Reflection Paper 2: Ivonne Alexandra Londoo Leudo
Reflection Paper 2: Ivonne Alexandra Londoo Leudo2013
THE LEARNER-CENTRED CURRICULUM: A VISIONARY PROCESS FOR
COLOMBIAN TEACHERSColombian teachers have been facing the
traditional development of curriculum where all the pedagogical
action and design is just given to the teacher in charge.
Basically, classical approaches in terms of course planning convey
the idea of showing what teachers actually must do in the classroom
(Standards, goals, subsidiary aims, content, resources and
evaluation) rather than analyze what students really produce in
terms of language. The learner-centred curriculum presents an
innovative effort to make more reflective teaching practices,
involving actively the pupils in the educational objectives as well
as provoking decision-making processes in such important
educational field nowadays.Curriculum development is a mandatory
task for every Colombian teacher in any subject or institution,
being relevant knowing how to do it with an operational purpose; in
that case, state schools show a serious situation. In fact,
teachers need to fill out forms of what could be defined as
curricula, regardless the coherence with the standards, real
knowledge outcomes and the society demands. Therefore, the lack of
a monitored process by the Minister of Education has made that the
responsibility of curriculum development fall to the teacher;
leaving aside the educational community core of any improvement in
the teachers planning. However, the curriculum process is not a
piece of cake or a set of isolated determinations in order to
follow a sequence (Planning, implementation and evaluation)
mentioned by Taba (1962). In particular, the learner-centred
curriculum (Nunan, 1994) is based on negotiation, collaboration,
informal planning, switching roles between students and teachers
and is a profound study of what students want to learn and also
what really need. Indeed, the foreign language curriculum has
several weaknesses so it is obvious that in our institutions we do
not carry out correctly the four stages suggested by (Nunan, 1994):
Diagnostic stage, content selection, methodology and evaluation.
Thus, the diagnostic stage must be conducted as a data collection
of learners objective needs. For instance, the current proficiency
level of Colombian students is one of the most crucial components
because there is not a established test to measure what are their
english levels at early ages in order to reinforce their weaknesses
and counteract the low results in the ICFES test. Also, the
teachers time is another circumstance which impedes the effective
development of this stage thanks to quantity of duties they have to
perform into the institution.Nevertheless, the biographical data
collection with the granting of students age, educational
background, previous learning experiences, educational and life
goals, learning styles and preferred methodology make available a
classroom picture for the starting point in the advancement towards
the negotiated and students- centered curriculum. But, following
with the processes, the content plays an outstanding role in the
curriculum. Indeed, the traditional selection of topics for
teaching languages was mainly static and with little or no changes.
Truthfully, we can find Colombian graduated students saying that
they only thing they have learned were the verb to be in all their
English language experience at secondary level. In contrast, the
learner-centred curriculum is based on modification of contents
(negotiated between the teacher and student) during the process
because exists the awareness of students skills, needs and likes
with the intention of incite meaningful learning and critical
thinking.Apart from that, in the majority of Colombian educational
contexts the preponderant methodology is that one where the teacher
is the center of the process being considered by the students as
the wise person because is a provider of knowledge. Meanwhile, the
21st century student asks for attention and has a lot of
technological resources available for consultation letting them
know even more than the teacher, thus, the learner-centred
curriculum establishes compromises and intervention to deal with
that mismatches caused by these conflicts.Correspondingly, the most
powerful weapon each teacher has and the final component in the
curriculum model is the evaluation, which represents the tool of
learning accountability and the demonstration of English language
outcomes. When we talk about Colombian state schools, we can
encounter a quantity of summative evaluations rather than formative
based mainly on numbers, where the students fight for a grade more
than its own learning and growth as a person. The learner-centered
evaluation presents itself as an alternative of monitoring the
learning process, giving feedback and promoting the participatory
students involvement where the self-evaluation of pupils and
teachers are prime.Besides, the confusion of concepts (Curriculum
vs. Syllabus) commonly discussed in educators meetings which is
defined depending on different contexts, the curriculum renewal
(Clark, 1985) promotes the change in the field letting students
have factual learning experiences, with the continue monitoring
process of the second language acquisition in the light of their
classroom reality.In my opinion, the idea of a learner-centred
curriculum needs a huge movement in the Colombian education because
it could be solution of many problems presented into the classroom
and outside of it. I would like to design one big project like this
in order to contribute my community in Ansermanuevo. In actual
fact, I have already taken some steps of this approach in my
research project plus I can notice the positive transformation of
students interest towards what I am teaching. Since the right
moment I ask them what they want to learn in English and how, I
realize that my methodology need some adjustments.In conclusion,
the learner-centred curriculum development is a painstaking mission
having the teacher and the student in a reciprocal position where
every classroom action, strategy, product will benefit the
educational process from several views. The negotiated agreement
determines a conciliatory instructive environment where the pupil
is involved as well as their dreams and demands, provoking
self-awareness and metacognition proper of well-intentioned
learning.
REFERENCES
Nunan, D. (1994). The Learner-centred curriculum. New York, NY:
Cambridge University Press.
