Three High School Teachers' Conceptions of the French They Teach Patrick R

Lesley University DigitalCommons@Lesley Educational Studies Dissertations Graduate School of Education (GSOE) 1997 Three High School Teachers' Conceptions of the French They Teach Patrick R. Moran Lesley University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lesley.edu/education_dissertations Part of the Language and Literacy Education Commons, and the Secondary Education Commons Recommended Citation Moran, Patrick R., "Three High School Teachers' Conceptions of the French They eT ach" (1997). Educational Studies Dissertations. 92. https://digitalcommons.lesley.edu/education_dissertations/92 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School of Education (GSOE) at DigitalCommons@Lesley. It has been accepted for inclusion in Educational Studies Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Lesley. For more information, please contact [email protected]. \s LUDCKE LIBRARY set . , MA 02138-2790 For Reference Not to be taken from this room Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from Lesley University, Sherrill Library http://www.archive.org/details/threehighschooltOOpatr THREE HIGH SCHOOL TEACHERS* CONCEPTIONS OF THE FRENCH THEY TEACH A DISSERTATION submitted by PATRICK R. MORAN In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degreee of Doctor of Philosophy LESLEY COLLEGE GRADUATE SCHOOL January 1997 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Mine is the only name that appears on the title page, but many people helped me in all phases of this study. Above all, I would like to acknowledge the three teachers who participated in this study. I greatly appreciated their willingness to openly share their thoughts, feelings, and experiences. It was a privilege to enter their worlds and to hear their stories. I have a renewed respect and admiration for the challenging work of high school foreign language teachers. Debora Sherman, Jay Jones, and Alvino Fantini, my dissertation committee colleagues, were extremely helpful, providing support, encouragement, and constructive comment throughout the course of this study. They allowed me leeway, and they helped me establish boundaries when these were needed. My peers at the School for International Training graciously accommodated my reduced presence during the course of my doctoral studies, and were always ready to listen and to offer kind words and thoughtful counsel. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the love and support of my family, my wife Annie and son Jean-Christophe, who granted me the time, space and solitude that I needed to see my studies through to this dissertation. In the final phases, Jean- Christophe continually reminded me that writing a dissertation was simply about numbers of pages, nothing more. All I really needed to do, he said, was to write an established number of pages, and the dissertation would be completed. It took me a lot of writing to discover the right number, but I eventually did. When I reached that page number, just as he had predicted, the dissertation was completed. I thank him for this astute advice. ABSTRACT In its quest to make foreign language learning relevant and attainable for all students, the foreign language education profession has made recommendations based on its search for the ideal language teaching methodology, on its research on the language learner and language acquisition, and on its reconceptualizations of the subject matter of language and culture. These recommendations represent conceptions of foreign language as subject matter. As such, they presume an understanding of what it means for foreign language teachers to know and teach foreign languages. In fact, the profession knows little about foreign language teachers' perceptions of the languages they teach. Very little research on foreign language teachers' understandings of their subject matter has been carried out. The purpose of this study was to understand foreign language teachers' own perspectives of their subject matter. It consists of case studies of three experienced high school French teachers' conceptions of the French they teach in their respective schools in New England, drawn from in-depth interviews. The case studies are presented as detailed narrative accounts that describe these teachers' personal histories as language learners and teachers, their teaching situations during this study, and their views of their subject matter, French. Findings in this study suggest that these teachers' conceptions of French are interconnected with their conceptions of teacher roles, students, curriculum, and of the context~the language department and their colleagues, the school, and the community. Findings further suggest that these teachers organize this interconnectedness through their conception of a working relationship with students based on learning French in their respective schools. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Chapter One: Research Context 4 Chapter Two: Methods 13 Chapter Three: Narrative Accounts 25 Susan Winston 26 Molly Evans 90 Carl Harvey -. 149 Chapter Four: Findings 223 Chapter Five: Discussion 241 Appendix 251 Bibliography 261 ILLUSTRATIONS Methods 15 Figure 1 : Interview Schedule Figure 2: Conceptual Framework 20 Susan Winston Figure 3: French ll/lll Weekly Schedule 32 Figure 4: Development of Course Binders 35 Figure 5: Incorporation of Dialogue Journals 39 Figure 6: Spiral Ascension I 62 Figure 7: Vertical and Horizontal Dimensions 63 Figure 8: Spiral Ascension II 64 Figure 9: Outcomes 65 Figure 10: Grades 70 III 75 Figure 1 1 : Spiral Ascension Figure 12: Project Activities 75 Figure 13: Learning Activities 76 80 Figure 14: Who I Am Today Figure 15: Summary 84 Molly Evans Figure 1 6: Scrambling for Materials 99 Figure 17: Feeling Pressured 102 Figure 1 8: Teacher Roles 1 06 Figure 19: View of Students 111 Figure 20: Language Content Tracks 113 1 Figure 21 : Content Areas 25 Figure 22: French Outcomes 133 Figure 23: Outcomes in Attitudes 136 Carl Harvey Figure 24: Tracks 153 Figure 25: Intentions for Quebec Curriculum 1 56 Figure 26: Level 5 Curriculum Change 161 Figure 27: Teacher Roles I 163 Figure 28: Teacher Roles II 175 Figure 29: View of Students 1 76 Figure 30: Content 182 Figure 31 : Linguistic Content 1 83 Figure 31 : Cultural Content 1 86 Figure 32: Personal uowth Content 189 Figure 33: Communication Content 190 Figure 34: Interconnectedness of Content 190 Figure 35: Quebec Curriculum Outline 191 Figure 36: Personal Growth Outcomes 200 Figure 37: Interplay of Outcomes 203 Findings Figure 38: Conceptual Framework 224 Figure 39: Context - 225 Figure 40: Content, Activities, Outcomes 227 Figure 41 : Students 229 Figure 42: Teacher 231 Figure 43: Susan's Conception 236 Figure 44: Working Relationship 239 INTRODUCTION . learning French. ..I think language-language learning-can easily have a stigma. It can be deadly. You know, grammatical, and boring, and all that stuff. Or -- it can be just like the most fascinating thing. Carl Harvey Carl Harvey, high school French teacher, contrasted two views of his subject matter in these opposing terms. French, learning French, can either be "deadly" or "the most fascinating thing." Carl, one of three teachers in this study, drew this distinction in our first interview to help me see how he thought about teaching French, about students, and about their experiences learning French in his classes. Carl, of course, is right. Foreign language study can be deadly. In the foreign language teaching profession, it is common to hear many former high school foreign language students describe their language learning experience in negative terms, and themselves as poor language learners. These three teachers were no exception. Susan Winston heard the ineffectiveness expressed as: "So many people would say, 'Oh I took four years. I don't know a word of it.'" Molly Evans heard former students' strong emotions: "Oh God, I took that in high school and I hated it!" It did not take me long to discover that Carl's conception was much more textured and colorful than this flat, two-toned opposition of deadly and fascinating. I found the same kind of texture and color in the accounts of the other non-native high school French teachers in this study, Molly Evans and Susan Winston. Indeed, the texture and the color became the focus of this study. These three teachers' stories of their conceptions of teaching French in three New England high schools are the subject of this dissertation. In the field of foreign language education in the United States, educators are clearly committed to making language learning less deadly and more fascinating. Much has been written concerning what foreign language teachers need to know, do, and think in order to make languages and language learning relevant and interesting for students. Prescriptions for improving foreign language education and foreign language teachers abound. Among the most recent are the professional standards for foreign language education, Standards for Foreign Language Learning: Preparing for the 21st Century (Phillips, 1996), a landmark document which has great implications for foreign language teachers. Likewise, in the field of foreign language teacher education, documents produced by the major professional organizations in the field include efforts to establish standards and guidelines for education and training of foreign language teachers (Murphy, 1989; AATSP, 1990; Shulz, 1993). These latter recommendations are comprehensive, and spell out in detail the competencies that teachers of particular foreign languages

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