It is my pleasure to send out this call for chapter proposals for a new
edited volume tentatively entitled “From Language Lab to Language Center and Beyond: The Past, Present, and Future of the
Language Center.” This volume will differ from the LCD (Language Center Design) book published in 2011 through IALLT in that it looks at the
larger picture rather than the more concrete nuts and bolts issues and case studies. The book will be published by the International Association for Language Learning and Technology (IALLT).
The edited volume proposed here will find answers to the some of the following
questions:
1. What impact has the proliferation of mobile technologies had on the
design and usage of physical spaces?
2. What functions and mandates of language centers have declined or disappeared,
and which have emerged? How has this led to a change in design parameters?
3. What is the role of language centers in an environment in which most
tenured and tenure-track language professors “were trained exclusively in literary criticism but might do as much as two thirds of their teaching in language classes” (Liddell and Garrett, 2004: 33)?
4. And more fundamentally: are language centers disappearing and being
absorbed into larger, more centralized structures in educational institutions, or is there a countertrend to these developments? How does this manifest itself in the design of physical learning environments?
5. + many more (e.g. the history of the lab, its rise and fall and its
paradigm shifts, changes in technology, professional development, etc.)
If you do not wish to contribute a full chapter, I would be happy to try
to pair you up with another chapter author. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions, or if you are not sure if your topic(s) of interest would be a good fit for the publication. I am open to different topic and chapter formats, for example
a visual history of the lab or an oral history type chapter.
If you are interested in authoring or co-authoring a chapter, please send
an e-mail to [log in to unmask]
in which you briefly describe the topic(s) that you could contribute to the book. Proposals received on or before
May 31, 2015
will be given full consideration. Proposals received after that date may be accepted if there is still a need for further contributions.
I look forward to your e-mails!
Best,
Felix
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Dr. Felix A. Kronenberg
IALLT Language Center Design Editor
Asst. Professor, Modern Languages and Literatures
Director, Language Learning Center
Rhodes College