1.1 Introduction

Michel Tournier (1972), in his novel Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique, retells the tale of Robinson Crusoe, a young man stranded on a desert island, exiled from civilization as he knows it, a stranger in a strange land. Not long after his arrival on the deserted island, Robinson begins the arduous task of adapting his environment, of changing it in such a way as to make the wild, immense and virgin island conform in every way to the civilization which he left behind in his native Holland. Robinson goes to great lengths to ensure that every aspect of civilized life is represented in his new environment. Constructing, organizing, ordering, measuring, mapping, legislating, exploiting, administering, regulating, labeling: these are some of the activities in which Robinson engages in order to "metamorphosize" the island. His zeal extends to attempts at tagging every bird, labeling every plant and even to imposing a penal code. Tournier's tale evolves into somewhat of a parable as Robinson's self-constructed world eventually and literally explodes. Robinson finds himself once again in an environment which does not bear any resemblance to the civilized world. However, this time, it is Robinson who, instead of changing his environment to suit him, does the reverse - he begins to adapt to his environment. It is he himself who changes his appearance, his relationship with the only other inhabitant of the island and his daily habits. He no longer aims to change the island; rather he marvels at its natural state. Thus, this time, it is Robinson who undergoes the metamorphosis. A sense of calm now characterizes his state of mind. He becomes more reflective, more in tune with his inner self, more at peace and content to live on the island without needing to transform it.

Robinson's experiences, by analogy, evoke in many ways the immediate response that, as humans, we instinctively take when faced with new environments in particular or with newness in general. We impose the map on the territory. We rely and depend on the familiar. We facon the new on the old. We recreate that which is absent. We compare with what we have already. We pattern from the past. We think within the dominant paradigms. Thus, we are as McLuhan (1964) so articulately mused, "dragged into the future" moving forward while "looking into a rear-view mirror". Unfortunately, such tendencies create dilemmas. To move forward, we must have the ability and will to transpose or detach ourselves from the present and past patterns and paradigms that dictate the ways in which we think, do, feel and believe. Most importantly, we must have the ability to change or accommodate our ways of thinking to suit the world instead of changing our representation of the world to assimilate it to our ways of thinking.

The need to be able to detach ourselves from the past has perhaps never before been so imperative as it is now. It has almost become cliché to comment on the exponential rate of change facing humanity at the beginning of the 21st century. The change is nonetheless startling, rapid and all-encompassing. Mention need hardly be made of the magnitude and scope of changes affecting all aspects of society and the world as a result of the evolution and progress in the area of technology and telecommunications. Perhaps more than ever in the history of humanity are humans facing changes in their environment. More than ever are they forced to adopt new ways of thinking, doing and being. Change is not exclusive or selective in terms of the sectors of society which it affects. Industry, health, education, politics, business: all are affected.

In the area of education, there now exist new online environments for learning. Such environments offer great potential and many possibilities for education and particularly for the teaching of French as a second or foreign language (FSFL). However, their potential may only be realized if teachers can accommodate their personal theories, beliefs and practices to suit the characteristics of the new environment. The potential may not be realized if, like Crusoe, teachers expect that the new environment will allow a simple transposition of their beliefs. Instead, teachers may need to define new maps, to adapt to the new environments and to evolve their beliefs to ensure that they are compatible with learning in the online learning environments.

This study is concerned with understanding how certain individuals react when faced with new environments. Thus, the dominant metaphor for the study is a geographical one. The terms environments, lands, landscapes and territories are used synonymously to refer to the settings for learning. The study takes an ecological perspective as a means of gaining insight into the relationships between online learning environments (OLEs) and teachers' beliefs about teaching and learning in such environments. Along with these environments and landscapes, we have the metaphor of the map, i.e., the representation of the environment or territory. The map is symbolic in this study of teachers' beliefs, personal knowledge and implicit theories. Just as the map serves as the traveler's guide through unknown territories, so too do teachers' own theories and beliefs largely influence the direction or approach they take in their teaching. The study's use of geographical metaphors is necessary in order to understand and conceptualize the new phenomenon of online learning environments with their accompanying technologies and tools. The entire concept of OLEs can best be conceptualized by relating it to concepts with which we are already familiar.

The online learning environments that are referred to in this study are comprised of the wide array of Internet tools and mediums that can be combined and exploited for educational purposes. The Internet itself can be many things to many people. The interest of this study is in the Internet as an open learning environment. By using the term learning environments we place a greater emphasis on the place in which learning takes place. In general, use of the term learning environments highlights a shift in thinking which is taking much of the focus away from teaching and redirecting it instead towards learning. For Perkins (1996), an environment has "length and breadth, places and parts, non living and living, simplicity and complexity, constancy and change" (p. v). Wilson (1996) describes a learning environment as "a place where people can draw upon resources to make sense out of things and construct meaningful solutions to problems" (p.3). The traditional reference of the "classroom" as the setting for learning means little when we think of OLEs. The term "virtual classroom" suggests that the new environments for learning must, by necessity, be modeled from the "real world" counterpart. As this study aims to illustrate, the digital landscape of the Internet stands in stark contrast to the four walled classroom and, as such, has no equivalent in the "real world".

For the sake of convenience, and because the term Internet is more common than the term online learning environments, the two terms are used synonymously in this study. At the same time, the difference between the two terms should be made clear. The distinction between the two is that online learning environments refers specifically to use of the Internet for the purposes of teaching and learning and includes e-mail, video-conferencing technologies, the World Wide Web, discussion lists, telnet, FTP, gopher, Veronica, newsgroups, MUDs, MOOs, chat rooms, search engines, real audio, shockwave, HTML, VRML, Java and other such new, emerging technologies. The term Internet places greater emphasis on the tool or medium. However OLEs are far more than tools: they are places or spaces for learning of which the tools are simply one component.

What happens when the traveler or explorer visits new, uncharted lands? What happens when the map corresponds only partially, or perhaps not at all, to the territory? Faced with the newness of this environment, teachers can only rely on and adapt the maps that they have already and that are representations of the world of the classroom. Yet, while the classroom environment is familiar, the environment of the Internet is foreign or strange. How do their beliefs about the traditional classroom mesh with the new environment? How do they see their role? How do they see their students' role? What do they perceive as the value of this new learning environment? How do they perceive and interpret the experiences they have there? What type of approach to the teaching of FSFL do they favour when working in this environment? These are some of the questions and issues that are investigated in this study.

The primary question that has driven this study is: What are some of teachers' beliefs about teaching and learning FSFL in online learning environments? It is this question which can serve as a starting point for attempts to face the task of evolving second- and foreign- language teaching practices to bring them more in line with the demands, needs and possibilities of teaching and learning in online learning environments. Equally important is the need to understand these beliefs within a larger conceptual and historical context. This research thus aims to profile the beliefs and, as well, to situate them in relation to a broader context of the evolution of language teaching and of technology use in language teaching from the end of the 19th century up to the 21st century.