Steven J. Sacco, Professor Emeritus of French and Italian, San Diego State University

I know the last thing we world language educators want to read is a book on class disruptions, but before you move on to the next article in The Cardinal, let me explain.

The book I’m recommending for summer reading has a slightly longer title than Disrupting Class, and it is a font of innovation. It’s Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns (Christensen et al.). I’ve chosen to write about summer reading since summer reading is one of the topics selected by the editors of The Cardinal. 

First of all, what is “disruptive innovation?” The term disruptive innovation, initially coined by Harvard Business Professor Clayton Christensen, refers to “innovations that challenge established norms to improve upon them in keeping up with changes over time” (p. 6). 

Innovations that challenge established norms to improve upon them.

For us world language educators, “disruptive” activities include a cornucopia of powerful activities that you use to enhance learning. The “horn of plenty” of innovative activities include the use of the following:

• Task-based and project-based activities and courses 
• The teaching of Business French or Spanish at the high school level 
• The development of virtual exchanges between our students and students in other countries
• The decolonization of the French curriculum through the systematic inclusion of Francophone African content
• Cross-campus collaboration in developing globally-prepared graduates, and many others. 

Former President Bill Clinton, cited in Christensen et al., calls for “classrooms connected to one another and the outside world” (p. 72).

Getting back to Disrupting Class, Christensen et al. summarize their raison d’être in the following four statements:

1. “Maximize human potential.
2. Facilitate a vibrant, participatory democracy in which we have an informed electorate that is capable of not being “spun” by self-interested leaders.
3. Hone the skills, capabilities, and attitudes that will help our economy remain prosperous and economically competitive.
4. Nurture the understanding that people can see things differently—and that those differences merit respect rather than persecution” (p. 1).

They present “these statements to promote their thesis that the current U.S. teaching model is broken compared to other models in other countries” (p. 4). Furthermore, the authors point their finger at characteristics that disrupt the emergence of disruptive innovation and challenge us to question and perhaps combat the following: 

• Established norms
• Standardization of subject matter and testing
• Monolithic instruction
• The teacher as the “sage on the stage”
• Siloed education and the lack of interdisciplinarity

In a nutshell, they are looking to convince educators to become architects “who develop learning activities that enhance student learning, place students in situations to negotiate learning with each other and partners across continents, to solve problems they select, not problems the teacher selects” (p. 39).

I encountered several “established norms” and “monolithic instruction” when I was a high school French and Spanish teacher in rural southern Illinois in the late 1970s. One of these established norms included the principal selecting my textbooks because the school couldn’t afford to purchase new textbooks upon my arrival as a new teacher. I was forced to teach with Spanish: The Audiolingual Method (ALM), left by my predecessor, as my Spanish I and II textbook. Since my principal seldom visited my classes, I dumped the textbooks and created my own mobile network of “textbooks” that focused on the needs and interests of my students. The sports pages of El Vocero de Puerto Rico and the Spanish version of Soap Opera Digest were two of their favorites. 

Disruptive innovation often takes place rapidly because of changing circumstances. For example, in French III and IV, a real-life situation in 1978 arose that compelled me to modify our class curriculum—after discussions with and the approval of my students. A multinational corporation needed hundreds of business letters translated from French to English. The corporation offered me $5 per letter. I taught my students how to translate business letters, and they quickly mastered the language and the tone hidden within letters: those displaying camouflaged anger and frustration, for example. Concurrently, I also introduced them to the concept of etiquette created during the court of Louis XIV. My students learned “workplace” French and discovered a potential future career path as global business consultants. By the way, the principal never did find out that my students were getting paid for studying French.

Self-paced, mastery-based instruction is another favorite of Christensen et al. They use the Florida Virtual School (FLVS) as an example. Founded in 1997 as an experimental option to standard educational systems, FLVS created the banner of “any time, any place, any path, any pace.” Under this banner, FLVS has attracted more than 71,000 students in and outside of Florida, including thousands who study ASL, Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, and Spanish. 

If only self-paced, mastery-based accounting had existed in my freshman year of college when I got a D-. All I needed was more time to let the subject matter simmer. I bet that today, in my 74^th year of life, I would have gotten an A if I had had 14 weeks to complete the course instead of 10.

Speaking of self-paced, mastery-based education, at Ohio State, where I completed my doctoral studies in Foreign Language Education, I experienced first-hand (both as an instructor in French and as a student of Arabic) the phenomenon of “any time, any place, any path, any pace.” Created in the late 1970s, the “individualized” program provided the freedom for students to proceed faster or slower than traditional language classes. Enrollments in the Individualized Program nearly surpassed that of the traditional language classes, thereby fortifying enrollments against the pen of “bean-counter” administrators. I am proud to have published my very first academic paper about OSU’s Individualized Program in The Cardinal in 1982. Thanks OMLTA, now OWLA!

References

Christensen, C.M., Horn, M.B., and Johnson, C.W. (2011). Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns. McGraw Hill.