular as there is a great deal of common ground between the disciplines, and graduates are highly marketable in both English-language learning and foreign-language programs in K–12 schools.
Alternate Routes to Teacher Certification in Chinese 華語文教師證照替代方案
While the United States may lack a supply of qualified teachers of Chinese, it has a sizable pool of people who possess some level of Chinese, whether as native speakers, immigrants, heritage speakers, or those who have learned Chinese as a foreign language in school or college. Heritage-language schools have thousands of teachers, many of whom have extensive teaching and immersion experience as well as the ability to connect Chinese and American cultures. Troops to Teachers, a U.S. Department of Education and Department of Defense program that helps eligible military personnel begin careers as teachers in public schools, represents another potential personnel pool.
A network of fast-track programs, strategically placed in universities throughout the United States, which would provide Chinese speakers with the courses and skills they need for certification, could be a catalyst in the field and quickly provide a supply of teachers to meet the growing interest. Prospective teachers from different backgrounds would have slightly different needs that would have to be taken into account in designing these programs. Native speakers of Chinese, who already possess a high degree of proficiency and literacy in the language, might need additional training in English-language and pedagogical skills as well as enhancement of their working knowledge of the U.S. educational system. Heritage-language speakers, many of whom are already U.S. college graduates, have varying degrees of proficiency in Chinese, and may need Chinese-language training in addition to pedagogical courses in teaching Chinese as a foreign language.
A network of alternate routes to certification programs to serve Chinese speakers could quickly provide a pool of teachers. One example is the summer teachers’ institutes offered by the University of Pennsylvania, which is not yet a full alternate route program but has accommodated more than one hundred teachers nationwide and internationally since 1998. The state of Connecticut has a summer-plus-weekends program for certification of language teachers. Recently the California State University at Long Beach announced the availability of a Single Subject Credential Program for candidates to become certified to teach Mandarin Chinese in California.13 In addition, in fall 2005, George Mason University will add Chinese to its foreign-language program for licensure in Virginia.14
An examination of institutions that currently offer alternate certification programs and might be able to offer Chinese could yield a crop of programs and teachers in this field. According to a recent study conducted by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), there are over 137 institutions of higher education that collaborate with their respective state education agencies to offer alternate route certification programs designed to save time and ease financial barriers to teaching. These programs are “geared to adults looking for programs where they can draw a salary and/or receive a stipend during the period of career change.”15 A significant number of universities surveyed indicate that they have such programs, which in turn might be expanded to include Chinese.
Here the issue of teacher demand and supply must be reiterated. Because there are currently only a small number of programs and jobs, prospective teachers are hesitant to undergo labor-intensive and financially burdensome training in pursuit of a potential career, which may or may not become a reality. For the same reason, colleges and universities have been hard-pressed to offer such alternate-route or regular teacher-education programs because of perceived paucity of demand and lack of Chinese programs for student teaching. Likewise, while demand is rising for Chinese-language instruction, once Chinese language teachers are certified, they face more challenges in finding appropriate job placement than do their counterparts in Spanish or French. An electronic clearinghouse of available positions would be beneficial in matching teacher candidates with programs in need.
Teacher Certification and Licensure 教師執照與證書
Regardless of which preparatory route they take, all prospective Chinese teachers who are interested in teaching in public schools must meet state teacher certification and licensure requirements. Not only does each state have its own teacher certification requirements for foreign- or world-language teachers, many states are also not familiar with or have not established provisions in certifying teachers of languages other than the commonly taught European languages. New trends in teacher certification along with added demands on teacher accountability further complicate this issue. Many teacher-education programs must simultaneously take into account the changes in the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC), and the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification (NASDTEC). Topping all these issues is the “highly qualified teacher” requirement mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 that is due to take effect for all public schools by 2006.17
Several implications can be drawn from these developments. First, many states or teacher-preparation programs are considering adopting the competence or output model as stipulated by NCATE, INTASC, or NASDTEC instead of the traditional course credit or input model. This trend is the driving force for the adoption of Praxis II tests by most states and U.S. jurisdictions. Second, under the “highly qualified teacher” provisions of No Child Left Behind, a teacher candidate can become certified only if he/she is a graduate of an accredited teacher-education program or passes the Praxis I and II tests offered by the Educational Testing Service. The Praxis series tests are professional assessments for beginning teachers, consisting of three categories corresponding to the three milestones in teacher development:
· entering a teacher training program—Praxis I: Academic Skills Assessments;
· licensure for entering the profession—Praxis II: Subject Assessments; and
· first year of teaching—Praxis III: Classroom Performance Assessments.18
Praxis I tests a candidate’s competence in math as well as reading and writing in English. At the heart of the issue in foreign-language certification is Praxis II, Subject Assessments, which usually contains two different tests for a language: content knowledge (interpretive listening, structure of the language, interpretive reading, and cultural perspectives) and productive skills (presentational speaking and presentational writing).
In theory, the Praxis II tests sound like a viable solution to course credit requirements. In other words, a teacher simply needs to pass the Praxis II tests instead of having to take thirty or so university or college credits required by many states. Praxis II tests, however, are language specific and are available only in French, German, Latin, and Spanish. They also require each state to have a minimal number of teacher participants in the rigorous process of validation and standards setting in order to establish the passing scores, which vary from language to language. In most states, French and Spanish Praxis II tests are available; German and Latin scores may be set through multi-state agreements if a state requests to participate in such a network.
There is no Praxis II test available in Chinese or any other less commonly taught language that enables teacher candidates to demonstrate their pedagogical as well as linguistic competence in the target language. Although No Child Left Behind requires only the demonstration of content knowledge and not pedagogical skills, the Praxis II tests inherently cover both the knowledge and skills necessary for being a language teacher. It is important to note, however, that there is a Praxis II test in foreign language pedagogy (planning, teaching, and evaluating instruction) conducted in English. This test may be useful but is not considered evidence of content competence under No Child Left Behind for highly qualified teachers. In the absence of ETS’ Praxis II subject tests in these languages, the speaking (Oral Proficiency Interview) and written tests in 37 different languages offered by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) may be a viable solution. Currently five states are using ACTFL’s assessments to allow teachers to waive credits for the language portion of their certification. Since these tests are very different from one another, a serious dialogue about how to align the ACTFL and Praxis II tests or develop other tests that are aligned with these existing tests needs to take place. The bottom line is to ensure that all teacher candidates of a particular language will not be treated unfairly in their pursuit of certification. Given the urgent need to solve this issue, all stakeholders from inside and outside the Chinese-language field must be engaged in serious discussion about how best to certify teachers of Chinese.
Professional Development 專業發展
Because of the relatively small number of programs, teachers of Chinese often do not receive professional support. The teacher licensure renewal or accountability criteria discussed above also require teachers to engage in meaningful professional development related to their disciplines every three or five years. Hence, regional and national efforts to provide the requisite professional development to teachers of Chinese are crucial. Professional development needs include information on materials and resources; student recruitment and program sustainability; instructional strategies and assessment; balancing learners’ development in listening, speaking, reading, and writing in order to engage in interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational communication; incorporating culture into language instruction; and mapping curriculum across grades and content areas.
Over the years, the Chinese Language Teachers Association has offered professional development workshops and training for teachers of all levels. The Chinese Language Association of Secondary-Elementary Schools has met the needs of its members by securing several Fulbright-Hays Educators Study Abroad grants from the U.S. government and by collaborating with the Taiwanese government and the National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language in providing high-quality professional development opportunities. Plans are under way from the College Board to offer regional and national workshops and electronic discussion forums for teachers in preparation for the launch of the AP course and exam.
As part of its online professional development programs, ACTFL is also developing a special section for Chinese-language teachers. Certain existing vehicles for professional development and teacher training could be expanded. The summer intensive program at Ohio State University, for example, could be retooled for K–12 and heritage-language teachers.
Similarly, the cadre of teachers trained through the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia, a Freeman Foundation Initiative, is an untapped resource. These teachers, primarily social studies and English-language arts teachers who have demonstrated enthusiasm for teaching about Asia, could provide important support to new Chinese language programs in their schools.
Summary 結語
In this report, we recommend that the field takes both short- and long-term approaches to create a supply of qualified Chinese-language teachers. Lack of teachers is the key bottleneck to building capacity in Chinese. In the short term, to expedite the creation of a pool of qualified Chinese teachers, states should work with institutions of higher education to create high-quality, “fast-track,” alternate routes to teacher certification for Chinese speakers in the United States; pilot visiting-faculty programs for teachers from China; use technology and multimedia to supplement the shortage of full-time Chinese teachers in classrooms; and explore a multistate system to certify Chinese-language teachers. In the long term, it will be necessary for higher education institutions to invest in full-length teacher preparation programs, similar to those used for other languages, and to extend professional development opportunities to Chinese-language teachers.
