Often, advances in culture and language research and learning, especially as both may apply to international security, occur between issues of JCLIS.  The audience for JCLIS runs the gamut of academics, learning developers, instructors, program manager and those who deploy into culturally complex for any number of government and non-government organizations and we find it relevant and timely to produce special topics issues to meet the more immediate culture and language needs of this array of populations.  

In this initial special topics issue, Robert Greene Sands and Pieter DeVisser suggest, in their detailed look at the DoD’s language, regional expertise and culture (LREC) program, that there lacks any kind of sufficient assessment mechanism to provide organizations critical understanding of their LREC capability, while failing to also provide the individual learner with a measure of performance useful to professional career development.  Sands and DeVisser provide a critique of current DoD LREC policy and strategy and the lack of necessary guidance on assessment beyond language programs.  Drawing on their experience at Joint Base Lewis/McChord in developing an LREC course, they propose an assessment model based on learning performance that is a more accurate reflection of LREC capability.

To read the journal, click the link below.