Contrasting stories of two early foreign language programs in the United States—a Japanese program at a laboratory school connected to a large research university and a Spanish program in a suburban school district—are told in this volume. As one of few longitudinal studies that track the cumulative impact of any kind in language education, this volume examines why and how one program—the Spanish program—was sustained and flourished, whereas the other—the Japanese program—did not.
Over the course of more than 15 years, Donato and Tucker examine the contrasting situations of the two programs through (a) a historical account of the two programs (chapter 2); (b) reports on their comprehensive program evaluation that include multiple views from students, parents, and teachers (chapters 3 and 5); and (c) student language development (chapter 4). They illustrate how the Japanese program was always marginal and isolated at different levels within the school community. The implementation process took place in a top-down manner, and only one Japanese teacher was assigned to simultaneously develop curricula and teach across all grade levels in the school. Additionally, although there was a partnership with the university while the program existed, its collaboration was restricted to include only the Japanese program, thus limiting efforts to integrate other content areas in the Japanese curriculum. In contrast, the Spanish program was placed in the core of the curriculum and multiple stakeholders—including administrators, teachers of Spanish and other subject areas, university partners, and parents—fully participated in the implementation and development process from the beginning. Research into the Spanish program conducted by the university partners was broadly disseminated, discussed, and applied for further improvement within the program community. Thus, as the authors discuss in the final three chapters (chapters 6, 7, and 8), one of the major characteristics of successful and sustainable foreign language programs is the ecological and bottom-up nature of the program implementation in which different stakeholders actively participate in the implementation process.
Although this volume provides a comprehensive picture of the two programs, a more detailed description and analysis of actual classroom practices would perhaps help readers to better understand the situations in which the programs were placed. Although readers may choose to read relevant studies conducted by the authors (e.g., Domínguez, Reference Donato, Tucker, Wudthayagorn and Igarashi2004; Donato, Tucker, Wudthayagorn, & Igarashi, 2000) to gain much-needed information, the question of whether classroom instruction was fully explored by Donato and Tucker in this volume as one of the major factors in sustainable early foreign language programs remains unanswered.
Overall, the longitudinal study of these two early foreign language programs broadly provides fascinating insights into language learning and teaching in general. The authors present their analysis of the programs after tracking student language achievement and motivation as well as student and parent attitudes toward language learning in both the Japanese and Spanish programs. They also find “a strong relationship” (p. 87) between classroom practice and students’ oral or written performance in these programs. Most importantly, this volume makes a significant contribution to the field of language education by illuminating the ways in which internal and external factors impact the implementation processes.
