Department of German

Spencer Grant: Material Development Project
Teacher Researchers: Astrid Weigert (convener), Tim Frawley, Shannon Hebel, Susanne Rinner
Mentor: Heidi Byrnes

Materials Development Group

The Materials Development Group started its work on November 2, 2000. For the first year, group members met approximately every other week, with a break during the summer months. In the course of the meetings and ongoing e-mail exchanges between group members and mentor, our thinking about the issues at stake progressed considerably in a number of areas. The group's work in the first year focused on delineating the acquisitional issues that are central to Level V courses in the GUGD curriculum. A crucial step in this effort was to draw a clear distinction between Level IV and Level V courses. The distinguishing feature at which we arrived with considerable input from our mentor was a focus of Level V courses on the multivoicedness of texts coupled with a strong genre focus. To increase our knowledge base, we read, discussed and wrote up brief comments on a bibliography of about 50 scholarly articles and/or books provided to us by our mentor. Parallel to the review of literature, group members continued to work on better defining the content and language goals for their individual courses under revision or in development. Draft were circulated via e-mail before the meetings and critiqued extensively during the meetings. The group's efforts in the first year culminated in a joint session entitled "Content Courses as Advanced Language Learning Courses: Principles and Practices for Materials Development" by three of the group members at the November 2001 ACTFL/AATG Conference.

After having established a joint knowledge base and having worked very collaboratively in the first year, the group's efforts became more individualized in the second year. Consequently, the frequency of meetings decreased to approximately every two months. The four researcher participants paired up, with two members (Weigert and Rinner) working collaboratively on course revision and/or course development and the other two members (Hebel and Frawley) working collaboratively on guidelines for Level V materials development in the GUGD curriculum. At our meetings, we pulled the work of both pairs of researcher participants together, since the curriculum work by Weigert and Rinner clearly had a bearing on the establishment of guidelines by Hebel and Frawley and vice versa. For the pair of course developers, the project culminated in teaching the newly or redeveloped courses in the semesters following the end of the grant (Rinner: "Liebe Lust und Leidenschaft" in Fall 2002; Weigert "German Business Culture and Globalization," Spring 2003). The guideline developers Hebel and Frawley were able to produce a set of guidelines for Level V courses that will be a welcome contribution to the GUGD and the FL profession at large.

Participant Learning

After compiling statements of individual participants' learning, several areas were found to be particularly relevant for all participants.

* First, all group members now clearly view themselves as practitioner-researchers, as opposed to the pre-project understanding of themselves as either "teachers" or "researchers". Since the group members were either graduate students or junior faculty, this new self-understanding of their role will have a lasting effect on their careers.
* Second, the collaborative nature of the project combined with the fact that this project was the first longterm research project for most participants, has left group members with great appreciation for the benefits as well as the challenges of collaborative research efforts. The 2001 joint AATG Conference presentation reinforced the benefit of collaboration for all involved. Indeed, two of the participants plan to continue their collaborative efforts with a jointly authored article based on their project work.
* Third, all group members were able to substantially increase their knowledge base on issues related to content and language acquisition for the advanced learner of a foreign language. The readings came from a wide variety of fields in linguistics and second language acquisition which enriched our thinking on materials development from a equally wide variety of perspectives. The knowledge base established in the course of this project will be a solid basis for any future practitioner-researcher work that group members might consider.
* Fourth, the hands-on approach to materials development that ran parallel to the theoretical approach gave each participant a deep appreciation for the complexities of course development for foreign language courses which attempt to link content and language instruction. All group members are now fully aware of the process nature of course development with its lengthy, yet productive process of writing, revising, receiving feedback, revising yet again and so forth. Group members feel a deep sense of satisfaction and pride in the work they have accomplished during the course of the project.

Posted March 11, 2003