Reflection Paper 2: Ivonne Alexandra Londoo Leudo 2013

THE LEARNER-CENTRED CURRICULUM: A VISIONARY PROCESS FOR COLOMBIAN

TEACHERS
Colombian teachers have been facing the traditional development of curriculum where all
the pedagogical action and design is just given to the teacher in charge. Basically, classical
approaches in terms of course planning convey the idea of showing what teachers actually must
do in the classroom (Standards, goals, subsidiary aims, content, resources and evaluation)
rather than analyze what students really produce in terms of language. The learner-centred
curriculum presents an innovative effort to make more reflective teaching practices, involving
actively the pupils in the educational objectives as well as provoking decision-making processes
in such important educational field nowadays.
Curriculum development is a mandatory task for every Colombian teacher in any subject
or institution, being relevant knowing how to do it with an operational purpose; in that case, state
schools show a serious situation. In fact, teachers need to fill out forms of what could be defined
as curricula, regardless the coherence with the standards, real knowledge outcomes and the
society demands. Therefore, the lack of a monitored process by the Minister of Education has
made that the responsibility of curriculum development fall to the teacher; leaving aside the
educational community core of any improvement in the teachers planning. However, the
curriculum process is not a piece of cake or a set of isolated determinations in order to follow a
sequence (Planning, implementation and evaluation) mentioned by Taba (1962). In particular,
the learner-centred curriculum (Nunan, 1994) is based on negotiation, collaboration, informal
planning, switching roles between students and teachers and is a profound study of what
students want to learn and also what really need.
Indeed, the foreign language curriculum has several weaknesses so it is obvious that in
our institutions we do not carry out correctly the four stages suggested by (Nunan, 1994):
Reflection Paper 2: Ivonne Alexandra Londoo Leudo 2013

Diagnostic stage, content selection, methodology and evaluation. Thus, the diagnostic stage
must be conducted as a data collection of learners objective needs. For instance, the current
proficiency level of Colombian students is one of the most crucial components because there is
not a established test to measure what are their english levels at early ages in order to reinforce
their weaknesses and counteract the low results in the ICFES test. Also, the teachers time is
another circumstance which impedes the effective development of this stage thanks to quantity
of duties they have to perform into the institution.
Nevertheless, the biographical data collection with the granting of students age,
educational background, previous learning experiences, educational and life goals, learning
styles and preferred methodology make available a classroom picture for the starting point in the
advancement towards the negotiated and students- centered curriculum. But, following with the
processes, the content plays an outstanding role in the curriculum.
Indeed, the traditional selection of topics for teaching languages was mainly static and
with little or no changes. Truthfully, we can find Colombian graduated students saying that they
only thing they have learned were the verb to be in all their English language experience at
secondary level. In contrast, the learner-centred curriculum is based on modification of contents
(negotiated between the teacher and student) during the process because exists the awareness
of students skills, needs and likes with the intention of incite meaningful learning and critical
thinking.
Apart from that, in the majority of Colombian educational contexts the preponderant
methodology is that one where the teacher is the center of the process being considered by the
students as the wise person because is a provider of knowledge. Meanwhile, the 21
st
century
student asks for attention and has a lot of technological resources available for consultation
Reflection Paper 2: Ivonne Alexandra Londoo Leudo 2013

letting them know even more than the teacher, thus, the learner-centred curriculum establishes
compromises and intervention to deal with that mismatches caused by these conflicts.
Correspondingly, the most powerful weapon each teacher has and the final component in
the curriculum model is the evaluation, which represents the tool of learning accountability and
the demonstration of English language outcomes. When we talk about Colombian state schools,
we can encounter a quantity of summative evaluations rather than formative based mainly on
numbers, where the students fight for a grade more than its own learning and growth as a
person. The learner-centered evaluation presents itself as an alternative of monitoring the
learning process, giving feedback and promoting the participatory students involvement where
the self-evaluation of pupils and teachers are prime.
Besides, the confusion of concepts (Curriculum vs. Syllabus) commonly discussed in
educators meetings which is defined depending on different contexts, the curriculum renewal
(Clark, 1985) promotes the change in the field letting students have factual learning
experiences, with the continue monitoring process of the second language acquisition in the light
of their classroom reality.
In my opinion, the idea of a learner-centred curriculum needs a huge movement in the
Colombian education because it could be solution of many problems presented into the
classroom and outside of it. I would like to design one big project like this in order to contribute
my community in Ansermanuevo. In actual fact, I have already taken some steps of this
approach in my research project plus I can notice the positive transformation of students interest
towards what I am teaching. Since the right moment I ask them what they want to learn in
English and how, I realize that my methodology need some adjustments.
In conclusion, the learner-centred curriculum development is a painstaking mission
having the teacher and the student in a reciprocal position where every classroom action,
Reflection Paper 2: Ivonne Alexandra Londoo Leudo 2013

strategy, product will benefit the educational process from several views. The negotiated
agreement determines a conciliatory instructive environment where the pupil is involved as well
as their dreams and demands, provoking self-awareness and metacognition proper of well-
intentioned learning.















Reflection Paper 2: Ivonne Alexandra Londoo Leudo 2013

REFERENCES

Nunan, D. (1994). The Learner-centred curriculum. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.