Practitioners respond to Kathleen Graves’ ‘Mind the gap: A tale of two curriculum fallacies’

IF 4 2区 文学 Q1 EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH
Emily Yuko Cousins, Peter Brereton
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

As Kathleen Graves argues in her 2023 article, the belief that students learn best when teachers deliver a curriculum exactly as written is a common fallacy, based on an underlying assumption that ‘the institutional curriculum is the most important determinant of what happens in the classroom’ (p. 200). Graves stresses that, in reality, the institutional curriculum itself does not guarantee effective learning and that, instead, it is up to teachers to modify, adapt, or ‘enact’ the curriculum for it to make sense and work effectively in each unique context (p. 200). In our roles as academic writing instructors at a university in Japan, we are simultaneously teachers and curriculum developers. As such, we were drawn to this article and have examined how Graves’ ideas relate to our teaching beliefs and experiences. In this response article, we first discuss issues caused by an overemphasis on the institutional as well as on the enacted curricula. We then highlight the importance of building a program culture that invites open dialogue about how teachers creatively adapt a given curriculum in order to involve teachers meaningfully in course development.

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来源期刊
Language Teaching
Language Teaching Multiple-
CiteScore
7.10
自引率
2.80%
发文量
46
期刊介绍: Language Teaching is the essential research resource for language professionals providing a rich and expert overview of research in the field of second-language teaching and learning. It offers critical survey articles of recent research on specific topics, second and foreign languages and countries, and invites original research articles reporting on replication studies and meta-analyses. The journal also includes regional surveys of outstanding doctoral dissertations, topic-based research timelines, theme-based research agendas, recent plenary conference speeches, and research-in-progress reports. A thorough peer-reviewing procedure applies to both the commissioned and the unsolicited articles.
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