EESL 614 assignment: Teacher Curriculum Interview

* Interview Questions:

1. Do you participate in designing the curriculum?

2.  (Then) Who (else) designs the curriculum?

3.  Could you tell me about the curriculum of the course you designed or you’re involved in?
  - How long is the course?
  - Tell me about the target teaching level?
  - Could you please be more specific about the curriculum context and the structure and content of the curriculum?

4. Do you think the curriculum is effective in your school system? Is it working now?
    (If not, can you tell me why not?)

5.   What’s the strong point of the curriculum? Or what do you like most about the curriculum?

6.   What do you think is the weak point of the curriculum? How would you like to improve it?

7.   Were there any troubles or difficulties in designing the curriculum? If so, what were they

8.   What’s your philosophy about curriculum? Do you think it’s important?

9.   What do you think is the most important aspect in designing curriculum?

10. Finally, to make a curriculum work, what do you think is necessary?

* Profile of the Interviewees:

Professor Juyoung Park holds a master’s degree in TESOL from CELSE (Centre for English Language Studies in Education) at University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, and is currently working on her Ph.D in TESOL from Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. She taught English at a couple of universities in Korea and is teaching at Sungshin Women’s University now.

Professor Hyojung Huh holds a doctor’s degree in TESOL from Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, and is currently teaching TESOL certificate program at Griggs University Seoul Campus.

* Summary of the Interview:

Professor Park designed the curriculum for general English course with her supervisor and two other coordinators two years ago. The target learners were freshmen of the university. They were divided into two groups according to the order of the classes they should attend in each semester of the year. The students were also divided into three groups according to their level: beginner, intermediate, advanced.

One of the features of the curriculum is that it provides practical English lessons for the students’ job hunt such as resume and cover letter writing at the end of the course. However, Park didn’t like to implement mock TOEIC test as a placement test for the course because it was not closely related to the course content. She would like to have adopted some other assessments which make more sense.

According to Park, designing curriculum itself was OK because they were provided all the necessary information, however they had difficulty finding the right textbook covering both academic and practical English at the same time.

What she thinks is most important in designing a curriculum is the final production. For example, at the end of a basic writing course, the student should be able to write at least one paragraph. The curricula she designed had very clear objectives for each program. It was a very practical tip for future curriculum designers.

She says curriculum designing is often more like persuading the administration because there are things you cannot decide alone such as how many students should be in one class. Curriculum is very important, however, the managers do not understand the concept of the curriculum. Since most of them are not TESOL majors, they often think using nice textbooks is all about the curriculum. So the agreement between the teachers and the administration is important. She hopes the administration should be trained in terms of curriculum.

Need Analysis is crucial in designing curriculum, she says. It’s the step one. In addition, assessing curriculum is also important. However, the curriculum was not assessed when she was working at the university. She believes the whole school should assess the curriculum.

Professor Huh was one of the staff designing TESOL certificate program at Griggs University. One unique feature of the curriculum is the flexibility. The program was a combination of online classes and offline lessons, and the students could control the pace of their learning. So the course length is not fixed. Because of this uniqueness in the program, the curriculum is very important, like bones in a body. The curriculum makes the program work.

According to Huh, one important consideration in designing curriculum is balancing of two approaches: topped on approach and bottom up approach. She believes these two approaches should be adopted equally in designing curriculum because otherwise the curriculum will be biased.

* Reflection:

Luckily I was able to interview two university professors who have actually designed curricula. So the interview was focused on their reflection on their experience. It was a meaningful experience for me to think about the reality in designing curriculum in Korea.

The interview with Professor Park reminded me of that “curriculum is very political in that state governments, locally elected school boards, and powerful business and publishing interests exercise enormous influence over teaching practices and curriculum policies” (Kristonis, http://blog.unsri.ac.id/userfiles/22683719-Politics-in-Education.doc) As she pointed out, many in administrative position in school do not have proper understanding of curriculum and are not aware of the importance of it. I agree that they should be trained and need more awareness in terms of TESOL.

Curriculum is eventually for students to achieve their learning. However, curriculum designers often have to meet the demand of the school or the institutes rather than realizing their ideals in education. Both professors emphasized that way that balancing and good negotiating skills are critical. I became aware of what qualification is required to be a good curriculum designer from this interview: curriculum designers should be analytical and have flexibility about how the content is organized. And to make it work, collaboration of administration and teachers are essential. A curriculum designer is a mediator that way.

* Audio Files are at http://juliensanghyopark.podomatic.com/