Innovation in ELT revisited

Abstract

English language teaching practices in many countries and contexts are subject to frequent change as innovation is introduced to reform teaching and learning practices. Although this Key Concept was discussed in 2009 (ELT Journal 63/4), it is revisited here for two main reasons. First, most ELT professionals worldwide continue to be affected by innovations. Second, research since 2009 has increasingly highlighted the need for planners to consider what challenges innovations may pose for those –like teachers and school leaders—tasked with implementing them. This entry focuses on large-scale innovations, in particular national English curriculum reforms. These occur very frequently, affect very large numbers of people, and (to date) remain extremely difficult to implement successfully. Most points made are, when adapted to context, also relevant to innovation at institutional or classroom level. Educational innovations represent ‘fresh ways of meeting outstanding challenges’ (OECD 2017: 17). Innovations are planned and entail adjustments to people’s thinking and behaviour. One ‘outstanding challenge’ commonly mentioned in English policy documents is the difficulty of finding ways to develop citizens’ English proficiency in the current ‘dynamic, fast changing world characterized by globalization, technologization, mobility and migration’ (Ministry of Education, Israel 2019). The ‘fresh ways’ that state education systems have found to respond to this challenge have usually involved expanding the quantity of English taught (often introducing English at primary level), and/or its quality, through curriculum reform promoting new teaching and learning approaches and practices, that they hope will help learners achieve higher proficiency levels. Early ELT innovation research (Holliday and Cooke 1982; Kennedy 1988) emerged from experiences of trying to implement British government sponsored ELT projects in overseas contexts. Research drew on theories from disciplines including general education, anthropology and business. It warned against adoption in ELT of top down, ‘hyper-rational’ innovation theories (Wise 1977), which propose that once innovation aims are agreed, plans to achieve aims identified, and necessary resources allocated, successful implementation will be unproblematic. Instead, research showed that ELT innovation implementation processes are complicated, needing planning that is system-wide in scope, and based on a thorough understanding of the implementation context or ecology. Further studies in language education (e.g. Waters 2009; Wedell 2009) have used the above, together with insights from general education (Fullan 2007), and the concept of secondary innovations (Markee 1997) to try to develop principles to guide ELT innovation planning. They have helped expand understanding of the complex, interdependent range of human, institutional, and system-wide factors which may affect the outcomes of the implementation process. They particularly highlight the need for policymakers introducing a primary innovation (e.g. a new English curriculum) to understand the changes to organizational thinking and behaviour that will be needed to provide enabling support—secondary innovations. These require policymakers to understand both the ideas underpinning the innovation itself and how the innovation will affect those whose roles influence implementation success. This implies, for example, that before planning how to implement a new curriculum, policymakers would be wise to take time to: a) develop their own understanding of the pedagogic principles and classroom practices underpinning the curriculum; b) identify the educational roles (e.g. teachers, school leaders, teacher educators) whose work will affect and be affected by implementation of the new curriculum; c) provide each with role-relevant information about the key principles and practices underpinning the innovation; d) discover how representatives of each role in different parts of the country understand the personal and professional challenges that the innovation poses for how they currently work. This information would provide a basis for developing implementation plans with timeframes, funding streams, and professional support mechanisms appropriate for the challenges identified. Recent research (e.g. Mukherjee 2018; Ong’ondo 2018) suggests, however, that policymakers’ insufficient consideration of secondary innovations continues to create barriers to curriculum implementation at three connected levels. First, system-level barriers may result from policy borrowing (Tan and Reyes 2016). Policymakers uncritically adopt pedagogic approaches (e.g. learner-centredness) and ‘best practices’ (e.g. interactive classrooms) that are apparently successful in one educational context for use in their own. Their limited understanding of ideas underpinning innovation, and insufficient consultation with those whose roles will influence implementation, lead them to develop overly ‘rational’ implementation plans that underestimate the challenges in context. Such plans may have unrealistic timeframes and funding streams, and inadequate or inappropriate provision for classroom resources and/or teacher and educational leader support. In addition, alignment between the adopted innovation and existing high-stakes examinations is frequently overlooked. Where such system-level planning occurs, resulting second-level barriers at the institutional level may mean school leaders and education officials have limited understanding of and support for practices that the innovation recommends, especially where there is parental pressure to continue to teach to unchanged examinations. At the third, classroom level, the outcome may be English teachers who, due to insufficient or inappropriate professional support, and minimal moral support from leaders, feel little understanding or ownership of the innovation. In such circumstances they may feel little motivation to make the sustained effort needed to implement the classroom changes that the innovation hopes to promote. A different strand of ELT curriculum innovation research (Grassick and Wedell 2018; Graves 2021), drawing on general education research into the relational and emotional dimension of educational change (Zembylas 2010), has begun to further articulate the complexity of innovation implementation. Taking a system-wide and experiential approach, it explores relationships between implementers’ (teachers, school leaders, teacher educators, educational administrators’) lived experiences of the implementation process and the extent to which desired changes are seen in classrooms. It recognizes that the curriculum is only one element influencing what happens in classrooms. Identification of others, including the beliefs and behaviours of school leaders, teacher educators, and parents, and the cultural and physical aspects of the school context, helps explain the ineffectiveness of one-size-fits-all implementation planning that hopes to ensure implementation fidelity (Penuel et al. 2014)—uniform implementation of the curriculum in all classrooms. Instead, planning that introduces role-relevant innovation principles and practices to all affected by implementation, and helps them use their existing personal/professional experience to adapt principles in context-appropriate ways, is more likely to enable implementation integrity—a range of different practices broadly consistent with curriculum aims becoming visible in most classrooms. Final version received January 2022

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