Teacher's Autonomy in Curriculum Design and Material Development
Introduction
Curriculum design and material development play crucial roles in establishing educational change. According to Elite Olshtain, any educational curriculum, whether it is a language curriculum or a curriculum in any other subject matter, expresses the cultural, social, and political perspectives of the society for which it is intended. It integrates ideologies, experiences, philosophies, and innovations with dreams, aspirations, and expectations for the future. Clearly, all these values are filtered through the perception of the decision-making agencies involved in curriculum development. Curriculum development is a challenging task, therefore the involvement of all stakeholders, especially individuals who are directly involved in student instruction, is a vital piece in successful curriculum development and revision. Teachers are the central figure in the teaching process who are closely in touch with students. Teachers can recognize their students’ educational needs in their educational context and provide suitable curriculum and learning materials. Therefore, teachers’ autonomy is an essential factor for ensuring a learning environment that addresses students’ diverse educational needs and expectations. Yet in developing countries especially in middle east due to the dominant social, historical, and cultural values the role of teacher autonomy in curriculum design and material development is not very well understood and valued.
Generally, the decision-making process in curriculum design can follow a 'top-down' or a 'bottom-up' approach. In either case, the curriculum type will reflect the concurrent views on the nature of language and the nature of language learning. However, the preference for any particular curriculum type would depend on the implicit societal values and concerns.
In the top-down approach, policy decisions are made by a higher level authority; e. g. , a ministry or a board of education which needs to present a document providing guidelines for a variety of school types, school populations, and learning contexts, within the national or regional setting. The 'bottom-up' approach to curriculum design derives from the classroom. The decision-making process results from teacher/learner interactions and is described by Nunan: 'a negotiated curriculum model is developed in which much consultation, decision making and planning is informal and takes place during the course of program delivery'. This decision-making process is closely linked to the learner-centered curriculum described above.
By definition, the top-down curriculum allows little involvement and contribution from the teacher and the students implementing it. On the other hand, the bottom-up curriculum is what Nunan (1989) calls the collaborative approach to curriculum design. In this approach teachers are partners in curriculum development and often initiators of the decision-making process. As the top-down approach to curriculum development, where the main stakeholders were presented with one-size-fits-all materials, was seen as ineffective in bringing about educational reform, a bottom-up approach was taken to raise awareness of different teaching methodologies and to encourage classroom observation and collaboration. Therefore, there has been an increasing interest in discussions on the role of teacher autonomy in curriculum making.
In the scientific literature, the concept of the teacher autonomy is defined by many scholars and these definitions contain important differences. However, the common ground in the definitions is that the concept of autonomy refers essentially to the freedom and the power of the teachers in their professional activities. The teacher autonomy is not just confined to the planning and implementing of the teaching activities. It covers equally the improvement of the teachers’ role and power in decision-making regarding the regulation of working conditions and school environment, and the management of the human, financial and material sources.
Little (1995) First Defines Teacher Autonomy as the Teachers‟ Capacity to Engage in Self-Directed
teaching. After that, scholars have been trying to define teacher autonomy from different aspects. Aoki (2000) offers an explicit definition of teacher autonomy, suggesting that this involves the capacity, freedom, and/or responsibility to make choices concerning one’s own teaching. According to Richard Smith (2000), teacher autonomy refers to “the ability to develop appropriate skills, knowledge and attitudes for oneself as a teacher, in cooperation with others. ”
Benson (2000) argues that teacher autonomy can be seen as “a right to freedom from control (or an ability to exercise this right) as well as actual freedom from control”.
Fullan (1991) found that the level of teacher involvement as a center of curriculum development leads to effective achievement of educational reform. This is because teachers are closely in touch with learners and can observe and analyze their needs. Teachers are directly involved in educational atmosphere therefore they can have a thorough needs and situation analysis. Based on these analyses they can set clear objectives and goals for the course and prescribe a useful curriculum and educational material considering their students’ individual differences and educational needs. So, the teachers are an important factor in the success of curriculum development including the steps of designing, implication and evaluation. Also as Thavenius (1999) put it autonomous teacher as someone who has the ability and willingness to help learners take responsibility for their own learning, facilitates the empowerment of the students, determines their needs, uses and fosters self-evaluation and reflection, evaluates the students honestly, promotes research among them, looks for possibilities to facilitate the development of their skills and promotes trust and autonomy.
It is highly desirable for many teachers to think of themselves as autonomous professionals, free from control exerted by colleagues, administrators, the institution or the educational system and able to decide and take action on their own. Reality shows a different picture: teachers are restricted by contracts, administrators, school regulations, curricula and students’ desires demands and expectations. Unfortunately, due to the lack of teamwork and collaborative atmosphere in developing countries especially in this case among the stakeholders in curriculum and material development lead to the dominance of top-down approach to the decision-making process. Basically in this approach as defined above, policy decisions in curriculum and material development are made by higher level authorities who are not directly involved in teaching and learning process and do not have a clear understanding of students’ needs and learning situation consequently they design a curriculum that met their policy requirement rather than individuals learning needs. And they prescribe materials that follow one-size-fits-all approach which in most cases considering students’ diverse educational needs and backgrounds result in failure.
Conclusion
Dominance of top-down approach in educational system leads to the exclusion of teachers from decision-making process over what and how to teach. This would consequently result in ignoring students’ individual differences and situational needs -the most important factors in curriculum design and material development- therefore, it would bring dissatisfaction and feelings of disappointment for students as they cannot fulfil their educational needs and expectations. And this would result in extra work and responsibility for the teachers because on one hand they have to consider the curriculum designed by authorities and use the given material, on the other hand find ways to respond to their students’ real educational needs that they have diagnosed before and during the course. There should be a change in decision makers’ perspective towards top-down curriculum and material development in order to avoid its negative outcomes. They should consider bottom-up approach and give teachers more freedom and autonomy in recognizing students’ needs and providing suitable curriculum and material.
