For the past year, I have been mulling over the 1997 second
edition of the International Teaching Assistant: An Annotated
Critical Bibliography (from here on referred to as the ACB).
The ACB was first written in 1990 by the University of
Michigan. It contained 111 items and was organized into three primary
categories: articles, books, reports and presentations; dissertations;
and manuals, textbooks, and videos. Each item included a bibliographic
citation, an abstract or summary, and a short commentary about the
resource. The goal was to “produce a comprehensive and up-to-date
collection of the available publications that deal specifically with
international teaching assistants’ issues,” (p. v) and materials were
selected to that end. In 1997, The English Language Institute at the
University of Michigan updated the publication and increased the number
of items to 201. It has been nearly 15 years since then and it is time
for an update.
A couple of institutions have a hard copy of the text, but
converting it to a workable document (Word format) is really what is
needed. By having a dynamic document, we can continually update the ACB
and have a rich resource full of past and present materials. Rich
Powers, an MA student at the University of San Francisco, graciously
converted it into a PDF document. This was done with OCR software;
because OCR software sometimes misreads the text, he confirmed the
format and proofed the document. This leads to where we are now, with
two primary areas for discussion: how to make it available, and what
materials to include in it.
At the Mid-America TESOL 2011(MIDTESOL) conference in St. Louis, a small group of ITA professionals
met to share on various topics. I opened a discussion on the ACB. We
discussed a number of questions pertaining to accessibility and content.
The first question was: How do we make this available to the
interest section? Accessibility is vital. Technology is the biggest
hurdle right now. We discussed a database, Google documents, and
Dropbox. We need to establish a format that will allow any person to
access and peruse (so there goes any specific database program). TESOL
has the TESOL Resource Center, which would be available to those of us
with TESOL memberships. With a paper edition, the ACB has to be printed,
bound, and sent, and then is promptly out of date. If it is online,
then we will not need to have a paper copy. If a PDF version is
available, then there is access, but adding materials is problematic. I
am hoping to find a way to have a searchable database, which would allow
easy access and a dynamic resource that can be updated
regularly.
We also discussed what should be included. There is a
considerable amount of overlap between ITAs and other aspects of ESOL,
such as pronunciation. What do we include, and what do we omit? Just
because the words international teaching assistant do
not appear in the text does not mean a resource is not useful or
relevant to our population.
The group felt that submissions should be open to anyone but
that we need one core person, or group of people, who can collect the
submissions and ensure that they are well written and contain all the
necessary information (author, abstract, citation, commentary) before
adding them to the ACB.
The discussion raised more questions than it answered, as is
often the case with a productive brainstorming session. After reading
this article, hopefully people have some brilliant ideas. With the brain
juices flowing, I intend to pose the following questions to the ITA
e-list and anticipate some very practical responses:
- Does anyone know of a platform that we could use to make these resources searchable and expandable?
- Does anyone have a way to convert our PDF version to Word? (I have made numerous attempts.)
- What resources should be included? (For example, hundreds of
articles are published on pronunciation each year; though they are
related and useful to the ITA field, how do we determine which are added
to the ACB?)
As far as resource collection, I have reviewed my own reference
list from my dissertation and identified some articles that could be
included. I have also been collecting the citations as they come through
the e-list. Sarah Briggs, who passed the ACB along to me, also included
a wonderful stack of articles to be included. If anyone knows of useful
ITA resources to submit, I would be happy to start collecting the
citations, abstracts, and a short commentary that the provider may
have.
Special thanks to Jacquelin Militello for coordinating the
session at MIDTESOL 2011, and to those who participated in the
discussion: Maureen Burke, Nancy Kauper, Erin Leddon, Patricia Krejcik,
and Denise Mussman.
REFERENCE
Briggs, S., Clark, V., Madden, C., Beal, R., Hyon, S.,
Aldridge, P., & Swales, J. (1997). The international
teaching assistant: An annotated critical bibliography. Ann
Arbor: The English Language Institute, University of Michigan.
Cheryl is the director of the Center for English as a
Second Language at Southern Illinois University Carbondale where she
works extensively with ITAs. |