1 Why Explore English Teachers’ Experiences of Curriculum Change?
One of the greatest changes in education worldwide over the past 25 to 30 years has been the increasing role of English as a core school subject in state education curricula. Forty years ago, English as a subject was, in most countries, taught to a limited number of secondary school learners, if at all. Now, it is a compulsory subject at secondary level almost everywhere, with some countries requiring success in the English paper of a school leaving exam as a prerequisite for university entrance. More recently, English has increasingly become a core subject at primary school also. A recent global survey (Rixon 2013) shows that English is a subject from at least the third year of primary school in 49 of the 64 countries investigated. Although the exact number of school learners is difficult to establish, estimates suggest that there are 390 million school and university level learners in China alone (Wei and Su 2012), and between 1.5 and 2 billion learners globally, most of whom are learning English as a compulsory part of their basic state system education (Crystal 2000; Graddol 2006; TESOL 2014; Jenkins 2015). Such enormous numbers of learners of course require a huge number of teachers . Prince and Barrett (2014) give a sense of the scale when they report that there are 3.2 million English language teachers working in government and private schools across India alone.
Historically, the aims of most of today’s English curricula have been strongly influenced by changing perspectives on language teaching and education more generally. The first change derives from ideas in Applied Linguistics in the 1970s which by clarifying that language proficiency entails more than linguistic competence encouraged the long and unfinished evolution of ‘communicative language teaching ’ (see Savignon 1997; Nunan 1999). Attempts to try to teach language (now mostly English) for communication have more recently coincided with (and often been in the vanguard of) a second global educational change. This is the move, rhetorically at least, away from the ‘teacher-centred’, knowledge transmission, view of teaching and learning that has been (and remains) typical of many school systems worldwide since compulsory schooling for all began, towards a more ‘learner-centred’, ‘interactive’ and ‘constructivist’ conception of education (Schweisfurth 2011; 2013).
Today, therefore, state school education systems worldwide have increasingly, and now almost universally, introduced English curricula whose stated goal is to develop learners’ ability to use/communicate in English. Two examples below from different continents illustrate how state school English curricula express their desired learner outcomes. Numerous similar examples can be found in the chapters that follow.
In Venezuela, the English curriculum goals are for learners to become able ‘to use oral and written language as a means for communication with the rest of the world and as a means of accessing scientific and humanistic knowledge’ (New National Curriculum 2007, as cited in Chacón 2012). In Nepal, they are expressed similarly, as becoming able ‘To develop an understanding of and competence in spoken English; communicate fluently and accurately with other speakers of English’ (Curriculum Development Centre 1995, as cited in Shrestha 2008: 195).
Such communication-oriented curricula usually recommend the use of interactive/learner-centred pedagogies.
In response to the perceived global demand for communication in English, new TEYL curricula have generally emphasised communicative competence. In many countries, particularly in East Asia (Ho 2003), this has led to the introduction of some form of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) or Task-Based Learning and Teaching (TBLT). This is the case, for example, in Korea (Li 1998; Mitchell and Lee 2003), Hong Kong (Carless 2003; 2004), China (G. Hu 2002), Turkey (Kirkgöz 2009), and Thailand (de Segovia and Hardison 2009), to name just a few. (Garton et al. 2011: 5)
As will become clear in the chapters that follow, recommending the use of such teaching approaches is not limited to East Asian countries. English teachers in all countries reported on here are encouraged to establish classrooms in which, as well as providing knowledge about the language, they facilitate activities and tasks that provide opportunities for learners to try to use English language knowledge for meaningful interaction. While English teachers are almost universally explicitly recommended to adopt such approaches, in many contexts, the teaching of other subjects remains based around the transmission of factual knowledge. This is in spite of official rhetoric promoting ‘learner centredness’ across the education system.
In such circumstances, the classroom implementation of new English curricula espousing the adoption of more interactive pedagogies remains inconsistent with majority educational and cultural norms and expectations . This poses considerable challenges for English teachers. They are expected to make complex (Fullan 1992) changes to their classroom practice and their professional thinking in working contexts where the assumptions and behaviours underpinning most teaching and learning of other subjects remain unchanged.
Most national education systems in both developing and developed countries remain hierarchical and top down in their planning processes. Change planning strategies remain largely power coercive (Chin and Benne 1976), with change implementation still often viewed as ‘a linear, sequentially ordered industrial production line’ (Pettigrew and Whipp 1991: 32). Those responsible for curriculum implementation at local level (teachers , school heads or local educational administrators) are rarely informed or consulted about proposed curriculum changes, or involved in implementation planning . Many stories in this book confirm what the literature (Wedell 2013; Levin and Fullan 2008) suggests about the likely outcomes of such lack of communication. Firstly, lack of real communication with those working at local level results in change implementation planning proceeding without sufficient consideration of the existing cultural and material realities across the national context. Secondly, it contributes to a view of curriculum change as a discrete event, and a failure to consider what the curriculum changes imply for other parts of the English language system such as textbooks , examinations and teacher education, to make sure that they remain broadly consistent with new curriculum goals. Finally, lack of communication and involvement prior to implementation is likely to mean that when implementation officially begins, English teachers are confused about what exactly they are supposed to do. Their own local contexts can offer little guidance or support, since school and administrative leaders themselves often know little about and/or are indifferent to the classroom implications of the new English curriculum. In such circumstances, where implementation planning fails to develop structures that enable the implementation process to be supported by the ‘focused and sustained efforts by all parts of the education system and its partners’ (Levin and Fullan 2008: 291), then implementation outcomes in terms of visible changes to ‘teaching and learning practices in thousands and thousands of classrooms’ (Levin and Fullan 2008: 291) are likely to be disappointing.
Of course, implementation planning does often include formal support for some English teachers and may include exhortations to adapt curriculum goals to the realities of their own local contexts . However, as most of the following chapters show, the support provi...