Evaluation is a way of understanding and developing language programs: the thematic and background section sets out the decision-making, quality management, and learning functions of evaluation. Case studies illustrate the diversity of evaluation contexts, functions and approaches, documenting the ways in which evaluation processes and outcomes inform and facilitate program development, and contribute to explaining how language and teacher education programs constitute opportunities for learning. The ways in which evaluation practice can be researched and developed to maximize policy, institutional and program effectiveness is included, and a comprehensive set of resources for those commissioning, undertaking or researching language program evaluations concludes the text.
Australia is a country with a wide diversity of languages in a world in which there are more multilinguals than monolinguals. This book explores the paradox of a nation rich in language resources, yet characterised by monolingual thinking. With insight and passion, Michael Clyne illustrates the ways in which our language resources can be consolidated and further developed for universal benefit.
Michael Cronin looks at how translation has played a crucial role in shaping debates about identity, language and cultural survival in the past and in the present. He explores how everything from the impact of migration to the curricula for national literature courses, to the way in which nations wage war in the modern era is bound up with urgent questions of translation and identity.
A book of polemic and passion, which will challenge school leaders, teachers and policy-makers alike. Amid vivid invective and extensive research about the impoverishing effects of educational standardisation, there gleams Hargreaves' unwavering conviction that teaching is the key agent of change in the knowledge society. As governments search for reform strategies to match the challenges facing state school systems around the world, we need original thinkers like Hargreaves. He defines the space within which leadership must be exercised.
Modern Languages: Learning and Teaching in an Intercultural Field (Teaching and Learning the Humanities Series)
"This is an important book. A very important book. It is important because it both challenges traditional understandings of language teaching and learning in universities, and rejects new understandings which only devalue the potential power of language learning…. This is not, however, merely a critique. The authors offer a compelling alternative, and do so in a language and style which mirror the alternative proposed. The authors illustrate their ideas through snapshots of classroom practices which help to build up a picture of what is meant. Such illustrations are invaluable" - Teaching in Higher Education
