PET 225 TESOL Curriculum Development

Assessing Societal
Factors
Lecture 4
23 March 2015

Introduction

More often than not teachers are asked to design

courses without really understanding the concept
of curriculum design.
Teachers and writers tend to work on the basis of
their best intuition
Teachers design language courses based on what
they understand happening in the classroom but
designing a course for an unseen audience is
different from ones own teaching.

 Learning should not only

take us somewhere; it should

allow us later to go further
more easily.
Bruner (1960)

The more fundamental or basic is the idea, the

greater will be its breadth of applicability to new
problems (pp 17-18).

Bruner advocated that these fundamental ideas,

once identified, should be constantly revisited and
reexamined so that understanding deepens over
time. This notion of revisiting and reexamining
fundamental ideas over time is what has become
known as a spiral curriculum. As time goes by,
students return again and again to the basic
concepts, building on them, making them more
complex, and understanding them more fully.

 Ralph Tyler (1949)

classic text on curriculum

development. It was organized around four
questions:
1. What educational purposes should the school seek
to attain?
2. How can learning experiences that are likely to be
useful in attaining these objectives be selected?
3. How can learning experiences be organized for
effective instruction?
4. How can the effectiveness of learning experiences
be evaluated?

Stenhouse (1974)
advocates principles for
selecting content,
developing teaching strategies,
sequencing learning
experiences,
assessing student strengths
and weaknesses with an
emphasis on empiricism.

General Curriculum Planning

Tabas (1962) design for Curriculum

development has become the foundation for

many writers.

Tabas curriculum processes

1. Diagnosis of Needs
2. Formulation of Objectives
3. Selection of Content
4.
Organization of Content Selection of learning
experience
5. Organization of learning experience
6. Determination of what to evaluate, and the means to
evaluate.

McNeil (1977) offers a general description of

curriculum design which includes:

Humanistic
Social Recontructionist
Technological
Academic subject matter.

Terms of reference
Curriculum broadest context in which takes place

either in national or community level. (programme,

US)
Syllabus a more prescribed document, usually
prepared for a group of students. (course outline). It
could also mean language content
Goals address general or bigger term; societal,
community and institutional.

National interest, attitude towards English and other

languages

 Objectives specific outcomes or product of

courses which are outline in a syllabus.

Guide teachers
Help learner understand direction of the course
Could be performance objectives

Objectives must take into account information

from all interested sources:

Learners from previous courses,

TESOL Teachers and subject teachers experience

 Needs associated with individual learners

At the level of classroom instructions

To select appropriate methods and techniques
To be decided before students come in the class
Can be negotiated

Assessing Societal Factors

To begin with Curriculum development, one

has to start looking at the fact finding stage.

The fact finding stage is an imperative
prerequisite for effective decision making
regarding the participants.
We need to know who our learners are.

Four areas need to be

investigated

1.The Language Setting

2.Pattern of Language use in the
society
3.Political and National context
4.Group and individual Attitudes

Questions that need to be

asked.

1.Who are the learners?

2.Who are the teachers?
3.Why is the programme necessary?
4.Where will the programme be
implimented?
5.How will it be implemented?

The Language Setting

Curriculum designers need to assess the

significance of LS in terms of its effect on

learners and the learning process

Target language (TL) is strongly supported

Negative attitude towards TL

Is it ESL, EFL or LWC

English as TL

English as a 2nd Language

(ESL) or LWC

View language along a continuum

ESL ----------------------EFL
ESL English is spoken natively by the population
Eg. USA, UK, Australia, New Zealand

spoken by part of the population, eg. Canada, South Africa.

Official Language of the country but not the native lang.
(retain the colonial lang. eg. Uganda, Zambia, Nigeria.
India)
Neither national lang. nor official lang. but given special
status. Eg. Malaysia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Israel.

 At the end of the continuum

EFL English is taught as one of the foreign

languages or as the most important foreign

language. Eg. Indonesia, Thailand, Japan China,
etc.
The role of English is for modernization, science
and technology.
The position in the continuum indicates the
degree of support a student gets in the immediate
environment.
Private ed. Emphasize on English.

Malaysian situation

Local Students in the country taking English as

a second language.
Teaching Maths and Science in English; to
continue or not.
Foreign students studying in the county.

Patterns of Language Use in

Society

The role of LWC in Education

The role of LWC in the job
market
The role of LWC in the
process of modernization

The role of LWC in Education

When English is not the native

language, is English a means to

furthering education or what role it
plays in the curriculum and existing
materials?
In Malaysia, if one were to study
sciences and technology then it will
be in English.
In school, science and mathematics
are taught in English.

The job market

English is widely used in the private

sector
Interviews for executive are in English
Newspapers advertisement for jobs is
in English.
Job manuals are in English

The process of modernization

The ICT era today; communication in the cyber

world is in English.
Information in English
Books on latest tech and sc in English
Internet
E mail
sms

Group and Individual

attitudes toward language.

What is the attitude towards TL

Positive
Hostile

The political and National

context

Business promoting entourage overseas

Good communication aspects for foreign

businesses
English widely used in the country.