Running head: SHUTTLE BETWEEN TWO ROLES
Shuttle between Two Roles: A Reflective Essay on Working on a Collaborative Curriculum
Jing (Elise) Fang
The Pennsylvania State University
MD& CD: APLNG 597A
Maymester 2013
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Introduction
In the course Materials Development and Curriculum Design, my group members and I
designed a collaborative curriculum for students studying abroad at Penn State. As a novice
teacher, this was my first encounter with developing a curriculum. Being a material developer or
curriculum designer differs significantly from actual classroom teaching. As a novice teacher, I
often struggle by shuttling between the two roles instead of combining them to better meet
pedagogical needs. Through my work on collaborative curriculum, I have learned how to
develop a curriculum that fits into my own local context. I try to think both as a material
developer and a classroom teacher, but I still need to work on how to make the curriculum I
designed to better meet both target students’ and teachers’ needs and better adapt to the local
context.
As a material developer and a classroom teacher
As a material developer or curriculum designer, I learned to design a comprehensive
curriculum that motivates students and accommodates local contexts. Firstly, the curriculum
designer should consider the learners’ experiences and their linguistic backgrounds- both of their
native language and the target language. In order to raise learners’ interests and motivations to
learn the target language, their target needs and affective needs in and outside the classroom need
to be taken into account. In addition, material developers need to make relevant to the social and
local context so that the materials can be used accordingly. Further, the integrated language skills
and learning strategies are also a big focus in designing materials so that students can engage in a
journey of discovery and problem solving as well as personal development. For the material
itself, authenticity and variety should be two priorities because one of the ultimate goals of
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learning a language is to enable students to develop the communicative competence, and it is in
the authentic environment that students can have a better sense of how to use the target language.
From my experience of conducting the curriculum for the hypothetical English language
learners, it is a problematic issue of dealing with authentic materials in L2 classroom. Because
authentic materials contain not only the language points needed for students to learn in
classroom, but also include other aspects of the target language, which are not accessible to
learners on their current language level. For example, when making an activity to let students
practice their writing skills as well as knowing more about campus culture, I wanted to use the
campus news on the university’s homepage because they are authentic materials that address
recent campus issues thus are perfect for my objectives. Whereas, I found the vocabulary and
sentence structures of the news were difficult for my target students to understand. Then I made
my decision to just use the headlines of the news to raise students’ interests and then let them cowrite the imaged story behind the headlines. After students’ writing, I would provide them the
original news for them to read for fun.
The use of authentic materials in my writing activity echoes with a continuum concerning
the order of material use provided by Graves (2000). She contends that the importance of the
pedagogically prepared material should be emphasized in choosing the material for it provides
the stepping stones for students to understand and use authentic material. Therefore, it is better to
firstly use pedagogically prepared material and secondly use semi-authentic material and then
authentic material. In my writing activity, I put the authentic material at last for students to use.
In light of the continuum, I would revise my activity to better use authentic materials in my
future teaching. The writing guidelines and sample writings will be firstly presented to students
in order to help them grasp the general ideas of coherence in organizing a story, and then I would
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let them do co-writing activity. After the collaborative writing, I would provide students the
original stories for them to compare and contrast in order to revise their own stories. Personally
speaking, this continuum makes sense to me and provides me useful guidance on using authentic
materials in the future.
Another issue I think needed to be emphasized in language course design is fostering
learner autonomy. Actually, I did not have the awareness that enabling students to take charge of
their own learning is one of the essential goals in all learning before taking this course. I simply
thought doing group work or individual presentation were effective ways of offering students
opportunities to learn by themselves or from others, which I considered as learner autonomy.
Consequently, I thought sparing some time on group discussion and individual work in my
curriculum was enough for enhancing learners’ autonomy. Whereas, according to Cotterall
(2000), curriculum designers should be responsible for incorporating ways of transferring
responsibility for aspects of language process from the teacher to the learner. That is, involving
learners in the process of setting goals, selecting learning strategies and materials as well as
evaluating materials. I partly agree with that students should have their voice in formulating
goals and objectives because they are the center of learning. Whereas, the fact is that some
students would think the teacher is the one who should take charge of conducting the curriculum
and setting the learning goals and objectives rather than relying on the learner. For me, it is really
a dilemma to address learner autonomy in developing a curriculum.
Inspired by Cotterall (2000), I will also incorporate learners’ reflection on their own
learning in conducting my future curriculum. Cotterall (2000) claims that learners’ reflection has
a retrospective and prospective function, in which the learning experiences of the past are
reflected aim to enhance learners’ insight into their learning processes and transform into plans
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for future action. Learners’ ability to reflect critically on their own learning indeed serves as a
measure of the effectiveness of the teachers’ pedagogical decisions and learning environment. As
a result, developing activities that prompt leaners to reflect on their learning not only raises
learners’ awareness of autonomy, but also offers teachers insights on how to go a step further to
achieve pedagogical goals. In my future teaching, I will let my students to complete journal
entries regularly to reflect on their periodical learning, and discussion sessions will be held to
deal with issues raised in students’ journals to help students brainstorm solutions to their own
problems.
In regard to material users’ perspective, I really want to get ideas about how to use the
materials in order to achieve my teaching goals and objectives. Actual teaching and using
materials in classroom is totally a different story from developing materials and designing a
curriculum. In the real classroom, teachers should make pedagogical decisions on how to choose
and use the materials provided by external developers all the time. Shawer (2010) holds the view
that mutual- adaptation approach that involves interactions between teacher and student as well
as teacher and developer enables teachers to play a vital and active role in shaping curriculum
according to their local context. It often happens that teachers have no choice of selecting
textbooks for their own class but follow the curriculum made by the material developers outside
the classroom. It is a crucial issues for teachers to explore ways to make adjustments and
adaptations in the pre-exist curriculum. In the process of developing the collaborative curriculum,
I tried to be in classroom teachers’ shoes and prepare detailed procedures and explanations for
the materials I designed. Even by doing this, I still felt it could not guarantee an effective and
productive lesson. Only through ongoing adaptations and modifications can teachers know in
which ways students can learn better.
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Conclusion
Being a material developer and a classroom teacher are not two separate things. Teachers’
curriculum approaches have an impact on student learning and motivation as well as teachers’
professional development. In light of the experience of working on a collaborative curriculum, I
really think that teachers’ professional knowledge and previous experience as well as
accumulative skills affect the interactions of students and materials in ways that neither material
designers nor material itself can. Accordingly, in my future teaching, I will treat textbook as a
teaching tool rather than a product that hinders both students’ and teachers’ development. The
collaboration throughout the entire process of conducting the curriculum provides me useful and
insightful perspectives and experience on making changes and better decisions. Now I firmly
believe that the changes I make and will make stem from my beliefs and understandings, my
goals and objectives, my students’ needs, and the requirement of my context. I should work both
as a material developer and enhance curriculum implementation and enactment.
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Reference
Cotterall, S. (2000). Promoting learner autonomy through the curriculum: principles for
designing language courses. ELT J, 54, 109-117.
Graves, K. (2000). Designing language courses: A Guide for Teachers. Boston: Heinle &
Heinle.
Shawer, S. F. (2010). Classroom-level curriculum development: EFL teachers as curriculumdevelopers, curriculum makers and curriculum-transmitters. Teaching and Teacher
Education, 26, 173-184.
Tomlinson, B. (Ed.) (2011). Materials development in language teaching. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.