Implementing Elt Innovations.pdf

Implementing ELT innovations: a needs analysis framework Alan Waters and Ma. Luz C. Vilches

Implementing an ELT innovation involves analysing a range of needs so that a sound strategy for maximizing the potential for adoption and ownership of the innovation can be developed. The quality of the implementation process, therefore, depends on the picture of needs underpinning it. This paper presents a model for trying to account for such needs as adequately as possible. The model is in the form of a matrix. First, on the vertical axis, we distinguish between two main levels of need: ‘foundation-building’ vs. ‘potential-realizing’ needs. Then, on the horizontal axis, and intersecting with the vertical dimension, we identify four main interlocking areas of need, illustrated by reference to a recent major ELT innovation project in the Philippines. We conclude by using the model to locate areas of priority and neglect in current innovation implementation practice.

Introduction

The initial development of an ELT innovation, especially one involving large-scale curricular reform, tends to take place via a process of highlevel discussions and agreements among ‘top management’. In this way, for example, a Ministry of Education and a foreign aid agency may decide to develop a new ELT textbook. However, in most cases those who will actually design and implement the innovation, and those who will form the majority of its ‘end-users’, are not involved in these consultations. As a result, when the attempt is made to put the innovation into practice, it cannot be assumed that ownership at these levels has already been established. Rather, it will usually be necessary to build towards this gradually, by catering appropriately to a range of innovation implementation needs. This paper is concerned with identifying the basic characteristics of such needs. The model we have developed for this purpose is in the form of a matrix. We will first of all discuss its vertical dimension, in relation to levels of need, and then its horizontal aspect, with respect to areas of need.

Levels of need

In the first instance, innovation implementation needs can be thought of as forming themselves into a number of hierarchically-arranged levels (see, for example, Maslow 1970: 39–46; Fullan 1991: Part I; Hersey and Blanchard 1993: 473¤). ELT Journal Volume 55/2 April 2001 © Oxford University Press

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Familiarization

At the most basic level, there is the need for familiarization. This involves the innovation implementation team, on the one hand, in becoming properly familiar with the innovation situation, and on the other, in the potential innovation users likewise being adequately informed about the background to, rationale for, and possible direction of the innovation. Thus, for example, in a textbook development project, needs at this level might be catered to by meetings in which the initial innovation concept is explained and a proper needs analysis is conducted, involving a representative cross-section of those who will use the textbook, as well as those, such as heads of department, supervisors, and others, who will be responsible for overseeing its use, and so on. On this basis, a ‘working hypothesis’ can be developed about the shape that the innovation might take in practice.

Socialization

At the next level up there are the socialization needs. These involve providing opportunities for the innovation prototype to be modified by the same group that provided input into the needs analysis process, so that the model at this phase of its development is checked for its match with the prevailing socio-cultural educational preconceptions of this group. At this stage in a textbook project, therefore, consultation meetings could be held, in which the participants—teachers (and, ideally, also learners), heads of department, supervisors, trainers, and the like— are given a chance to provide feedback to the design team on how well samples of draft materials do or do not fit in with and extend previous approaches, and, as necessary, to suggest how they might be modified.

Application

The third level up is concerned with the need for application. This is to do with ensuring that the process by which the users actually test the worked-out innovations is monitored and supported in such a way that the necessary level of personal, practical understanding and expertise is built up. To use the example of a textbook development project once again, meeting needs at this stage might involve a programme of schoolbased project work, in which teachers are supervised closely in their attempts to put the new materials into practice, followed by further support in the form of related trouble-shooting meetings.

Integration

Finally, at the topmost level, there is the need for integration. Here, scope should be given for the innovation to become the personal ‘property’ of the users, through its further development, in ways determined as far as possible by the users’ individual priorities. In a textbook project, this could be done by linking teachers’ attempts to get the best out of the new materials on an everyday basis to their schools’ and their own professional development programmes, supported and supervised directly by the host educational system. The picture can be made clearer and simpler than this, however, by conflating these four levels into just two basic, overall strata. Thus, needs at the first and second levels can be seen as concerned with achieving an initial conception of a proposed innovation, and its ‘ratification’. In other words, they are to do with establishing a basis on which further understanding and development can be built—what may therefore be

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called foundation-building needs. Needs at the third and fourth levels, on the other hand, can be seen as mainly to do with establishing ownership, at first in a relatively generic manner, and then in a more personal way, of the significant features of the innovation. These needs are thus concerned with capitalizing on the potential for further understanding and development created by the satisfaction of needs in the first main stratum—or, in other words, what we might call potential-realizing needs. As the textbook development example also shows, innovation implementation needs are sequential and hierarchical in nature. They therefore have to be properly addressed at each of the two main levels, starting with the foundation-building level, and then building on this foundation at the potential-realizing level (see Fig. 1 below). Potential-realizing 3 also at the higher level.

2 then building on the lower level

figure 1 Levels of need in the innovation implementation process

1 Needs must be addressed at this level first

Foundation-building

In other words, there has to be a first phase concerned with establishing a secure foundation for understanding and for the initial acceptance of the innovation. Following on from this, there must also be a phase devoted to helping the innovation user to capitalize on the prior phase by establishing an ever-increasing level of personal ownership of the innovation.

Areas of activity

Having outlined the vertical dimension of our model, we will now map out its horizontal axis. This consists of the core areas of development activity, and, therefore, of need, which ELT innovation projects potentially involve, namely curriculum development (including evaluation), teacher learning, trainer learning, and ELT management learning.

1 Curriculum We define ‘curriculum development’ as any form of innovation activity development needs which is aimed at bringing about change in the way learners experience the learning process, at the overall level of policies, goals, and so on, and/or in terms of the syllabus, teaching materials, teaching methods, and evaluation techniques.

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This area of innovation activity can be related to the earlier discussion about levels of need, as follows. ELT curriculum development has traditionally involved two major but apparently opposing concepts of ELT (see, for example, White (1987)). The first of these might be termed the ‘traditional’ approach to ELT ¡. Its stock-in-trade is a focus on form; whole-class teaching; pattern-practice drills; ‘up-front’ error correction; norm-referenced testing; and so on. These attributes help to create structure, order, and a sense of belonging. Thus, from the perspective established earlier, such an approach can be seen as catering mainly (however implicitly) to the lower of our two main categories of need, i.e. the foundation-building level. The second of the main approaches might be termed ‘modern’. Such an approach tends to focus mainly on meaning; much of the teaching is done in a pair or small-group work mode; the predominant activity is the problem-solving task; error is tolerated, or even ignored; testing is criterion-referenced, and so on. Such features tend to favour the creation of individualized opportunities for making learning personally meaningful. This kind of approach is therefore geared mainly towards the higher of the two main categories of need, i.e. the potential-realizing level. The two approaches can thus be pictured as shown below:

figure 2 Curriculum development needs

Potentialrealizing

‘Modern’ approach

Foundationbuilding

‘Traditional’ approach

Now, many ELT innovation projects are concerned with attempting to introduce elements of the ‘modern’ approach into a context dominated by elements of the ‘traditional’ one. There is therefore a tendency for the innovation development process to focus mainly on the higher level, while ignoring or under-rating the importance of the lower one, i.e. to be ‘innovation-led’. However, it follows from the principles outlined in the previous section that the key to satisfactorily catering to needs at the higher level is to ensure that those at the lower level have first of all been adequately attended to. Thus, for example, the confidence to communicate meanings comes from a secure classroom environment, and knowledge of language form. This is to cater to needs at the lower level. However, there is an equal need for the classroom environment to provide scope for individual creativity by learners, and opportunities for them to manipulate language meaningfully. This caters to the higher level. Rightly conceived of, therefore, a sound approach to the ELT curriculum innovation process must be based on attempting to integrate both main levels of need.

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The PELT Project

We have attempted to adopt this approach in our work in the Philippines English Language Teaching (PELT ) Project ™. We deliberately began the project without any pre-conceived view of what might constitute a desirable alternative to the local ELT paradigm. Instead, its characteristics were first of all studied at first hand, in an attempt to properly appreciate them. In the main, they were found to resemble those of the ‘traditional’ approach just described. A consensus was then established between the Project and its beneficiaries about how the existing teaching methods might be minimally strengthened and extended by integrating them with a range of supplementary teaching methods characteristic of the ‘modern’ approach. The resulting combination came to constitute the curriculum innovation focus of the project. In this way, the model of teaching being promoted by the project became one which tried to ensure that learners’ foundation-building needs were still being catered to, while at the same time, by building on this basis, higher-level, potential-realizing needs were also taken into account to a greater extent than previously (cf. Clarke 1989).

2 Teacher learning needs

The second of the areas of activity on the horizontal axis—and, therefore, of need—is teacher learning. Any attempt to change the curriculum— whether indirectly through changes in teaching materials, for example, or more directly, through changes in teaching methods—implies a need for teacher learning, i.e. opportunities for teachers to learn about the rationale for the new form of teaching, to critically evaluate it, and understand how to get the best out of it. The teacher learning dimension can also be mapped onto our emergent matrix in terms of the two main levels of need, as follows: the first level can be seen as corresponding to an ‘awareness’ need, i.e. the building up of fundamental knowledge and skills by teachers about the curriculum innovation in question, e.g. the new textbook, the new teaching approach, etc., as well as the creation of opportunities for critiquing and questioning it; the second level corresponds to needs associated with ‘ownership’ of the innovation, i.e. the acceptance by users of responsibility for implementing, sustaining, and further developing a personally meaningful version of the innovation. Having described the two levels, however, it should be said that in our experience there is a tendency in ELT innovation projects to focus rather more on the first level than the second. The most common vehicle for catering to teacher learning needs in such projects is a short course of one kind or another. However, the ‘culture’ of a training course is often very di¤erent from that of the normal teaching situation (Rudduck 1981: 164). In a course, removed as it usually is from the everyday pressures of the work-place, it is all too easy for the ‘ideal’ to supplant the ‘real’. As a result, while a course may meet the need for teachers to be ‘inducted’ into the innovation paradigm, it may not provide them with suªcient opportunity to make the ideas personally meaningful in terms of the realities of the context in which they normally work (cf. Joyce and Showers 1980). Implementing ELT innovations

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In order to try to overcome this problem, therefore, a further device is required, one which addresses the potential-realizing level of need. In other words, there is also a need for the innovation development strategy to include a school-based teacher learning element (here the term ‘school’ stands for any kind of teaching institution), linked closely to the work done at the foundation-building level. In the PELT project, this component is known as the School-Based Follow-up Development Activity (SFDA ) (Waters and Vilches 2000). Under this system, teachers first of all attend a two-week course in which the teaching methods the Project is concerned with are introduced, evaluated, and tried out. However, this is not the main purpose of the course, since its primary function is to prepare teachers for the SFDA , which follows. The SFDA programme consists of the execution of teaching development action plans prepared by the teachers during the training course. The focus of the plans is on areas of teaching studied in the course which the teachers want to attempt to apply in their home teaching situations. On return to their schools, the teachers execute their plans, in consultation with their school ‘ELT managers’ (i.e. Heads of Department, or equivalent). In this way, the Project makes allowance for two levels of teacher learning: one aimed at meeting ‘foundation-building needs’, the other geared towards ‘potential-realizing’ needs. The two levels are also closely integrated, with the latter building closely on the former. The resulting situation can thus be pictured as in Figure 3:

Potentialrealizing

School-based teacher learning (e.g. SFDA)

Foundationbuilding

Course-based teacher learning

figure 3 Teacher learning needs

3 Trainer learning needs

As already noted, ELT innovation projects generate a need for teacher learning. This, in turn, often creates a need to train a cadre of teacher trainers, in order to facilitate the teacher learning process. In our experience, however, as with aspects of the previous areas of need, the full extent of the trainer training need is not always recognized, since frequently trainers are only ‘trained’ in the sense of having attended the teacher training course, which they are then expected to handle as trainers. We see the true extent of needs in this area as corresponding once again to our two-tier model. A foundation of understanding on the part of the trainers about the content of the innovation should be constructed first of all, so that they have the necessary in-depth grasp of what the teachers are expected to learn. In the PELT Project, therefore, this has become the main focus of the first part of the Project’s trainer training programme.

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However essential this foundation may be, the trainers’ role is not simply to ‘teach’ the content of the innovation, but to maximize the potential for ownership of the innovation by the teachers. The second part of the PELT trainer training programme has therefore focused on preparing the trainers for the latter role, by providing opportunities for them to gain a practical understanding of the nature of real teacher learning, and how to promote it, i.e. the methodology of teacher development. The situation can thus be represented as follows:

Potentialrealizing

Orientation to teacher development methodology

Foundationbuilding

Orientation to innovation content

figure 4 Trainer learning needs

4 ELT manager learning needs

To be implemented e¤ectively, an ELT innovation project must obviously enlist the support and co-operation of the managers of the educational system which is the host for the innovation. ELT manager learning, therefore, is our fourth area of development activity, although, once again, in our experience this category of need often tends to be underrated or ignored in the ELT innovation process. We see needs in this area as existing at the same two main levels as the other areas already discussed. In the PELT Project, foundation-level needs of this kind are catered to in a similar manner as for trainers, i.e. through a programme of ELT manager orientation meetings. The potential-realizing level is addressed by devolving responsibility to the ELT managers for monitoring and supporting teachers in carrying out their SFDA s (see 2 above). This enables them to play their normal role vis-à-vis their teachers, but in this case, with respect to the project innovation. This has resulted in a good deal of ownership of the project by the ELT managers, since they see themselves as joint collaborators in the PELT innovation process. The provision as a whole can be pictured as follows:

figure 5 ELT manager learning needs

Potentialrealizing

Devolution of innovation monitoring and support

Foundationbuilding

Innovation orientation

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Conclusion

Potential-realizing level

Foundation-building level

We have tried to show that there are two main levels, and a number of major areas of need, to be taken into account in the ELT innovation implementation process. Figure 6 is intended to summarize what we see as the current tendencies in this regard. The unshaded cells show the areas of need usually identified, as indicated in earlier sections of this paper. The shaded cells, as also indicated, represent the areas of need that we feel tend to be overlooked, or under-rated. However, as we have tried to show, they are nevertheless of equal importance.

‘Modern’

School-based

Methodolgy

Devolution

‘Traditional’

Course-based

Content

Orientation

1 Curriculum development figure 6 ELT innovation implementation needs: areas of priority and neglect

2 Teacher learning

3 Trainer learning

4 ELT manager learning

areas of need usually focused on areas of need that tend to be under-rated or overlooked

We have also argued that it is important for the innovation dynamic to follow the direction of the vertical arrow, i.e. to proceed in a ‘bottom-up’ fashion, from the foundation-building to the potential-realizing level, in order to take into account the psychology of the innovation process. Of equal importance, of course, is the proper horizontal integration of each of the main categories of need, as indicated by the dotted vertical lines between the areas of activity and the horizontal, two-way arrow. Of course, implementing an innovation e¤ectively is not simply a matter of accounting one by one for each cell in the diagram, (although this is very important), but also of striving for adequate vertical and horizontal integration of each constituent. To conclude, we believe that by the use of a framework of the kind described, a sounder picture of the full range of needs involved in the ELT innovation implementation process can be taken into account. This should result in projects which are informed by a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the innovation strategies that are likely to be e¤ective in any given development situation. It is also to be hoped that the potential for such projects to succeed will thereby increase. Received July 1999

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Notes 1 The term ‘traditional’ is used here in a chronological, rather than a qualitative sense. 2 The Philippines English Language Teaching (PELT ) Project is an in-service teacher-training project of the department ... etc!!! References Clarke, D. F. 1989. ‘Materials adaptation: why leave it all to the teacher?’ ELT Journal 43/2. Fullan, M. 1991. The New Meaning of Educational Change. London: Cassell. Hersey, P. and K. Blanchard. 1993. Management of Organizational Behaviour (6th edn.). New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. Joyce, B. and B. Showers. 1980. ‘Improving Inservice Training’. Educational Leadership 37. Maslow, A. H. 1970. Motivation and Personality (2nd edn.) New York: Harper & Row. Rudduck, J. 1981. ‘Making the most of the short inservice course’. Schools Council Working Paper 71. London: Methuen Educational. Waters, A. and M. L. C. Vilches. 2000. ‘From Seminar to School: Bridging the INSET Gap’. ELT Journal 54/2. White, R. 1987. The ELT Curriculum: Design, Innovation, and Management. London: Blackwell.

Implementing ELT innovations

The authors Alan Waters is Director of the Institute for English Language Education at Lancaster University, England, and was the Lead Consultant for the Philippines English Language Teaching (PELT ) Project from 1995–9. His current main research interests are teacher learning processes, and the application of ideas from management to the ELT classroom. Email: [email protected] Ma. Luz C. Vilches is the Executive Director of the Ateneo de Manila Center for English Language Teaching, Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines and was the Co-ordinator of the Philippines, English Language Teaching (PELT ) Project from 1995–9. Her main research interests include the use of literary texts in language teaching, and the training, of teacher trainers. Email: [email protected]

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