With Asia moving to the center stage in world economic and political developments, the learning and teaching of Asian languages has become crucial. Stony Brook is taking the lead in preparing qualified teachers of Asian languages with the launch of undergraduate teacher education programs in Chinese and Japanese leading to New York State initial teaching certification and the B.A. degree in Asian and Asian American Studies: Adolescent Education–Chinese/Japanese, Grades 7-12. The Department of Asian and Asian American Studies provides content core courses, the Foreign Language Teacher Education Program (FLA) offers pedagogical core courses, and the Professional Education Program coordinates additional programs for teacher certification.
The new Chinese and Japanese teacher education programs grew out of a $171,000 U.S. Department of Education grant awarded in a nationwide competition to a team of internationally renowned experts in the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies specializing in applied linguistics and the structure, acquisition, and pedagogy of major Asian languages (S.N. Sridhar, PI; Agnes He, Eriko Sato, and Meena Sridhar, co-PIs). Under this Title VI grant, made under the Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language Program for 2007-2009, the expert team developed innovative teacher education programs in Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, and Korean and organized a conference on Asian Languages in the Professions. The new certification programs are integrated into the Department’s major in Asian and Asian American Studies and complement the minors in Chinese and Japanese, under the direction of Agnes He and Eriko Sato, respectively. More than 300 students take courses in each language program yearly.
Stony Brook offers a rich array of programs and resources that support the teacher education programs. The Professional Education Program (PEP) is nationally accredited by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education. Its distributed paradigm for teacher education combines disciplinary academic rigor with the study and application of pedagogical theory and practice and develops a unified fieldwork and clinical practice program, and strengthens the University’s partnerships with Long Island and New York City schools. Nationally recognized by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, the FLA program offers teacher candidates research-based pedagogy courses, field experience, and clinical practice opportunities utilizing extensive partnerships with school districts across the region. The FLA program has been coordinating the preparation of undergraduate and graduate students to become teachers of French, German, Italian, Russian, and Spanish at the secondary school levels, and will also coordinate the preparation of undergraduate teacher candidates for Chinese and Japanese.
The Language Learning and Research Center offers technology resources for the teaching and learning of languages, literatures, and cultures. The Stony Brook University Library owns more than 5,000 volumes of books related to China and more than 2,000 volumes of books related to Japan. In addition, the China Studies Library and Japanese Studies Library provide invaluable resources.
International Academic Programs offers a number of study abroad and exchange programs with universities in China and Japan.
For more information on the teacher education programs for Chinese and Japanese, please contact Eriko Sato at eriko.sato@stonybrook.edu.
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