ACTION RESEARCH: A REFLECTION ON CURRICULUM

1. ACTION RESEARCH: A REFLECTION ON CURRICULUM

2. Action research is the process of systematic collection and analysis of data in order to make changes and improvement or solve problems (Wallace, 1998, p. 1 and Coles & Quirke, 2001, p. 14). There are several forms of action research, however Nunan (1992, p. 17) saw it as, “A form of research which is becoming increasingly significant in language education.” Warrican (2006, p. 2) saw the heart of action research as the promotion of collaboration between a researcher-innovator and his or her clients. This drive for collaboration is grounded in the epistemological assumptions that knowledgedoes not only exist objectively outside the ‘knower’, but that it is also subjectively created by experiences and that knowledge is generated and formalized through the sharing of different perspectives about experiences. People who want to bring about change therefore must learn about the situation that they wish to influence and then consult closely with the people most likely to be affected by the project who have first–hand knowledge of it. Action research is widely used in language teaching but also as an approach for external innovators who seek to effect educational change (Warrican, 2006, pp. 1-14). Nunan (1991, p. 62) said that the classroom could become a laboratory for experimenting with, contesting, and evaluating the materials and classroom tasks in a teacher’s own context and situation. Brown (2005, p. 397) suggested that teachers will learn most effectively and change behavior in circumstances where there is personal engagement in identifying a practical concern as the focus of the research, designing the study, taking action, collecting evidence, formulating conclusions and feeding these back to practice. This action could be an incentive for teachers to discover the literature of other research

3. Curriculum involves planning what is to be taught/learned, implementing it and evaluating it. According to Richards (2001: 2), language curriculum development is ‘an interrelated set of processes that focuses on designing, revising, implementing and evaluating language programs’. Similarly, according to Hall & Hewings (2001: 1), language curriculum covers ‘all the issues relating to the planning, implementation and evaluation of a series of language learning events conceived as a coherent whole with a specified purpose’. While these definitions are straightforward, curriculum processes are hardly neutral. As Jackson (1992b) has argued, a definition of curriculum is not simply a starting point for discussion, it is also the product of someone’s reasoning about what education is, whom it should serve and how. Thus, a definition will ‘serve the interests of some, but not all’ (Jackson 1992b: 21). We therefore need to be clear about who conducts the processes, who conceives the whole, for what purposes, and in which contexts. We also need to understand the relationship among the processes

4. This section is constructed around a different view of curriculum, one that retains the three core processes of curriculum – planning, implementing and evaluating – but renames the • middle one ENACTING to reflect the agency of teachers and learners in the classroom. The term • and concept of CURRICULUM ENACTMENT can be traced from Barnes (1976) to Eisner (1985: 302, as cited in Graves ,2008), who described the curriculum as events shaped by the purposes and cross-purposes of teacher, student, subject matter and classroom ‘occurring in time more truly than it exists in space’. Snyder et al. (1992, as cited in Graves) define curriculum enactment as the educational experiences jointly created by students and teacher in the lassroom. In this view of curriculum, enactment – the teaching and learning processes that happen in the classroom – is at the heart of education. • Planning and evaluating are both directed at the classroom and are closely allied with it. The three processes that make up curriculum are embedded in social and educational contexts • that determine their purpose and scope. The reasoning behind this view is that without enactment, there is no curriculum. A curriculum cannot exist BEFORE it is enacted. Or, put another way, curriculum must be enacted to exist. One cannot claim to have a curriculum without teaching and learning experiences. Curriculum plans, policies, syllabuses, and materials are not ‘the curriculum’. We may refer to them as ‘the curriculum’, but as reifications of • planning processes (in Wenger’s sense), they will be interpreted differently through different • enactments. They are products whose purpose is to guide and support teaching and learning.

5. In the second part of his review, Breen (1987: 159) wrote that a ‘syllabus can only have, at best, an indirect influence upon actual language learning. It is mediated by teaching and the encircling classroom context within which instruction is only one element’. He points out that there appear to be so many variables that intervene between the planning of a syllabus and the learning that is supposed to be shaped by the plan as to make the original plan irrelevant. Widdowson (2004: 369) puts it more strongly: ‘There is then always a gap between the different movements in the development of ELT . . . and what actually goes on in classrooms. The actuality of classroom practice is for the most part unrecorded, and indeed to a large extent unaffected by the shifts of thinking that have been charted here’. The inevitable question is then whether a syllabus is ‘actually effective at all?’ (Breen 1987). Breen went on to propose a fourth kind of syllabus, the PROCESS SYLLABUS. The process syllabus is not a syllabus in the traditional sense of describing what should be taught and in what order. Rather, it is a stance toward teaching and learning in which the teacher invites learners to negotiate all or a range of aspects of their learning, from choice of topics and tasks to how they will be assessed (Breen & Littlejohn 2000). As such, it connects the notion of syllabus with its enactment in the classroom by the learners and teacher. It foregrounds learner agency and decision-making as essential parts of classroom learning. Breen & Littlejohn’s edited volume provides examples of the process syllabus enacted in a range of contexts at the primary, secondary and tertiary level. The process syllabus, while shifting our focus to the learners and their capacities as decision-makers, nevertheless leaves out the wider frame of the socio-educational contexts in which classrooms exist and the way those contexts shape classrooms as social practices where the norm is for learners to make very few decisions. If enactment in classrooms is the core of curriculum then we need to understand how classrooms work as loci of learning – or, more to the point, why they don’t work. Are they transitional spaces in which to implement an externally created curriculum or are they curricular spaces in their own right?

6. Action research should be used not only by the researcher but also by students. • The more students were familiar with action research, the more they could further develop into autonomous learners. Warrican (2006, p. 2) argued that the core goal of action research was to create sustainable learning capacities and give participants the option of increasing control over their own situation. Burns (2002, p. 5) states, “Action research is one of a group of activities associated with the idea of reflective teaching.” Frost (2004) saw that research on task-based learning promoted students’ communication. Students had more opportunity to practise communicating during a task-based lesson, whereas the accuracy of the language is not as influenced. If this is so, then it seems sensible to give students preparation time when encouraging them to use new language. Nunan (1992, p. 19), Nunan, (1993, pp. 41-42) and Bailey, Curtis & Nunan, (2001, p.137) described the process of action research as a series of steps

7. Step1: Problem Identification. I identified problems that had occurred in the classrooms from previous experience. • Step 2: Preliminary Investigation. I further investigated students’ feelings towards their problems and consulted other departments about problems. • Step 3: Hypothesis. I formed the hypothesis that most students lacked confidence in language learning, especially speaking, because they had developed negative attitudes toward language learning in previous classes, such as being nervous, being afraid of making mistakes and losing face, being afraid of taking a risk etc. • Step 4: Intervention. After observing the class and forming the hypothesis, we planned the lessons and identified strategies which may solve problems defined by the hypothesis. • Step 5: Evaluation. In this step, my observer colleagues and I worked through the stages of: act, observe, reflect and revise to evaluate the outcomes in terms of activities, materials, classroom atmosphere and teacher’s role.

8. Farrell (2002, p. 25) provides six ways of sharing private reflections with others: getting a group of teachers together to talk about teaching, collecting data from actual classroom teaching situations and sharing this data with the group for discussion, self observation with audio and /or video cameras; observation by critical friends, journal writing for reflection and comments by group members. In this project, the first four ways were applied and used for sharing data reflection. Moreover, I think it is a good idea for me to further develop to the others in the future. • Research should allow teachers to engage in critical reflection about their set of beliefs or expectations about what language learning is, how a foreign language is learned and why certain practices or activities are acceptable or not in a foreign language classroom. Evidently, the integration between teaching, researching and learning requires a type of research that proffers reflection and self-examination to teachers and students. This integration also requires a type of research in which teachers can search for solutions to everyday, real problems experienced in classrooms, or look for ways to improve instruction and increase student achievement.

9. Apart from systematization, documentation, understanding and knowledge, AR provides teachers with autonomy. Here, I do not understand autonomy as a generalized “right to freedom from control” (Benson, 2000) or as “a teacher’s capacity to engage in self-directed teaching” (Little, 1995), but as a capacity for self-directed teacher-learning (Smith, 2000). Smith explained that the idea education should embrace teacher autonomy is not at heart a new proposition (advocates of teacher development, teacher-research, classroom-research and so on would appear to share this goal implicitly) (2000, p. 95). What might be a relatively new idea is the emphasis on the development of autonomy through reflective teacher-learning. This autonomy must be understood as a critical reflection that teachers do on when, where, how and from what sources they (should) learn. This type of autonomy mainly takes place when teachers monitor the extent to which they constrain or scaffold students’ thinking and behavior, when they reflect on their own role in the classroom, when they attempt to understand and advise students, and, ultimately, when they engage in investigative activities. Actual engagement in and concern with reflective teacher-learning appear, then, to be a powerful means for developing teacher autonomy, particularly when it is explicitly linked to action research. Reflective teacher learning and AR are essential for teachers to construct autonomy. This autonomy takes place when teachers gain better abilities and a greater willingness to learn for themselves. It emerges when teachers develop an appropriate expertise of their own. EFL teachers can become autonomous if they use AR and reflective teacher-learning as a methodology to develop a capacity to inspect their own work, to validate their educational development and, ultimately, to foster learner autonomy

10. Two of the most important of them are ‘effectiveness’ of the materials in achieving the purpose of the course and their ‘appropriateness’ for the students and teachers (Graves, 1996). Appropriateness of the materials usually refers to how comfortable and familiar the materials are for the students. Is the language level of the materials within learners’ achievable level. In other words are the materials within zone of proximal level of the learners, following Vygotsky. Are the materials interesting and relevant. It should be mentioned that ‘course book assessment is fundamentally a subjective rule-of-thumb activity, and that no neat formula, grid or system will ever provide a definite yardstick’ (Sheldon, 1988, p. 245 in McDonough & Shaw, 2003, p. 61). Sometimes a text which looks to be appropriate will appear to be very difficult to implement as we introduce it to the class. One example of this situation is provided by Fujwara (1996). She describes a situation in which a text that seemed right in achieving the purpose of the course, developing listening skills and strategies, was in practice too difficult for the students and therefore a text which looked to be appropriate proved to be inappropriate in practice. Therefore, texts will be selected subjectively and their actual appropriateness will be a matter of actual practice.

11. Teacher involvement is critical to the success of a curriculum, but teachers cannot alone and on their own create and sustain it. Both research and practice emphasize the importance of TOP– DOWN and BOTTOM–UP processes as essential for curriculum development and innovation.(Markee,1997) According to Rice (2007b: 6, as cited in Graves, 2008)), ‘[t]he most important factor researchers point out is that lasting innovation cannot be imposed by a • higher authority. Bottom-up participation in the change process of all stakeholders, especially • faculty and students, is of vital importance’. She goes on to point out that support from • higher administration is vitally important and that if the head of the educational institution • is committed to change, then chances of success are increased. Burns & de Silva Joyce • (2007b: 6, as cited in Graves, 2008) build on Markee’s research that shows that ‘in any attempt to promote innovation in educational contexts, the participants involved potentially play different kinds of social roles that define their relationships with others’. These roles include adopters, implementers, suppliers, change agents or resisters. Given the multiplicity of roles and responsibilities at all levels, developing a shared discourse among decision-makers and stakeholders is also critical for a coherent curriculum. Finally, successful curriculum planning, enactment and evaluation processes depend on collaboration and mutual responsiveness among participants. All of the examples cited in this review involved, indeed depended on, some form of collaboration between administrators and curriculum planners or teachers and curriculum planners or teachers and learners or teachers and teacher educators