The majority of teacher-preparation programs require course work and field experience in teaching students with disabilities, while less than one-third require such training for those who teach English-language learners, says a report released Wednesday by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
The report recommends that the U.S. Secretary of Education ensure more systematic coordination among federal offices that oversee grant programs, research, and technical assistance at colleges that prepare teachers for these demographics groups, which each comprise about 10 percent of the nation's student population.
The findings are based on a survey of 374 programs nationwide. The report notes that state and local governments regulate teacher-preparation programs, but that in recent years the federal government has taken an increased oversight role. The report also cites a 2008 government study in which the majority of teachers surveyed said their training in instructing ethnically diverse students was of little help in the classroom.
Comments
1. 22079340 - August 19, 2009 at 06:17 pm
Sadly, American too many colleges and unviersities fail to understand the unique needs of English language learners. It is not uncommon to find faculty (or graduate students) teaching such students whose backgrounds are in literature, drama, MFA creative writing programs, etc.
It was not too long ago when BA english major graduates were being retained to teach English to speakers of other languages. Having literature, poetry, and comp lit graduates teaching these students may serve English departments, but the students are ill served--as are faculty teaching in other departments, who assume students who have completed comp courses have actually been taught by people with the capacity to develop their skills.
2. 22079340 - August 19, 2009 at 06:17 pm
Sadly, American too many colleges and unviersities fail to understand the unique needs of English language learners. It is not uncommon to find faculty (or graduate students) teaching such students whose backgrounds are in literature, drama, MFA creative writing programs, etc.
It was not too long ago when BA english major graduates were being retained to teach English to speakers of other languages. Having literature, poetry, and comp lit graduates teaching these students may serve English departments, but the students are ill served--as are faculty teaching in other departments, who assume students who have completed comp courses have actually been taught by people with the capacity to develop their skills.
3. vfichera - August 19, 2009 at 07:23 pm
This is one of those problems that will probably be addressed by the "throw a course at it" solution. Unfortunately.
The underlying, unspoken issue is that a majority of Americans in the teaching professions have little experience with foreign languages; thus, they have little to no ability to even conceive of the challenges faced by a second language learner in a foreign environment.
While this is oversimplification, to be sure, nonetheless the old joke still pretty-much obtains: "What do you call a person who speaks three languages? Tri-lingual. Two languages? Bi-lingual. One language? American."
Add to this the fact that the training for a teacher of English to speakers of other languages is often a patchwork of courses from multiple departments. TESOL and ESL are, in the pecking order of higher education, at best the step-children of linguistics, language, and literature departments -- all of which usually fight over the "housing" of such a program, hungry for FTE on their books, but unwilling to transform themselves as educators into a true embodiment of the ethos of such a program. And when the program is "housed" within an education department, the professionalism of the program becomes submerged in the ethos of "education" alone and rarely jointly with the "discipline" departments.
Required courses for these future teachers are often not taught by true second-language aquisition experts. And, those courses which are taught by SLA faculty are frequently taught by linguists who have no experience in elementary or seconday education, who speak no foreign languages themselves, or both. Or, alternatively, by foreign language or foreign literature experts who have no advanced training in linguistics/English linguistics and/or little or no experience in the schools.
The teacher of an English language learner is the victim of the failure of higher education to truly foster and integrate world-class education departments and schools into the main arteries of the university, other than as the biggest "cash cows" on the (usually, state university) campus.
American higher education has little interest in America's schools, the American professoriate is rarely to be found in any schools other than those of their own children, and the university curriculum generally is not in any serious manner "articulated" with that of schools to form the seamless web that is so obviously necessary for a truly educated populace.
In the end, for as long as the United States continues to delay serious foreign language education until what can only be called an "exposure" at the secondary level, with further erosions at the post-secondary level, the nation's teachers will reflect the entire U.S. education/higher education establishment's "allergy" to participating in and valorizing the multilingual nature of the human condition.