The role of the language program director within a three-dimensional model of articulation

Abstract

Post-secondary educators have been discussing the challenges of foreign language (FL) program articulation since the 1960s, and have as yet been unable to find a generalizable approach to achieving coherent programs. Research to date on this topic has been descriptive, making it difficult to generalize the successes of one program to others. To address the need for a generalizable model of language program articulation, the authors propose a model of articulation and report the results of a pilot survey used to test, and subsequently modify, the model. Survey respondents’ perceptions of the relative contributions of eleven factors to overall program articulation suggest that these factors interact differently and to varying degrees along three axes of articulation: Curricular Content and Instructional Delivery, Learner Experience, and Scope of Influence. The role of the language program director in articulation is compared with the role of the ten other factors on each of the three axes independently as well as in the three-dimensional model. Finally, implications of the survey results for the proposed model and for FL program articulation are presented.