School of Education
FACULTY OF ESSL
The national English curriculum and the
national English assessment system :
Close relations or total strangers?
Martin Wedell
Today
1.
Why is implementing a new curriculum a complex process ?
2.
How are assessment results used in today’s ‘performativity culture’?
3. How is the process of (English) curriculum implementation affected by
having curriculum goals and national assessment as ( +/- ) total
strangers
4. Why do current approaches to (English) curriculum implementation
planning make the ‘total stranger’ scenario moreor less inevitable?
5. Is there any alternative? Can we approach curriculum planning and its
assessment in a manner that helps to make classroom English
teaching and its assessment (slightly) closer relations?
Education systems are
complex
What we see ( or do not see!) happening in (English)
classrooms depends on the thinking ( beliefs / expectations )
and behaviours of
• millions of different people
Who for example ?
• Living/working in many different places.
Where for example?
What happens in classrooms is
influenced by…
People
• National policy makers
• Regional and district level
educational administrators
• Institutional/School leaders
• Teachers
• Learners
• Parents
Places
Homes, Schools, and Government
Offices in
• Crowded city centres and leafy
suburban settings
• Provincial towns
• More or less remote villages
Despite the complexity (English)
curriculum changes are common
Indonesian ELT curriculum changes (Sahurrudin 2013 :568)
(a) 1945’s grammar translation-based curriculum,
(b) 1958’s audio-lingual based curriculum,
(c) 1975’s revised audio lingual-based curriculum,
(d) 1984’s structure-based communicative curriculum,
(e) 1994’s meaning-based communicative curriculum,
(f)
2004’s competency-based curriculum.
g)
2013’s ‘integrative thematic curriculum’
Have (e) & (f) led to BIG changes in what you see
teachers and learners doing in every Indonesian English
classroom ?
Implementing Curriculum
changes is not simple
The central lesson of large-scale educational change that is
now evident is the following:
Large-scale, sustained improvement in student outcomes
requires a (i) sustained effort to change school and
classroom practices, not just structures such as governance
and accountability. The heart of improvement lies in , (ii)
changing teaching and learning practices in thousands
and thousands of classrooms, and this requires (iii) focused
and sustained effort by all parts of the education system and
its partners.
(Levin and Fullan, 2008: 291) My italics and numbering
3 key points
• Goal of any educational change is to change what actually
happens in thousands of different (English) classrooms (English as a subject to English as a language?)
•
•
(English) Classrooms are bound to be different- Changes
will not be implemented at the same rate /follow the same
route everywhere
To eventually see some version of change in all (English)
classrooms, there needs to be focused and sustained
effort over time by all parts of the educational system and
its partners.
And yet curriculum change planners still tend to plan as if all
classrooms will start implementing a new curriculum in the
same way on the same day…
1. Assessment
content and
format
4. Cultural and
Societal
expectations /
pressure
New ELT
Curriculum
goals
3. Teacher
education
( ITT / INSET)
2. Syllabuses
and Learning
materials
Curriculum goals and
assessment
If the goal of a national English curriculum is that English
should be taught as a language (not a subject) and that
learners should be able to understand and use (some)
English by the time they leave school …
• What might one expect any national assessment of
that curriculum to try to ‘measure’?
• What kinds of assessment items might one expect to
find in a curriculum-based national exam?
• Is this what the Indonesian national exams are like?
Curriculum and assessment
often ‘total strangers’ eg: Iran
The main approach of the curriculum for teaching foreign
languages is based on a perspective that language is a tool
to communicate and exchanging thoughts, so learning a
foreign language requires acquiring communication
ability which could be achieved through communicating a
language actively in especial situation” ( Dahmardeh, 2009:
121).
the tests were mostly designed to assess reading
comprehension, knowledge of grammar and vocabulary as
well as translation and there was no sign of communicative
purposes. (Darmadeh : 2009 : 271)
Ethiopia
Curriculum
• Content is both topic-based and linguistic … All four
language skills are developed equally and language
chosen is functional, relevant and realistic for teenagers”
(emphasis added) (The Ethiopian Ministry of Education,
2008).
Assessment :
Ethiopian School Leaving Certificate Examination (ESLCE)
Reading comprehension, vocabulary and grammar
Assessment always wins
If people in a (curriculum) change context (parentslearners-teachers-institutional leaders) see an
obvious lack of harmony between the behaviours and
practices underlying the proposed (curriculum)
changes and those that are perceived to help
learners pass high-stakes exams, it is the practices
that support success in assessment that will win.
(Wedell 2009:25)
National assessment results are
‘powerful’ ?
The purpose of assessment is no longer purely to support
learning / to assess what a learner has learned and to
decide whether s/he can progress further through the
education system.
Instead, as part of the increasing demand for education to be
accountable, education systems across the world are subject
to the demands of a ‘performativity culture’ ( Ball 2003)
Which needs assessment results to exist
Assessment results central to
‘Perfomativity culture’
The purpose of assessment becomes to judge the
performance of education systems, their institutions and
those who work in them through the collection, recording and
(public) classification of assessment result data.
The result of national exam could be used as a mapping tool
to evaluate the competency and quality of Indonesian
education, and could also be used as an achievement
comparison tool between one school and another (Uning
Musthofiyah 2013)
Assessment results influence
those who influence education
• National Policy makers- want ‘objective evidence’ that their policies
are being ‘successfully’ implemented, and want their country to
compare well with other countries in international ‘league tables’ PISA
/TIMMS etc
• Local/regional education officers - want to show how capable they
are by demonstrating that schools in their areas to do well (in national
exams)
• School heads- want show their effectiveness by demonstrating that
their schools can do well in (local / national) exams
• The exam has become very political, with teachers, principals and local
governments pushing students to get good scores for the reputation of
the schools and the area. (Uning Musthofiyah 2013)
• Teachers- want to demonstrate their ability, and/or keep
their jobs, by ensuring that their learners’ results help their
schools to do well (in national/ local exams)
• Parents and learners- want to pass whatever tests exist,
for the original reasons of wanting to successfully reach ( a
good school at) the next level of the education system.
So all the people we identified earlier see national assessment
as very important – use results for non-educational purposes
What then happens to curriculum implementation if the
assessment is a total stranger
Curriculum and assessment
as ‘total strangers’ -Problem 1
The new curriculum is ignored
National educational policy makers may find that – at local
level – local administrators and institutional leaders see
teaching the new curriculum as less important than teaching
to the tests.
I can tell you we did not encourage teachers to follow the curriculum. I had
tried it before and it was very disappointing; it is risky to my career, also to
my school … I believe once you understand the NMET, you can throw the
curriculum and textbook away. That is what I told my teachers in my school
… I believe without the curriculum and the textbook; I can also teach
students and their marks will not decline.
Ideally, I should follow the curriculum and that would be helpful to improve
students’ English, but I think the school needs us to focus on the test (Wei
and Wedell forthcoming)
Curriculum: assessment as
‘total strangers’: Problem 2
Much planned support for curriculum implementation
wasted
However much time, money and effort is spent on
• preparing new materials that are consistent with curriculum goals (often
carefully and appropriately designed)
and /or on
• training teachers to teach the new curriculum (almost always far too
little - 2013 curriculum- teachers will get 5 days training)
often ( largely) wasted.
Since assessment matters most, many teachers will avoid using parts
of any new English materials / new teaching approaches that do not
clearly help learners do well in national assessments.
Head of English dept- rural
school China
I think the tasks in the textbook are too complicated, I feel
maybe one or two students can reluctantly say a few
sentences. They lack the vocabulary and they know the
National Matriculation English Test (NMET) will not test oral
skills. They are simply not motivated to practice it. I cannot
waste my precious classroom time teaching these activities.
Wei & Wedell (forthcoming)
Curriculum: assessment as
‘total strangers’ Problem. 3
Classroom teachers work in a world of ‘mixed messages’
Teachers in English classrooms are in a state of tension between trying to
balance
the messages from materials ( and any training) which usually emphasise
• balance teaching grammar and vocabulary with time on helping
learners to develop language skills through ‘communicative activities’ /
group and pair work
and messages coming from the influential people in their immediate
working world (school leaders, learners and parents)
•
‘cover the book’ on which the assessment is based – make sure you
deal with grammar and vocabulary and don’t worry about missing out
’communicative activities.
Curriculum: assessment as
‘total strangers’. Problem. 4
Social divisions expand further
One reason why the development of skills in English is a goal of the
national curriculum may be parental pressure (Brock Utne 2010, National
Council for Education and Training 2006), because parents see the ability
to use English as important for their children’s future prospects.
Governments respond to try and provide equality of opportunity .
But while all (most) learners at school may pass the national assessment,
the focus on ‘teaching to the test’ in state schools means that few learners
develop (any/many) useable English skills.
Learners whose parents who can afford it, send children to learn such
skills at private language schools.
Sumatra- Jambi- Suburban
Middle Class area
Teachers and learners alike conceded that real progress in English was
only possible by studying privately outside the school. One teacher put it
bluntly: “They can’t success (sic) in English if they don’t take a course.”
Over 50% of the school pupils had taken private courses in English during
the time they were in the junior high school, with an average length of
eleven months, at over 20 different institutions. (Lamb and Coleman
2008:9)
Those whose parents with low financial incomes may feel submissive and
inferior to encounter the National Exam since they could not attend afterschool educational training which takes high cost of money (Uning
Musthofiyah 2013)
‘Total Strangers’ may make societies less equal.
Curriculum : assessment mismatch
distorts curriculum implementation
Human and financial investment in curriculum planning and
implementation does not lead to the desired ‘use’ based English
curriculum goals being met by most learners.
People across the education system (but particularly teachers) are torn
between classroom practices /behaviours promoted by the ‘training’ and
curriculum materials , and knowing that such practices will not prepare
learners for success in the unchanged (or barely changed), national
exams.
Apparent provision of English for everyone, in fact leads to greater
polarisation between those who ‘have English’ ( the language- through
access to private classes/out of school opportunities) and those who only
‘have English’- (the subject ) through school exposure.
Most teachers pretend to teach ‘English’ and most learners pretend to
learn it. School English remains a subject not a language.
Why does it happen?
Policy makers are too ambitious!
My experience (Chile-Kenya-KSA-Hungary-India-China) suggests that
English curriculum changes are almost always too hurried and too
ambitious, to allow assessment to remain a ‘close relation’.
The goals of curriculum change today usually assume that the English
classroom will somehow easily become more learner-centred, dialogic,
interactive (Wedell and Malderez 2013) and so start to teach English as a
language
This is NOT a simple change – involves changes to people’s thinking
about what teachers and learners need to know and be able to do, and
to assumptions about appropriate teacher and learner roles and
behaviours in classrooms.
Planning / funding is usually short term - such complex changes in
people’s thinking and behaviours may take 5-10- 20+ years?.(Fullan 2007,
Polyzoi et al 2003)
English as a ‘subject’
1. Teacher = ‘lecturer’
English as a ‘language’
1. Teacher supports/ guides
learning through
encouraging interaction
2. Teachers need limited L2 2. Teachers need good
proficiency – control learner personal proficiency to
language
cope with potentially
unpredictable use of
language
3. Teachers use one
textbook with +/predictable sequence
3. Teachers use a range of
learning materials - adapted
to own learners’ interests
4. Teachers need a limited
range of classroom
techniques/ management
procedures
4. Teachers need to be
able to organise and
manage varied classroom
techniques and groupings
Curriculum and assessment as
‘close relations’ = chaos
Making such changes to ‘being a teacher’ ( a learner, a
supportive principal, an aware parent…..) takes (a long) time.
If national assessment immediately became a close
relation, and reflected the ‘use-focused’ goals of a new
curriculum - most learners would fail, since most teachers
would not yet know how to support them!
Shock! Horror! assessment results are important to so many
people / are used in so many (non educational) ways.
So safer for assessment to remain a total stranger - even
though achieving curriculum goals is made +/- impossible.
What to do?
English is NOT a very ‘high stakes’ subject in Indonesia (ie:
governing entry to University), so do there need to be national
English assessments at all?
Do they need to happen three times during each child’s
education?
Indonesia promotes educational decentralisation – so could
deciding on how to implement the curriculum and designing
and marking (of most) English assessment become a district
or school level responsibility?
Positive example
Follow Finland!
Finland (a VERY small country with very highly trained
teachers ) – scores very highly in international league tables,
BUT each child takes only ONE national exam.
There is a national curriculum, but
curriculum planning is the responsibility of teachers, schools
and municiplities, not the State…… Another important teacher
responsibility is student assessment (Sahlberg 2011:88-89)
Curriculum and Assessment are therefore closely related and
support each other.
Could we learn anything from this?
How? Here? - Indonesia ?
The basic message (‘spirit’) underlying the English curriculum
today is probably quite simple- something like
Teach English as a language?? Something else??
BUT adapting existing classroom practices and roles to fully
reflect that ‘spirit’ is a long-term process.
Different teachers in different places will do it ‘imperfectly’
(to begin with), and to very different extents.
Flexible curriculum change
and flexible assessment
If national policy makers (acting on the principles of
educational decentralisation) would openly acknowledge that
• the (English) curriculum WILL anyway be interpreted
differently in classrooms in different places?
• Educators at local levels are the best judges of how to
implement an appropriate version of the curriculum in their
English classrooms, and of how to match English
assessment with what local teachers are trying to do
assessment could support local teachers’ attempts to
teach in the ‘spirit’ of the curriculum
Aim for Closer relations
If assessment reflected teaching in local classrooms, might
• teachers feel more encouraged to try to adapt the ‘spirit’ of
curriculum goals for their contexts, because they know that
they play a role in deciding on assessment ?
• Learners, seeing that ‘using English’ is valued (in exams),
become more willing to cooperate when teachers try to
encourage curriculum-related activities in class?
Over time, as teachers become more confident, might
versions of teaching English as a language become more
widely visible in classrooms- might more learners learn more
English?
A very ‘big’ educational
change
Making the already official decentralisation real,
Through actively encouraging and supporting localisation of
curriculum implementation and assessment is itself a
complex, long-term change (like a national curriculum change
itself)
Many people across society/education system would need to
adjust their thinking and behaviour- in terms of eg:
•Approach to curriculum implementation planning
•Purposes for which assessment results are used
•Perceptions of teachers/local education officials
Important questions to ask
before making any changes?
• Is society ready to give teachers more responsibility?
• Do teachers actually want the extra responsibility?
• Would they prefer just to keep teaching and assessing
English as a subject because it’s easier / familiar?
• Do learners really want to learn English as a language- are
they happier ‘learning’ for test-taking purposes?
• Is there rally long-term commitment to leading, funding and
providing support to help teachers teach and assess
English as a language?
…..?????
Staying the same is of
course an option?
Keep pretending that national assessment supports
implementation of hoped-for curriculum changes
• let many English teachers continue to pretend to
teach the ‘English’ curriculum
• let national testers continue to pretend to test it..
• and let many learners, those dependent on state
school education, continue to pass national tests,
but NOT learn ‘English as a language’
Value for ‘money’????
A more positive alternative?
Indonesia already devotes substantial human and financial resources on
the teaching and assessment of English. $$$$$$- 000000hours
Indonesia already has a decentralised education system
Instead of continuing to insist on uniform implementation of new
national English curriculum goals, and on assessing learners’
‘performance’ through inappropriately designed national examinations,
could we rethink, and instead spend resources on developing the
professional capacity of local education officials and teachers
by helping them to understand the English curriculum goals, how to
develop locally appropriate versions of teaching towards them, and how
to support classroom teaching through locally designed assessment?….
Would this, in the long run, benefit English learners, and
Indonesian education?
References
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the implementation of a new English curriculum: an urban and a rural case from China.
Language, Culture and Curriculum
m.wedell@education.leeds.ac.uk