DE LAS OBLIGACIONES DEL USUFRUCTUARIO

Within the implementation environment, the “tight temporal constraints” (Alexander, 2000, p.411) the teachers are working under seem to play an important role in the pedagogical decisions teachers make about what they do in the classroom.

5.4.2.1 Time and a centralized curriculum and syllabus

For the teachers in my study, worries about time relate to both the number of students in their classes and the amount of content they needed to cover in the set syllabus. As Mai notes:

I don’t have much time to organise group activities because very difficult because the number of students are crowded and we can’t move the table and chair yes and … I teach one lesson [from the textbook] in one period but if I want to use my ideas, I have many ideas, to help students, some more activities, but I don’t have enough time, because there are many, many things I have to do. What about ‘talk’? I only have some minutes for talk, [for students] to make dialogues.

(T. Mai.O3/11.4.14) Here Mai shows a desire to include extra activities into her lessons which would give the students an opportunity for more communicative practice yet in 35-minutes there is little time to deal with the classroom management involved in organising games and freer oral activities with a class of 65 students. This situation can be seen in her lesson extract in Figure 5.2 in the previous section.

All the teachers’ lessons are 35-minutes long and they have two periods a week. The time-frame for the syllabus is determined at the provincial level following the syllabus guidelines set out by MOET and so within such a rigid framework there is little opportunity for negotiation by individual teachers as to how best to manage the time and activities within and across lessons. Nhung remarks that:

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…we have to follow the curriculum for each lesson. We cannot pass one lesson. We cannot, yeah we have to follow all the curriculum.

(T.Nhung.O3/11/4/14) The uncertainty regarding the rigidity of time and what the teachers should be doing in the classroom threatens their sense of professional self. The extracts below show the frustration and guilt Mai and Nhung felt at being unable to meet the needs of their students due to a lack of time.

I think the number of nervous [weak] students is very big and I want to concern a lot for every student, but I can’t because I don’t have enough time in each class. If there are only 20 or 30 [students] I think I can help all the students. I want to spend a lot of time to help especially the not good students but I don’t have enough time to do this.

(T.Mai.INT1/4.11.13) Sometimes I feel sorry for my students. I really to want to teach them but sometimes no time… and yes sometimes, sometimes I feel tired of teaching because the number of students are very big, so it’s difficult for me to teach English so, yeah, sometimes I feel tired, tired.

(T.Nhung.INT1/5.12.13) Similarly, Bao places importance on being seen as a ‘good’ primary teacher in control of her class and providing sufficient language input and correction, something she feels she is unable to do when following the requirements of the new curriculum.

When I call students to read new words or practise the new structures I only have time to call some pair or some students, not all the students and I cannot correct the mistake.

(T.Bao.INT2/14.11.13) The new curriculum lends itself to a form of teaching that is much more time- consuming and unpredictable in terms of classroom learning events and outcomes. This creates a dilemma for the teachers in that they have to follow the new curriculum which requires a slower pace of teaching to provide the necessary communicative practice, yet they also need to fulfil the administrative requirements of the teaching time-frame. (This relates to the ‘rushing’ pace described in section 5.3.3.6.). These time constraints seemed to create a lot of emotional burden mediating the pedagogical decisions the teachers made in their classrooms. Nhung remarks:

I feel stressed because it’s too difficult, too difficult and …little time so we feel confused how to teach so that student can understand and have something [extra activity] in your mind, in your head, yes so really stressed. When I meet a lesson I feel worried, how can I follow to finish the first

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semester? It’s nearly the end of first semester but we haven’t finished 10 lessons so we worry.

(T.Nhung.INT2/10.12.13) The need to complete all the lessons in the textbook, as Nhung expresses above, is bound up in both the requirements of the DOET and also the need for their students to cover the set content for the test (see section 5.4.3.3 for more about the tests). Maintaining existing behaviours and practices in the classroom allows teachers to control the pace of teaching and ensure the required coverage of the syllabus, since “to be predictable is to be secure” (Alexander, 2000, p.415). Sticking to old ways of teaching also seems to be a pragmatic choice for the teachers in relation to temporal constraints.

I am stressed, worried very worried because …if we don’t teach carefully the other teacher say that yeah …when for example I teach Grade 4 next year another teacher will teach Grade 5. If they don’t study carefully in Grade 4, so it’s difficult to study Grade 5.

(T.Nhung. INT2/10.12.13) Nhung’s words in the extract above show that the new curriculum brings with it the potential to be blamed by others for failing to cover the syllabus within the set time- frame. This is echoed by a school vice-principal who states that:

…it is really hard for teachers to do new things without violating the MOET framework. If they want to change, the school will need to wait for decisions from the District office, from the DOET, and from MOET.

(Vice-principal District C, translated /22.4.14)

The vice-principal’s words hint at the extent to which what teachers do in the classroom is controlled by others in a chain of accountability. This suggests there is little opportunity for teachers to make their own judgements about what to cover and the time that that might take based on the needs of their own group of learners. The example illustrates the incoherence between curriculum assumptions about teacher behaviour and the existing expectations of and beliefs in the capacity and agency of teachers.

The teachers’ fear of blame is compounded by the reality of having to teach unfinished units over the summer holidays in organised “summer study in July before coming to the new school year” (T.Nhung, INT2 /10.12.13). My data seem to corroborate Wang’s (2011, p.7) findings from a study of primary teachers in China, that teachers

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…continue with whole-class lecturing and rote learning not because they disagree with the ideals of the reform, but for self-protection, as it is easier to hold teachers accountable for failure to complete the textbook than for poor student learning outcomes.

5.4.2.2 Time and ad hoc planning policy

Issues of time appear to have also been exacerbated by ad hoc policy planning. Feelings of confusion arose amongst all the teachers in relation to curriculum policy, as Mai articulates below:

…as I know, the new curriculum and the new textbooks were published for students to learn four periods each week, but in our district the manager of our DOET give the timetable for each school only two periods, but in fact I wonder a lot because it’s only two periods. It’s not enough time for students and for teacher to teach all the contents of the textbooks.

(T.Mai. INT1/4.11.13) The pilot programme for the implementation of the new curriculum required that schools provided four periods a week for English. This meant that the three pilot teachers in my study, Mai, Lien and Thanh, all taught four periods a week from 2010- 2013. However from September 2013, all the pilot schools had reverted back to the former two periods of English a week, yet still followed the new curriculum and textbooks. The other non-pilot teachers did not have the opportunity to experience four periods and when they started using the new textbooks, they had to fit the content into the 2-period a week time-frame. For Mai and Lien this seems to have added to their frustration and sense of uncertainty as to what they should be doing in the classroom.

…when we teach four periods we have a chance to decide many activities for our children, for example, sing, chant, drawing or something like that, games. But when we do two periods per week children seems to have no chance to sing, have no chance for games. Ok so it’s difficult.

(T.Lien. INT1/5.11.13) As Lien’s words above imply, this policy change appears to have quashed any attempts that teachers might have started to make towards new ways of teaching and perhaps explains a pragmatic preference for maintaining familiar teaching practices. Indeed the omission of communicative activities in favour of language content in order to cover the syllabus was officially suggested by MOET in a syllabus document which all the teachers refer to and follow, as Lien and Bao note:

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MOET said that when we teach only two periods with this book, two periods a week, we can pass some ‘soft’ part. For example in this lesson this is soft part, you can put it away, but in four periods a week you can do it.

(T.Lien.INT1/5.11.13) Um …in fact we have a document to instruct us about using this textbook. They said that we must do this part [language] but we can do it or not this part [freer practice]. So this is just extra activities, if we don’t have enough time we can pass this one.

(T.Bao.O1/28.11.13)

Temporal dissonance appears to be compounded by ad hoc mandates which seem to be in conflict with the demands of the curriculum and the new teaching approach the teachers are expected to implement.

…[now] the curriculum is shorter, we don’t have time to do that [communicative activities] and of course my teaching has changed, have to change to fit the district comments because we mustn’t leave out any unit in the textbook. We mustn’t pass any part of the unit, we have to follow all of them. So we have a short time and our teaching is not as effective as four periods.

(T.Lien INT1/5.11.13) Here Lien talks with a sense of resignation about having to be flexible in her teaching approach to suit the change in time allocation and the expectations of others, feeling that her very sense of professionalism is being undermined by having to revert back to previous ways of teaching.

Externally imposed temporal constraints would seem to have a significant influence on what teachers are able and willing to do in the classroom and link closely with the curriculum materials themselves.