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Curricular Planning along the Fault Line between Instrumental and Academic Agendas: A Response to the Report of the Modern Language Association on Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World 1
Author(s) -
Walther Ingeborg
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
die unterrichtspraxis/teaching german
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1756-1221
pISSN - 0042-062X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1756-1221.2009.00045.x
Subject(s) - curriculum , corporate governance , discipline , association (psychology) , foreign language , higher education , mathematics education , pedagogy , sociology , psychology , political science , social science , management , law , economics , psychotherapist
In calling for new governance structures and unified curricula, the MLA Report distinguishes between instrumental and constitutive views of language that characterize our often schizophrenic agendas of language acquisition on the one hand, and disciplinary knowledge on the other. This paper explores some common theoretical insights from the fields of language acquisition and cultural studies that interrogate these views, providing a basis for sustained collaboration around curricula among faculty on both sides of the divide. While these have already yielded the kinds of curricular innovations recommended by the Report, a case is made for more radical changes in hiring practices, distribution of teaching and service, reward structures, and graduate education — changes which have the capacity to transform the institutional values upon which they will also depend.