When recruiting new language faculty members, administrators frequently gravitate towards candidates who are already familiar with the program’s designated textbook. It’s not in the job description, but it’s like an ‘unwritten rule’: If the new hire knows how to teach ‘our textbook’, it saves us a lot of headaches, and we don’t have to train them.
This approach might seem like a reasonable strategy for the smooth operation of any language program, but here’s the trap:
1) Being acquainted with a particular textbook doesn’t mean that the candidate is a good teacher
2) It doesn’t mean either that the candidate likes that textbook or that they agree with its underlying pedagogical philosophy
3) Moreover, it is a sign that the language program is stagnant from a curricular standpoint
4) And it is often a declaration that the program is unwilling to change or unable to innovate.
Instead, language programs who want to be at the forefront should actively seek teachers that:
– Are well acquainted with proficiency guidelines and standards
– Know how to implement backwards methods to curricular design
– Know the basics of human psychology and how the brain learns
– Participate in professional development opportunities, regularly
– And ideally have learned a foreign language during adulthood.
When this becomes the norm, the field of Teaching Arabic as a Second/Foreign Language will finally take off.
Until then, we’re only perpetuating a PPP teaching model, and we are putting innovation on a stand-by mode.
