The Renewal Process of the 2008/9 English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Secondary School Curriculum
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Date
2020-04
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate the renewal process of the 2008/9 EFL secondary school curriculum. Qualitative case – study design was employed to guide the overall research with the use of semi – structured interview and document analysis as the data collection tools. An interpretive thematic approach of qualitative data analysis was applied for the purpose of coding, categorization, and generating theme from the collected data. Following this, the findings of the study were presented, analyzed and discussed based on the themes generated from the data analysis. According to the results, the major contextual factors that necessitated the 2008/9 EFL curriculum renewal were: too bulky nature of the curriculum; difficulty of the content for the students; irrelevance of the curriculum contents to learners‟ and society‟s needs; lack of minimum learning competency (MLC) indicators; difficulty in implementing continuous assessment, and the need to align the curriculum with government policies and strategies. The findings of this study also demonstrated that the process of the 2008/9 EFL curriculum development reflected typical characteristics of Tyler's (1949) product/objectives/top-down model since curriculum aims, goals and objectives, curriculum materials and/or contents (including the syllabus and the textbooks), teaching-learning methods, and assessment strategies were all centrally pre-specified by curriculum experts at the MoE. According to the findings, the process of the 2008/9 EFL curriculum renewal was incomprehensive, poorly – planned, and was not data – driven as it overlooked such crucial aspects as extensive evaluation and try – out mechanisms as integral parts of the process. It is also evident in the results that needs analysis had been conducted by curriculum experts at MoE through collecting data from students, teachers, school directors, supervisors and society. The findings further revealed that training of trainers had been organized for teachers selected from the regions at the ministry level though there was no evidence as to whether the trained teachers had disseminated the knowledge and skills they gained to their respective schools. Based on the findings, context – specific recommendations were forwarded towards the improvement of the EFL curriculum development.
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Keywords
EFL Curriculum, Curriculum Renewal/Development, Qualitative Case – Study