A Straight Talk at CATESOL 2009

The witty, outspoken, and always inspirational H. D. Brown, Saturday's plenary speaker at CATESOL 2009 in Pasadena, gave some honest opinions about three challenges facing our profession "in the second decade of the millennium."

Situated Language Learning (a. k. a. legitimate peripheral participation)

He quoted Lave and Wenger as saying, "Learning is situated, that is, it is embedded within activity, context, and culture. It is usually unintentional rather than deliberate." He wanted ESL teachers to continue embracing practices such as project-based, experiential learning that have become accepted now as opposed to the 1970s. He wanted us to find ways to facilitate social interactions, collaboration, field trips, workshops, etc. that embed and contextualize learning. He wanted us to address the whole issue of involving the learners not as mere objects in the classroom, but as whole persons.

Alternatives in Assessment

He warned the audience to avoid seeing standards and assessment as bad things. He said we should pay continued attention to educational standards, even statewide proficiency standards, but we should watch out for how the standards are implemented and measured. He called for refinement of standards by weaving in social context and the importance of communities of practice. We should pay attention to accountability and to the need for individual measures of achievement. We should reject traditional assessment featuring one-shot, standardized exams; timed multiple-choice format; decontextualized test items; and scores being all important. We should have a new vision about assessment as being sometimes informal (such as giving feedback instead of scores) and formative. Nothing about assessment we should be afraid of. Assessment is part of our normal teaching process. Assessment is almost constant (whereas tests are periodic).

Alternatives in assessment feature continuous long-term assessment; untimed, free-response format; contextualized communicative tasks, and intrinsic motivation. Examples of such alternatives include self- or peer-assessment, teacher conferences, etc.

Social Responsibility

Teachers should be agents for change. We should influence publishers and materials developers to include some controversial taboo topics that challenge learners' critical thinking capacity. We should promote respect for all human beings and for diverse views.

(There was a sizable Palomar "delegation" to CATESOL 2009. I hope this entry serves as a lead and colleagues who attended the conference will soon share the ideas they brought back.)