Key words: EFL curriculum development, professional growth, action research, personal practical theory, expertise

Abstract

This paper highlights two main assumptions about curriculum development and teacher professional growth. One is that curriculum development is an on-going process that never ceases once a curriculum framework and a package of prescribed teaching/learning materials are produced and introduced in an educational system. The other is that curriculum development and professional growth cannot be separated. Curriculum development in almost all Arab countries follows a top-down model in which teacher involvement is confined to the implementation of pre-designed packages of teaching materials. In this paper, it is argued that neither a top-down strategy, nor a bottom-up one will be effective in bringing about sustainable educational reform. The former can lead to teacher resistance to or misinterpretation of innovative features; and the latter can result in overly local and small-scale endeavors of educational reform. A model that combines both top-down and bottom-up strategies in curriculum development is proposed. The model illustrates how task-based teacher research can be encouraged and systematized in schools to allow for teacher initiatives to feed in subsequent top-down attempts to develop curricula. Practical suggestions for implementing this in the Omani context are made including suggestions for teacher educators who teach pre-service teacher education courses.

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Introduction
Oman has recently witnessed a comprehensive educational reform. A major aspect of this reform relates to the efforts exerted in developing new curricula for all stages and all school subjects including that of English as a Foreign Language. To the best knowledge of the present writer the approach used in curriculum development was basically a top-down one. Admittedly, people at the English Language Curriculum Department (ELCD) have exerted all efforts to get EFL teachers involved. Unfortunately, however, teacher involvement has always been selective in nature depending entirely on what is known as the "focus group". To the best knowledge of the present writer, their role has mostly been confined to providing feedback to initial versions of materials produced by expatriate or local experts and, perhaps, trying out parts of these materials in natural classroom settings. This is not to claim that EFL teacher involvement in curriculum development has not included other activities such as evaluating earlier teaching materials, attending textbook-based training courses or school-based workshops. Presumably, different approaches to curriculum development do include attempts to get teachers involved in the process.

With all these efforts, the division of labor that characterizes top-down models of curriculum development between experts as designers and teachers as implementers remains the norm, not the exception. This is not to argue that we can afford to use a wholly bottom-up model of curriculum development from the very beginning. Nothing is achieved to that effect. It is the contention of the present writer that the use of a top-down model is inevitable. However, a case can be made for a subsequent bottom up phase in which Omani EFL teachers may be gradually and systematically more involved in a number of school-based activities including curriculum analysis, curriculum critique and collaborative task-based action research endeavors whose outcomes can feed into subsequent top-down attempts at curriculum renewal.

Limitations of a top down model
A top-down model of curriculum development may be conceptualized in terms of a set of hierarchically ordered processes that are centrally initiated and controlled and that are usually performed by selected expert committees. A decision is made by the supreme authority in the educational system to start the whole process. A steering committee will be entrusted with the production of the educational philosophy. A number of working committees will be selected for producing the curriculum guides/ frameworks for different stages and school subjects or subject areas. A co-coordinating committee will be entrusted with the co-ordination of work done in different committees at different levels. The duties of the working committees might include the production of a retrospective scope-and-sequence through the analysis of existing curriculum documents and then producing the prospective scope-and-sequence based on the goals and broad guidelines specified in the educational philosophy/strategy. Materials will then be produced or selected. Materials production takes many forms and involves various processes depending upon several factors. In most cases, however, this will be the work of committees including textbook writers and editors.

In the different variants of the top-down model, attempts will be made to make those materials teacher-proof through the production of teacher manuals that accompany different textbooks for different stages and grades. This process might also include lots of brainstorming, fact finding, pooling of ideas, proof reading, revising and publicizing conferences in which the views of all stakeholders are sought. Proponents of this model or its variants normally consider such activities major efforts to get all parties concerned, including teachers, involved. Teachers' involvement here might be viewed as attempts to familiarize them with what is going on and, probably, ensure that the products are suitable for or feasible in the local market. Only during the implementation stage are teachers actually involved. The implementation committees will arrange for textbook training, and in some cases trialing language teaching materials on a small scale before they are finally introduced nation-wide. Presumably, this model has its own ways of market evaluation.

However, the teachers' role will be confined to implementation of the new product in exactly the same way in which expert designers intended it to be implemented. All measures are taken to suppress/circumvent any criticism; and any difficulties encountered by implementers will normally be interpreted as indicators of their ignorance of, or at least lack of familiarity with, the new product. But the most important advantage of this model is that tremendous nation wide changes that are centrally controlled can be coercively introduced in a relatively short time.

Depending entirely on this model may have both short-term and long-term disadvantages. First, curriculum development in this model looks like an educational raid that ends with replacing the currently used textbooks by a new series that may, or may not, constitute a great improvement on the old ones depending on a host of other factors such as the excessive caution of the change agents to be system-sensitive (See Markee, 1997). This is specially clear when the change agent is an expatriate as is the case in foreign language teaching. More often than not I am being reminded by teachers of very interesting features of the old materials that they miss in new ones. Moreover, no change agent will ever dare to introduce too many theoretically motivated innovative features given the filtering role often played by system constraints. Therefore, the newly introduced textbooks may, in very few years, require a new educational raid in which they meet the same fate of their predecessors. This is specially disturbing because most educational systems cannot afford such costs of frequent textbook replacement. Second, and perhaps more disturbing, is that it can result in teacher resistance to and/or misinterpretation of innovative features.

This argument is supported by the often dwelt upon phenomenon of the gap between theory and practice. To this issue we return later in the section about teacher professional growth. With all attempts made to produce teacher-proof materials through the production of highly prescriptive teacher manuals, teachers may reinterpret any task or language learning experience. Third, detailed guidance given to teachers about how to implement materials designed by experts can lead to guidance jams and feelings of insecurity, anxiety and a relatively low level of self efficacy. It might be argued that such phenomena are expected only in the initial stages of implementation. However, this prescriptive approach can develop what might be called pedagogical dogmatism. Fourth, as Markee (1997, p. 64) argues, it

Bottom-up/school-based curriculum development
In many parts of the world such as USA, Britain, Australia and some other European and South-Asian countries, many attempts have been made to develop curricula using bottom-up models (See Bolstad, 2004). In almost all these attempts, teachers in a particular school or region of a country will be entrusted with developing their school curricula collaboratively. Several definitions of school based curriculum development (SBCD) are available in the literature. Skilbeck (1984, cited in Bolstad, 2004, p.14) defines it as

Bezzina (1991, p. 40) defines SBCD as

In her literature review on SBCD, Bolstad sums up its main characteristics:

* Teachers are responsible not only for the implementation of curricula, but also for its development.
* SBCD is a collaborative process.
* It is an on-going process.
* It has to be centrally supported and facilitated.
* It may be adaptive rather than wholly creative.

Several arguments are frequently made to justify SBCD. One major argument is that it helps avoid the problems involved in top-down models. Another argument is that it makes curricula meet the needs of learners and local communities. It is also argued that SBCD ensures teacher autonomy, a goal that is currently believed to be part and part of teacher professionalism (Kumaravadivelu, 2003). But the most important rationale for SBCD lies in the realization that curriculum development and teacher professional growth are inseparable.

Before moving to teacher professional growth, it should be noted that a wholly bottom-up strategy to curriculum development has got its own limitations and practical problems. Bolstad (2004) gives examples of such problems. Examples of such projects show that SBCD can be very slow and piecemeal. Besides, a lack of central governance and monitoring can have serious detrimental effects on the quality of the teaching learning processes. Furthermore, many teachers may simply be unwilling to participate in such attempts thinking that curriculum development is beyond their role commitments. This is perhaps the reason behind the fluctuation between top-down and bottom-up strategies of curriculum development in many countries (Elliot, 1997). Hence the need for a model that combines both strategies in an attempt to preserve the strengths of each.

Professional growth
A number of concepts related to teacher professional growth are relevant to the proposed model. First, teacher learning is currently believed to be a life-long endeavor. But we have to make a distinction between experienced teachers and expert teachers. The former refers to the length of teaching experience measured in terms of years. But, the latter refers to teachers who can be considered exemplars. Earlier, researchers used to compare experts and novices in teaching in terms of a set of behaviors related to specific aspects of teaching, mostly, classroom management (Tsui, 2003). The focus of attention nowadays has shifted to the study of teacher cognition. It is currently well known that teachers will not automatically change their practices once they are told about any new idea or familiarized with it. The main determinant of teacher behavior is said to be his/her theory-in-action or personal practical theory. This has been conceptualized in different ways. However, a major component of teachers' personal practical theory would be their tacit beliefs and values about what constitutes effective foreign language teaching and learning. Such tacit component of the teacher's personal practical knowledge is formed throughout his/her past experience as a learner.

Most teacher educators at the moment would readily agree that tacit knowledge of teaching has its roots in past experience and, at the same time, acts as a filter for any received knowledge in teacher education programs be they pre-service or in-service. This might explain the phenomenon referred to above, i.e. teachers' reinterpretation of the intended curriculum dictated to them using a top-down model. Research indicates that such tacit knowledge does resist change because it cannot be articulated by teachers. Nor can it be directly accessed by researchers. However, there is enough evidence indicating that it is changeable under certain conditions. One condition is that teachers should be autonomous learners of teaching, i.e. they should become reflective practitioners.

Tsui's (2003) characterization of expertise is relevant to the discussion of professional growth. According to her, trying to distinguish expert language teachers from novices in terms of differences in teaching performance may not be very helpful in understanding how teachers grow professionally. Acquiring expertise as a process would be more useful. In this respect, she identifies a number of characteristics of the on-going process of becoming an expert teacher. First, it involves reflection in and on action. Tsui (2003, p. 227) argues that

She further adds that expertise is a "…constant engagement in exploration and experimentation, in problematizing the unproblematic…" Second, she asserts that expertise involves conscious deliberation that enables teachers to see things from different perspectives and identify the adequacy and relevance of past experiences related to new teaching situations. Finally, her notion of multiple and distributed expertise is specially relevant to teacher involvement in curriculum development. According to her, a teacher might gain expertise in one aspect of his/her complex work, but may act as a novice in another aspect. A teacher might be an expert in teaching English inside the classroom, but may act like a novice as a peer coach or a supervisor or even a task designer. Tsui (2003, p. 279) argues

In other words, it is advisable to avoid talking about global expertise in a profession. Expertise in teaching might be viewed as being distributed across individual teachers. It follows then, argues Tsui (2003, p. 280), that "The accomplishment of a task at the expert level often requires the pooling together of the expertise of a number of individuals." Given this notion of multiple and distributed expertise, it might be argued that professional growth is essentially a collaborative and multi-faceted endeavor. Furthermore, autonomy does not mean working individually. Indeed, part and parcel of current thinking on teacher professional growth is the attempt to replace teacher isolation by teacher collaboration in professional growth networks. Another condition is that teachers should be encouraged to engage in enquiry-oriented teaching activities that help them de-routinize their practice in class. This is the essence of reflective teaching. Such activities/task types include, among many other things, action research. This does not mean that there will be no role for teacher educators such as supervisors in in-service education or professional course instructors in pre-service teacher education programs. Indeed, their roles have to be redefined from lecturers or trainers to professional growth facilitators and co-coordinators.

Action Research
Action research has become a buzzword in the Omani context. But like some other innovative ideas (for example: alternative assessment) that are readily adopted in the fertile and virgin Omani system of education, the term has been associated with a number of misconceptions. The Arabic translation of this reflection enhancing task type is indicative of such misconception. It means literally "procedural research." Academic research also has research procedures. It might be appropriate to use the Arabic translation of other labels associated with action research such as "teacher research" or "practitioner research." Another misconception of action research relates to its purpose. To require teachers to assume a new role that might add to their burdens or that might take part of their valuable time that they have to spend on teaching is definitely undesirable if not unfair. The writer is aware of the various confusing conceptualizations of action research in the voluminous literature published recently. Some people make no distinction between action research and academic research. I would even stress the point that we have to distinguish between practitioners' action research and academic action research. Certainly, teachers are required to engage in some sort of action research to grow professionally. In an earlier paper, El-Okda (2004) discusses two options of action research that might be suitable to EFL teachers in Oman. One is called Exploratory Practice/Teaching proposed by Allwright (2000) and the other is task-based action research (El-Okda, 1991). Both of them share a number of characteristics that make them both easy to conduct and useful for professional growth.

My interest in task-based action research as a means of both professional growth and on-going curriculum development dates back to the late eighties; and the concept emerged as a solution to practical problems encountered during the implementation stage of a task-based ELT program in Egypt (El-Okda, 1991). A top-down model was used in a nationwide ELT curriculum development project. All efforts were made to ensure its success in such a large system of education with deeply rooted traditions that were expected to make resistance and misinterpretation the norm rather than the exception. More than a decade earlier, the Center for Developing English Language Teaching in Egypt (CDELT) was established at the Faculty of Education, Ain Shams University to prepare the required cadre of educational leaders. A team of American and British applied linguists together with Egyptian experts started an MA program and a Professional Diploma program. The team worked hand in hand with people at the national and regional training centers and the National Center for Educational Research and Development. Many people were sent to Reading University in England for a six-month program for training trainers. Eventually, a new series of task-based textbooks were introduced. The new textbooks replaced a very old audiolingual series. With all the tremendous efforts made to train teachers to implement the new series and the accompanying teacher-proof manuals, a number of problems emerged. Teachers tended to over-teach lesson segments they were accustomed to teaching; and therefore, to skip the focal tasks constituting the innovative feature in the new series complaining that they ran short of time. Their progress in teaching the materials tended to be too slow as if they had had some general agreement to have a go-slow strike. Textbook writers had to cut off four six-to-eight lesson units from the first twenty-unit textbook and include them in the next textbook in the series. Misinterpretation of tasks was the norm rather than the exception.

It was in this context that the seeds of my views about teacher involvement in curriculum development through task-based action research were planted. Rather than allow teachers to copy the detailed guidance prescribed in the teacher manual, which, more often than not, brought about guidance jams for teachers inside the classroom, I called for lesson planning in terms of task analysis. The aim was to allow teachers to form a mental representation of the work program for their learners. They were required to analyze the focal task in each lesson into its components: the givens, the procedure (steps to be followed by the learner), and the expected outcome. They were also required to identify the apparent pedagogical focus of the task. Weekly meetings with teachers consisting mainly of task analysis workshops proved to be very effective in getting over those problems.

Gradually, I began to realize that within the framework of task-based language learning/teaching, teacher professional growth may be conceptualized in terms of three stages: teacher-as-task-implementer, teacher-as-task-modifier and teacher-as-task-designer. As teachers began to gain more self-confidence, their pace of teaching improved and task misinterpretation decreased. Complaints about the course length changed into attempts to supplement focal tasks with similar and/or modified ones of their own make. Many tasks were modified in ways which improved their design. Unfortunately, however, lack of central support and coordination of these efforts in an on-going model of curriculum development made them local and piecemeal. A decade later, a new series of task-based textbooks was introduced to replace the earlier series. Certainly, the new series has many innovative features. But so had the earlier one. And with those features also the teacher-designed tasks were lost.

Figure 1 diagrammatically shows seven issues that might be addressed in teachers' task-based action research, two types of data that can be used in investigating them and the possible outcomes that may result from such attempts. Task-based action research is discussed in detail elsewhere (El-Okda, 2004). Indeed, Ellis (1998; 1997) has recently dwelt upon the need to engage teachers in task-based teacher research as a kind of evaluation of language teaching materials that he calls "micro-evaluation". The first two issues (task analysis and task complexity) are related to task design. The former involves analyzing a task work-plan in terms of its three components: the givens (input), the procedure to be followed by learners in performing it and the possible outcome(s) learners might come up with after its completion. This can be done regularly in lesson planning. It helps teachers distinguish between tasks and "non-tasks"/traditional exercises/drills. There are different proposals for analyzing language learning tasks in the literature (see for example Ellis, 2003 and Nunan, 1988). However, the three-component analysis adopted here is consistent with Doyle's (1983) original conceptualization of academic work in the main stream of educational thought. More important still is that EFL teachers find it fairly easy to understand (El-Okda, 1991). If used regularly in lesson planning, particularly in nationally mandated curricula, it can constitute some sort of 'pre-action' reflection that might be used in reflection-on-action.

Task complexity, as Robinson (2001) argues can be determined by looking at specific features in task work-plans such as the number of givens to which learners have to attend to and the number of steps they have to follow and the number of possible outcomes. Robinson distinguishes between task complexity and task difficulty. The latter depends on characteristics of the learners related to both affective and ability factors. Presumably, facilitators organizing workshops to acquaint teachers with those concepts need not use highly technical terms proposed in second language acquisition research. Nor do they have to subscribe to excluding what Robinson calls task conditions from the study of task complexity. It is true that decisions related to learners' participation might be left entirely for the teacher. However, most task work-plans entail the use of specific participation patterns. Following Allwright's specifications of the principles of exploratory teaching, the study of teachers' perceptions of task difficulty can be conducted using ordinary language learning discussion tasks. Information gained from the study of task complexity and task difficulty can shed light on task sequencing. Another issue that can be investigated will be the linkage patterns among different tasks in one unit, as well as across different units. However, this particular issue has received very little attention in task-based research. That is why I have excluded it from Figure 1. Learners' assessment of learning tasks is by no means a new concept (See for example Candlin & Murphy, 1986) and is specially highlighted in the process syllabus (Breen & Littlejohn, 2000). Teachers might do collaborative work on segments of task-based discourse to study issues like the amount of negotiation triggered by different types of tasks or different versions of the same type. They might also look at very practical concerns of theirs such as the amount and functions of code-switching and the different mistakes that might occur in task-based interaction. The study of such issues related to task-in-process might help teachers make informed pedagogical decisions.

Tracing the history of educational action research in Britain, Eliot (1997) shows that it was essentially the tool used for teacher involvement in school-based curriculum development in Stenhouse' famous Humanities Curriculum Project in the sixties. The project aimed at creating social studies curricula that were meaningful and relevant to learners. This led to the emergence of many other school-based, bottom-up curriculum development attempts. The shift to a national curriculum in Britain has led to dissociating action research from curriculum development. Therefore, its role has become confined to teacher professional development (improving practice) or just self-discovery. However, he predicts a nearby future comeback of collaborative action research involving more teacher involvement in curriculum development so that professional development and curriculum development might be reunited again.

Similarly, Brady (1995) examines the Australian attempt to strike a balance between centralization represented in the production of national curriculum profiles and decentralization represented in encouraging school-based initiatives within the framework of those national profiles, raising the question of the possible coexistence of both strategies. Brady argues that they can co-exist although the role of teachers in curriculum development will be constrained.

A proposed framework for curriculum development and professional growth

The discussion thus far might have highlighted a number of principles that should govern teacher involvement in curriculum development. These include the following principles:

Figure 2 diagrammatically shows how EFL teachers may be involved in on-going curriculum development integrating top-down and bottom-up strategies. According to this model, teachers' collaborative research based on tasks included in the newly introduced textbooks can lead to newly designed or modified tasks that can be subsequently published as supplementary ideas guides, as Allwright (1981) has called for, or even included in subsequent editions of national textbooks.

The present writer will readily agree to a modified version of Figure 2 in which teacher initiatives might be included at higher levels of the ELT curriculum development process. Coordinators can also involve teachers in the analysis of all curriculum documents including philosophy statements, and curriculum guides. At least they need to be involved in modifying curriculum guides according to their proposed initiatives. But the matter is not as easy as linking the two top boxes with an arrow pointing from coordinators to national curriculum documents.

Although Figure 2 is self explanatory, a number of comments are in order. First, co-coordinators/facilitators support need not be confined to school-based workshops. There is an urgent need to make use of available technology in connecting teachers and facilitators. The notion of multiple expertise discussed earlier entails collaborative work and one way of putting an end to teacher isolation will be teacher networks. Fortunately, the idea of teacher networks is getting more and more popular in Oman. Second, publishing teacher modified or newly designed tasks can be first published in ideas guides to be tried out in different schools before they are finally published in national textbooks. Currently used textbooks, like textbooks used in other parts of the world, teem with segments of lessons that are no more than traditional exercises or drills except perhaps for the visual element. Through task-based action research, teachers will hopefully be able to modify those exercises/drills in more well-designed tasks. Finally, supervisors' roles have always been confined to attempts to help teachers improve their classroom behavior. It is time to get them involved in curriculum development through acting as task-based action research coordinators/facilitators.

Conclusion
In this paper, an attempt was made to discuss a number of issues related to involving teachers in on-going curriculum development. The aim was to specify the principles that can be used as guidelines for the proposed framework. The proposed model is a tentative attempt to reconcile top-down and bottom-up models of curriculum development. Though this model has been developed for EFL curriculum development, it can be adapted to other school curricula. It might be argued that EFL materials are task based. But other teaching materials may not be task based. The essence of the model lies in curriculum analysis and curriculum micro-evaluation. This makes it applicable to the curricula of other school subjects.

A number of recommendations can be made. First, micro-evaluation of teaching materials and task design should constitute a major area of undergraduate courses on curriculum design. Second, the process of on-going curriculum development should be centrally supported and co-coordinated. It should be part and parcel of the top-down attempts to develop curricula. Networked teacher circles can be very helpful in this respect. Third, the argument that teachers mostly perceive their role to be confined to curriculum implementation (Bezzina, 1991) should not be taken as an excuse for excluding them from this process. It should only alert us to the need to change teachers' perceptions of their role in curriculum development as a prerequisite for the success of any attempt of this sort. Fourth, administrative obstacles that prevent teachers from being actively involved in such efforts should be removed.

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