Curriculum Evaluation Rubric (Revised)



Rubric Criteria

1. Course Organization                                                                        18 points

2. Resources and Materials                                                               18 points

3. Instructional Delivery                                                                    18 points

4. Learner Interaction                                                                         18 points

5. Assessment and Evaluation of Student Learning                 18 points

Total                                                                                                         90 points

Overall Curriculum Evaluation

Point values are equivalent to:

90-68                                                                                     = Exemplary / Well Thought Out

67-45                                                                                     = Satisfactory

44-22                                                                                     = Needs Improvement

21 - 0                                                                                     =  Not Recommended

Reflections on Graves, Ch. 5& Burns Ch. 10

In chapter five, Graves addressed understandable concerns of in-service teachers over formulating goals and objectives beforehand in managing their actual lessons. I agree that teaching is organic; thus evolves upon students’ needs and responses as lessons proceed. In that sense, setting up goals might restrict the dynamic nature of teaching and learning as well as the creativity and freedom of teachers. However, as Graves (2000) aptly noted, “Goals provide guidelines and should be flexible enough to change, if they are not appropriate” (p. 74). Graves added that stating goals will help the teachers make priorities where they see the greatest need in a planning phase among a range of choices about contents, materials, approaches, and a form of assessment. After all, it is a matter of choices and flexibility that teachers make over the entire course with regard to its focus and specificity in relation to subsequent objectives. It was also insightful to note how closely setting goals and objectives is linked to teacher’s teaching principles and educational philosophy.

Among several frameworks for setting goals, I take Stern’s framework that merits serious consideration. Stern’s framework is categorized into four domains: 1) Proficiency, 2) Cognitive including language functions and cultural aspects, 3) Affective including motivation and confidence, and finally 4) Transfer that includes how learning in the classroom will be transferred to actual situations outside of the classroom. What I take most is that the teacher can specify socio-cultural aspects and affective outcomes when formulating goals and objectives. Although socio-cultural and affective domain, in particular, is hard to assess as an outcome of students’ learning, those domains, I believe, are the essence of language and language learning.

As an EFL language educator, I view language mostly as a social phenomenon. One prominent socio-cultural theorist Vygostky (1987) argues that human being s use language as a tool for thought (along with other social artefact such as music, art, numbers) to mediate our relationship with others. According to Gee (1999), language always contains the cues and clues that trigger specific situated meaning in certain social, cultural context, or discourse. Without such socio-cultural consideration along with language, our understanding of learning language might be limited.

From a sociocultural perspective, language learning is a mediated process, one that is not only mediated by mental tools but also by social factors. In other words, people learn languages by exploiting the mental tools that are available to them in their interaction. Learning can be facilitated through scaffolding and Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). When learning includes the supportive, collaborative activities by the experts, learners are enabled to operate within their ZPD to achieve the desired outcome. The importance of scaffolding and ZPD to language learning well accords with my pedagogical focus on collaborative and negotiated activities in which peers and teachers have opportunities to co-construct meaning and in which learners, through feedback, can appropriate the targeted language. 

Albeit my great concern over socio-cultural implications of second language learning , I have been hesitating to apply those approaches into my actual teaching as such constructs were vague and hard to be implemented and assessed. The article of Burns provided an excellent framework for realizing my ideal teaching philosophy. The article demonstrated how skilfully and successfully a teacher can develop a course responding to learner’s actual, authentic needs in a situated context. All in all, teachers need to take the initiatives in their own teaching as well.

Reflections on Graves, Chapter 4, 8, 9

First Mind Map for Project-Based Learning

Reflections

As Grave (2000) indicated, the way teachers who are organizing courses conceptualize content and set goals and objectives depends on their educational beliefs and their past experiences as a teacher and a learner. Most importantly, in conceptualizing content, teachers need to know who the students are, what their needs are, and how they will learn it. One very efficient way to conceptualize content is using mind maps, which I have never used in a planning stage of course design. I have mostly used the grid form so far; thus, I did not seem to fully utilize the non-linear way of thinking of mind maps this time. Nevertheless, completing an initial mind map for future assignment of course design provided me with insight into the flexible feature of mind maps as an effective tool for demonstrating the relationship among various elements of the syllabus. “A mind map enables one to see the course as a whole, the component parts, and the multiple relationships among the parts” (Graves, 2000, p. 57). One area I have not given much thought at this stage is developing materials that can embody the goals I established. As designing a course is a recursive work, I expect that I will have more concrete ideas of what kind of materials I will use and how I utilize them through revision. Above all, the whole process of designing a syllabus requires careful and resourceful decision making in every step of the process to meet the needs of students.    

Teacher Curriculum Interview

Interview Questions

1.      Could you briefly introduce yourself as an EFL teacher?

2.     What are your target teaching level and main teaching areas?  

3.     What are the features of the curriculum of your school

4.     How do you assess your students’ performance?

5.     Are you following textbooks and methods prescribed by the curriculum of the school? Or do you have any freedom to make the decisions relating to content, materials, and assessment?

6.     What is your guiding philosophy of education?

7.     What suggestions would you provide to your school to improve the current curriculum?

8.     In teaching, what kind of challenges or problems do you encounter and how do you deal with them?

9.     In related to Question 4, could you explain more about the evaluation system of your school?

10.  In developing a curriculum or designing a course, what aspect do you think is the most important?

The Original Interview File

http://violet04.podomatic.com/entry/2010-11-07T17_31_33-08_00

(Disclaimer: The last part of a file was deleted for some reason I was not aware of at all. Thus, the report about Question 9 and 10 was basically based on my memory.)

Summary of Interview

I have interviewed Ms. Hanna Lee who has been teaching English to middle school students for about three years in Korea. She earned a BA in secondary education in the US, and her current main teaching areas include speaking, writing, and listening. She and her colleagues used to work for one of the major English institutes in Korea, but they quit their job to run their own school three months ago. The motive behind such decision was my greatest concern in conducting this interview.  

Ms. Lee said that it was her dissatisfaction with the curriculum solely scribed by the institute that made her leave the school. The school used the same American textbooks for American 7^th, 8^th, and 9^th graders to teach EFL middle school students, with which she mostly disagreed seeing that those textbooks were too high and difficult for her students to follow. She said that curriculum of the previous school did not match what she thought a good curriculum should be like. The curriculum failed to reflect the situation of Korea, and the ELD level of Korean students.

Ms. Lee and her colleagues collaborately designed the current curriculum, specifying it into four areas; Listening, Reading, Grammar, and American textbooks. American textbooks are incorporated into the reading class. Although the curriculum offers some basic guidelines to the teachers, there is no fixed syllabus of each class. Rather, each teacher tries to provide more individualized lessons reflecting the ELD level of her students. She is, in particular, interested in using a range of audio-visual aids such as discovery education videos and national geographic channel videos to motivate her students.

In light of her philosophy of education, Ms. Lee emphasized that “Students should put to use what they really learn..they have to fully understand it ..should have to utilize it as a member of a global society”. Thus, she suggested to the school that they make full use of computers so that they can provide richer audio-video materials and find more ways to incorporate offline classes to online classes to increase students’ interests in the subject. 

The biggest challenge she encounters as a teacher is to motivate her students, she added. “The only way to get them to really study is not by forcing them or coercing them into studying, but to actually make them have fun in class, make them feel that English is not just a subject you need to learn to go to a college, but make them actually appreciate English, and just get them interested in it”.

Upon my request to elaborate the evaluation system of the school, she said that at the end of every semester, the students are supposed to take a comprehension test. The students are also asked to submit an essay on a weekly basis and revise it reflecting teacher’s feedback. However, their writings are only used as reference indicators of students.  

Finally, in developing a curriculum or designing a course, she maintained that selecting textbooks and defining the context are of great importance. She said that the textbooks should correspond to the proficiency level of the students, and to that end, the teachers should be accurately aware of the reality and the context of teaching and learning English in Korea.

My Reflections

The interview with Ms. Lee provided me a valuable opportunity to see interrelatedness between teacher’s philosophy and curriculum development. Ms. Lee highlighted the importance of motivation in learning a second language, the need for defining the context  and in turn selecting textbooks appropriate for students’ ELD levels in designing a course, which eventually made her start running her own school to offer a program that mirrors her conviction . She aptly raised concern over the blind obsession with the content-based programs in EFL curriculum context, which actually match the level of mainstream learners.   Most EFL teachers are required to follow a required curriculum of the school; thus the dilemma between what a teacher values and what he/she has to teach is prevalent in EFL education.

Faced with such dilemma or challenges in teaching, teachers are encouraged to adapt their teaching resources to accommodate the needs and interests of the students. More fundamentally, as McKay (2007) noted, “Teachers need to analyze the curriculum context, and weigh their own beliefs and theories in relation to the innovation” (p. 4). With regard to changes in teaching programs, it should be noted that any change into a curriculum requires “teacher commitment, and works best as a collegial and collaborative process with others” (White, 1993, as cited in McKay, 2007, p. 11). Through a process of sharing, teachers are more likely to increase their awareness of language education. They will get better understanding of the importance of examining context. In this sense, hearing what other professionals think about teaching, proper methods and what a good curriculum constitute provides an opportunity for professional growth.