DE LAS PRUEBAS DE LA FILIACIÓN DE LOS HIJOS CUYOS PADRES NO FUEREN CONYUGES

The review of the curriculum change literature so far has shown how the research focus has been on creating a picture of the reality of implementation and the issues and challenges involved. However as I hinted at the start of this section, the emphasis appears to have been on curriculum change as a technical process. While the tensions in teachers’ existing beliefs about teaching and learning and the values and norms implicit in a learner-centred pedagogy have been examined, and criticism has been raised about the appropriateness of an imported communicative pedagogy in non-Western educational settings, there still appears to be a general disposition in the literature towards providing ‘simple’ technical solutions to a complex phenomenon. For example, Song’s (2015) recent study of Cambodian teachers’ responses to child- centred pedagogy examines teachers’ beliefs and practices and the mismatch between policy and reality. Like many similar studies, the findings indicate that there was little change in what teachers did in the classroom, despite teachers’ own proclamations that their practices had moved away from traditional methods. Song points to tangible and rectifiable factors such as large classes, lack of resources and

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an overloaded curriculum as obstacles to change, implying that if these obstacles were removed, the desired change would happen. There are a myriad of similar ‘lists’ within the literature which inform policy makers and planners that if these are adhered to, curriculum change implementation will be successful, or at least ‘less unsuccessful’ ( e.g. see Li, 2001; Hayes, 2012, 2014; Baldauf et al, 2011; Enever, 2011).

While the investigation of technical factors is useful, it does not provide a complete picture of the implementation landscape. Basica and Hargreaves (2000) call for research that “probes beneath technical aspects of reform”; research that focuses away from issues of mismanagement and breakdown to a more holistic view of the nature of education and its context. This is something that this case study of primary English language curriculum change in Vietnam aims to do. As Hargreaves and Fullan (2009, p.2) point out

...too much emphasis [has been] placed on the material being used [textbooks, curriculum, tests etc], rather than on the characteristics and understandings of those using the material.

Focusing on technical ‘solutions’ alone is unlikely to help to bring about the desired changes in classrooms since it ignores the complexity of people who experience change; how they think, feel and respond to a curricular innovation. From the previous analysis of the literature in this section, it would seem that understanding how teachers and others think and feel and respond to change becomes more significant in a context where a new curriculum requires significant pedagogical change and where there is often a huge underestimation of what is involved for successful implementation (O’Sullivan, 2002; Schweisfurth, 2011, 2013; Guthrie, 2013; Tabulawa, 2013; Altinyelken, 2013). This appears to be the case in the majority of examples of English language curriculum reform (Wedell, 2009).

In many ways it seems understandable why a technical view of change prevails since, as Levin and Fullan (2008) argue, ensuring coherence across different tangible elements of change implementation is perhaps easier than addressing the human behaviours and feelings involved, and governments everywhere are under pressure to show results of reform quickly and so may opt for apparently easy solutions. However Zembylas and Bulmahan Barker (2007, p. 239) remind us that technicist approaches to educational change

…overemphasize the rational and consequently do not take into account the complexity, ambiguity and uncertainty acknowledged to be part of the change in school.

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This implies that ignoring the human factor of change means not acknowledging the messiness involved in implementing a new curriculum into a system full of people who are likely to respond to the changes in different ways. This becomes significant if we consider the implications for policy planning. Mohammad and Harlech-Jones (2008, p. 48) express this well when they say

[p]lanners have imperfect understandings of realities or lives and professional environments of implementers. The result is that their planning has the hallmarks of utopianism, in that it fixes on a desired state while ignoring the practical realities [and people’s experiences of change] that might inconveniently wreck the whole process.

It is this investigation of the struggles and dilemmas faced by those who are tasked with implementing a new curriculum that this study contributes towards.

A focus on the human factor is very often translated into a focus on the teacher. Many of the research studies provided as examples earlier in this section have focused on teachers and their role in implementing curriculum change. However, despite this apparent move towards investigating the human aspect of change, there still seems to be an underlying technicist mindset where teachers are seen in deficit terms (Smylie and Evans, 2006; Bascia and Hargreaves, 2000; Datnow, 2006) and are the ‘problem’ in curriculum change, viewed in terms of their capacity and resistance. As Bascia and Hargreaves (2000, p. 5) put it

…reformers assume that educators have the capacity and ability to teach in different and more efficient ways but are either lazy, unknowledgeable, unfocused or resistant to change.

Priestly et al (2015, p.4) rightly warn that seeing teachers as ‘a factor’ in the curriculum change process suggests a conception of education in general as a “quasi-causal process” where the teacher is an ‘input’ and is devoid of thoughts, independent actions and feelings. They go on to argue that seeing teachers as ‘a factor’ in achieving particular educational outcomes can lead to a situation where teachers are blamed (and punished) if their classroom teaching does not appear to have a positive effect on student learning outcomes. Such a view was evident in the findings of a study of general education reform in Thailand (Hallinger and Lee, 2011). Hallinger and Lee highlight how policymakers’ rational and ‘deficit’ approach to teacher support is

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unlikely to foster the kind of new learning required of a more learner-centred curriculum:

“…learning by rote will next year be eliminated from all primary and secondary schools and be replaced with student-centred learning…Any teachers found failing to change their teaching style would be listed and provided with video-tapes showing new teaching techniques. If they still failed to improve, they would be sent for intensive training”.

(Dr Rung Kaewdang, quoted in Bunnang, 2000, p.5, cited by Hallinger and Lee, 2011, p.140). So while the teacher is a crucial partner in the success of curriculum reform, much of the literature seems to ignore or miss the ‘complexity’ part of Fullan’s quote and what it is that makes teachers’ role in reform complex. There have been relatively few studies in the research literature which have explored teachers as complex parts of a complex system; as people whose behaviour, attitudes and feelings during implementation of an educational change do not form or occur in a vacuum, but are dependent on and influenced by the different elements and people in the implementation world around them. Therefore further inquiry is needed in this area.

The next section focuses on the human aspect of change by examining the notion of sense-making and how implementers make sense of a curriculum change process in the literature.