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A quieter revolution has been going on in the field that has come to be
known as cognitive science. Our knowledge of how the brain functions has
increased dramatically in the last several decades. As we come to appreciate
how deeply behaviorism has influenced the practice of teaching in our country,
and as these deeply held and frequently detrimental beliefs are challenged, our
activities as teachers may be reshaped in ways as fundamental as the ones that
have been prompted by the first two revolutions described above.
The Russian language teaching profession is thus confronted with three
major shifts in our conceptual landscape. Any one of these by itself would be a
daunting prospect to confront, but taken together, we are faced with such
remarkable shifts that we have little choice but to restructure virtually all that we
do. For most teachers, especially at the college level, this restructuring will
require that we develop skills in "curricular thinking" that have nothing to do with
our professional training. This will not be an easy task, nor will its mastery occur
overnight. It will represent a learning task not unlike the one that faces our
students when we ask that they learn to master complex cognitive juggling
tasks.
What allof this means is that the timing of the national standards
movement and of the NFLC's Language Learning Framework projects is ideal.
With the benefit of hindsight, we can now see that our profession is being
pushed by a confluence of several overwhelming forces. In a Darwinian
moment, we see the choice may be to adapt or face extinction.
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