NECTFL: Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages

The Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages

2009 Stephen A. Freeman Award for Best Published Article on Language Teaching Techniques to Appear in a Professional Journal during the Previous Academic Year: Jason J. Goulah, "Village Voices, Global Visions: Digital Video as a Transformative Foreign Language Learning Tool." Foreign Language Annals 40, 1 (spring 2007): 62-78.

Jason Goulah is Assistant Professor of Bilingual-Bicultural Education at DePaul University and Director of Japanese Credit Abroad with Concordia Language Villages, Concordia College in Moorhead Minnesota. From 2000-2007, Dr. Goulah was a language instructor (Japanese, ESL, and Russian) and Co-Director of the Academy of International Studies at North Tonawanda High School in North Tonawanda, New York. In 2005, Dr. Goulah served as an adjunct in the Graduate School of Education at the University at Buffalo in New York and, from 2000-2001, as Senior Lecturer of Japanese at Niagara University in New York. He taught English in Japan from 1995-1999.

Dr. Goulah earned his Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction in Second and Foreign Language Education, an M.Ed. in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, and a B.A. in Japanese and Russian: Languages and Cultural Studies at the University at Buffalo; the first American graduated from Kwansei Gakuin University School of Law (Japan), Dr. Goulah earned an LL.M. in Fundamental Laws in 1999. From 2004-2005, Dr. Goulah served as a researcher on Buddhism and Japanese secular law for the Law and Buddhism Project with the University at Buffalo Law School's Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy.

Dr. Goulah's research interests include transformative second and foreign language learning, Makiguchian and sociocultural approaches to learning and development, educating immigrant students from the Former Soviet Union, and language, identity and new literacies. His research articles have appeared in journals such as Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, Foreign Language Annals, and Journal of Transformative Education.

The Board of Directors of the Northeast Conference is especially pleased to present this award to an individual who has been a student and teacher in such a broad range of fields and in an equally broad range of contexts. We congratulate Dr. Goulah on his fulfillment of the role of life-long learner and on his ability to convey the excitement of that role to his students.

The article for which he is receiving this award is based on a case study of teen-aged students of Japanese enrolled in a short-term program in Japan. Aimed at exploring how content-based digital video production by the students affected their learning, attitudes and literacy practices, the study is a model of rigorous teacher researcher ethnographic investigation. In addition to sharing richly-detailed portraits of the students' experiences and projects, Goulah's article conveys its theoretical underpinning, data collection methods and analytical approaches in clear, concise and elegant language. Thus, above and beyond providing us with a greater understanding of technologically-mediated language learning, a view of what he calls "planetary literacy," and invaluable insights into student attitudes and experiences in Japan, Goulah's article educates its readers about the characteristics of solid qualitative research. Notably, in commenting on the need for further work in this area, his presentation of the study's limitations reflects his careful use of triangulation and member-checking.

Goulah points out that "What we see in the students" videos is a clear understanding of the political and environmental information gained via the target language. But perhaps more importantly, the students are evidencing learning beyond accretion of knowledge to a plane of critical literacy and socially engaged transformative criticism using new literacies of digital technology via the foreign language." (p. 74). His article is thus an admirable "indeed, an ideal" piece to be highlighted and shared during this conference of engaged communities and globally-connected classrooms.