C- Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)
3.9 Textbooks, materials development and Huang’s framework for teacher autonomy: some final remarks
It is preferable for me to remind you that what I am undertaking in my thesis is investigating the link between having a set textbook, scope for the development of materials by the teacher and teachers’ sense of responsibility. As teachers face learners’ needs and learner autonomy sometimes forces them to exercise a degree of autonomy themselves.
I will now look briefly at the situation in three different contexts, KSA, Scotland and the Netherlands, as an illustration of the fact that there need not be a simple causal relationship whereby a set textbook in itself prevents teachers from having a sense of exercising autonomy or that teachers empowered to be materials developers is necessary for exercising autonomy.
Graph 1: KSA, Dutch and Scotland varied responses to textbooks and materials development.
The Ministry of Education in the Netherlands, provide set textbooks similar to the Saudi education system (Hughes, 1989). Teachers also always follow the instructions and the marking scheme of the General Directorate of Education (GDE) in designing their tests, much like the Saudi system.
However, their education system provides schools with the freedom and the scope to develop their own educational programme and materials (Thijs et al., 2009).
Therefore, unlike the Saudi system, Dutch schools devise their own curricular plan, teaching methods, and they select teaching materials (Encyclopedia).
In The Netherlands, English occupies a certain position in a number of formal domains of Dutch society. That is to say that the foreign language functions vividly within 'modern' domains such as media and business (Ytsma, 2000). For example, there is extensive exposure to English in the mass media.
De Bot (1994) remarks that 40 to 60 per cent of the television programmes in The Netherlands are English language (all subtitled in Dutch). Moreover, English is increasingly used in commercial advertising. In this respect, Gerritsen (1996) mentions that almost a fifth of the pages in Dutch newspapers and magazines contained English language advertisements.
KSA Set textbooks, no support or engagment in materials development
Dutch Set textbooks, with support or
engagment in materials development Scotland
No set
textbooks, very varied
response to chances for materials development
Gerritsen (1996) concludes that fully English-language advertisements are fairly well established in The Netherlands. In essence, all primary, low secondary and upper secondary schools in the Netherlands emphasise upon communication skills and the communicative function of the English language and, therefore, the objectives come down to plain communicative abilities in the domains of understanding, speaking and reading (Ingersoll, 2007).
The next system to be illustrated is the Scottish education system, which has no set textbooks, unlike the Saudi and the Dutch systems, but a variety of commercial textbooks, which puts the responsibility on the teachers, in terms of materials planning and delivery.
Nevertheless, the teachers’ responsibility, which depends on a guideline for its flexibility in organising, scheduling and delivering the experiences that results in teaching methods that satisfy all the students’ needs suggest that Scotland teachers exercise lower degrees of autonomy than Dutch (Executive, 2007). Although there are no requirements that are specific like time allocation as is the case in Saudi systems (Government, 2010).
The notion about the Saudi system is that it follows the top-down system and is based upon textbooks assessments (Al-Sadan, 2000, Ali, 2007). Particularly when teachers in Saudi are given time limits on teaching certain units in the textbooks (MoEAdminstration, 2010), this limitation hinders teachers and does not necessarily negatively implicate the content of the textbook, since the test of the textbook and the learner’s progress is viewed as the extent they have gone through the textbook and not what they have gained (Al-Sadan, 2000).
Accordingly, the Saudi teacher faces difficulties in providing materials or books other than the official textbook. Moreover, because the teacher is obligated to finish all the units of the textbook, he/she has no time to focus on materials that demands extra attention.
This leads to my claim that teachers in Saudi Arabia feel they are frustrated about the lack of scope and space to apply or develop new materials to supplement the textbook and being able to exercise a certain degree of autonomy.
However, having a set text textbooks need not preclude the teacher from engaging in materials development because teachers can have a set textbook and around that they can construct and develop the materials.
For example, KSA has set textbooks and teachers have no formal recognised role in materials development (Al-Sadan, 2000), and despite this they have been informally invited to submit some recommendations at some stages with no particular material development training (Zaid, 1993).
Teaching English in Saudi Arabia, as explained in more detail in chapter two, page 22, is not intended for communicative purposes as the Saudi community is rarely exposed to foreigners in situations where the use of the English language is needed and used as a necessary tool for communication.
Therefore, the communicative approach could be difficult to apply in schools, and instead Audio Lingual Methods and Grammar Translation Methods were the two traditional teaching methods that are applicable in the Saudi English Language teaching context (Alresheed, 2008). Finally, a reminder of the reason why I have illustrated the aforementioned three systems (GTM, ALM and CLT) is that my thesis explores the relationship between having a set textbook, the teacher as materials developer and teachers who wish to have a degree of autonomy. Those are the three dynamics that are built in this study.
The way those three dynamics interact are slightly different within the systems of Scotland, Saudi and The Netherlands. Such arguments suggests that it is not an automatic conclusion that the Saudi education system has set textbooks, but that it has no recognition of the need to exercise autonomy, as textbooks do not necessarily constrain the teacher, and it is my intention to explore such a relationship in the data collection.
This section presents an investigation of the literature relevant to issues surrounding the Saudi teachers of English language and their participation in the development of materials and their relationship with learners’ needs and as a result, a review of the implications of teachers exercising levels of autonomy.
It also explores teachers’ exclusive relationship with the application, design and assessment of materials of teaching and participation of reformation of textbooks.
Moreover, the aim of this section is to reveal factors that will get updated through the exercise of different level of teacher autonomy, and the level of control exerted by teachers in their teaching.
This present study’s questions were researched relative to the literature discussed in this section, and the results are presented in the coming chapters. The literature presented in this section showed the motives of teachers in many published studies regarding the usage of materials and their effects on the degree of autonomy of teachers, and the vivid relations between these two.
The ideas in this chapter will become more apparent in the methodology, which is in the coming chapter, and which marks the existing relations between teacher autonomy and curriculum development (with special interest in usage of material, design and assessment) in the context of the Saudi educational system. The next chapter focuses on the methodological framework, methods, instruments, and data analysis methods used in this study.