Conference Agenda

The trend followed by several European education systems opens to the possibility of making the curriculum offered to students in each school more flexible, more tailor made. However, such trend has been unequally appropriated by systems, teachers and schools (Priestley et. al. 2021).

Explanations of this difference could rely on curriculum traditions that have been framing such educational systems ( Kuiper et. al. 2008). Also, part of this inequality can be explained by the difficulty felt by many teachers and schools in assuming their agency in terms of curriculum decisions.

However, due to increasing traveling policies and international pressure made by OECD and other transnational institutions , acknowledgement regarding such differences have been appropriated by educational advisors and have been the support to Erasmus+ teacher mobility at the school level.

“… the continuous impulse given by European institutions to the mobility of non-university teaching staff supports the idea of the benefits of its completion towards improving the quality of education in European Union member states.” Salcedo-López &Cuevas-López, ,2021, 6).

Has the contact with other education systems and with other teachers from other countries, stimulated by the networks established within the scope of the ERASMUS+ programme, contributed to raising the awareness of teachers who might act otherwise?

Following the perspective of Biesta et al, (2015), we understand teachers' curriculum agency as the teacher's ability to recontextualize policies and translate them into their field of action.

It is a question of exerting a double effort of interpreting the purposes that the policies have defined and of taking local action, which reconfigures and encourages student learning.

That frames the purpose of this proposal - to contribute to the discussion about the effects that these mobilities have had on the power of curricular agency of teachers from two European countries.

Its objectives are:

To relate international mobility experience with curricular agency of teachers from two European countries

To research in two countries the impact of how international experience has encouraged curriculum making in both the school and the classroom.

To identify the impact of mobility on Schools curricular options.

The English language dominates almost all aspects of our daily life, not only in third-world countries like Bangladesh but throughout the world to meet the various needs of communication. Bangladesh uses English for other purposes as well, but in general, to enrol in universities, to migrate overseas for jobs, to study abroad and to work and continue business internationally. Moreover, the ability to communicate effectively in English is also considered an important quality in many job sectors, especially in corporate settings. The ability to communicate in English provides individuals with more opportunities to achieve a suitable position in the job market with an acceptable salary, contributing to economic growth and poverty reduction and achieving sustainable goals in a broader sense (Roshid, 2018).
Different strategies have been taken by the government of Bangladesh to implement standardized English language education in the country, including the revision of the curriculum several times. Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) was introduced for the first time in 1995 with the hope to improve communicative competence of learners. During the implementation process, a significant gap is observed between the policy aspiration and the resources due to a shortage of teachers with competency in English and teaching skills. To address the situation, government took different strategies and arranged training programs for the in-service teachers to implement CLT successfully in classroom practice and achieve its goal with the support from different Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) and foreign donor agencies.
Despite different initiatives, teachers failed to demonstrate significant improvements in classroom practice after completing the training (Huda, 2015). Thus, students who complete their secondary education are likely to enter higher education, outside and inside the country, with a smattering of English language skills. Therefore, students in Bangladeshi universities are still facing difficulties in both speaking and listening to regular class activities despite studying English as a compulsory subject from Grade 1 to Grade 12. It is because of the lack of speaking and listening practices at school and college levels (Shurovi, 2014). The competence in both listening and speaking skills is challenging for students studying at overseas universities, seeking a better job, and networking for social survival (Roshid & Chowdhury, 2013).
In this study, the challenges and gaps in effective training for oral skills from the perspectives of policymakers and teachers were identified to address implementation barriers to help learners proficient in oral skills of English. Finally, it concludes by proposing a conceptual framework for minimizing gaps between the policy and practice to enable more effective implementation of curriculum for oral skills in the future. The present study addresses the following research question:
RQ: How do curriculum policy and practice on oral skills affect English language education at the secondary level in Bangladesh?
The theoretical framework of this study is a “grounded” one as the contextual phenomenon was "grounded" in data, which can provide a better explanation than a theory borrowed "off the shelf" (Creswell, 2012). It does not limit the role of the research in the process-making but gives choices to make categories of interpretation, connect questions to the data, and interweave personal values and experiences (Creswell & Poth, 2018).

Wales is in the process of major educational reform. The new curriculum (Curriculum for Wales, CfW) commenced in schools in September 2022. CfW differs from the previous curriculum through its focus on four purposes representing a “shared vision and aspiration” for every learner and by articulating learners' progression through six areas of learning and experience. In contrast to the previous performative culture in Wales (Evans, 2022), CfW suggests a more developmental view of learning. Also central to CfW is the principle of subsidiarity. Similar to ‘new curriculum’ in Finland, Scotland, and the Netherlands, CfW shifts away from top-down policy and gives schools and teachers greater autonomy (Sinnema et al., 2020). Professional understandings of progression in learning, and a recognition that learners start at different points and progress in different ways, are meant to form the basis for schools’ curriculum, assessment, and pedagogy arrangements (Welsh Government, 2021).

In support of this, Camau i’r Dyfodol (Steps to the Future) is a three-year project designed to support the realisation of CfW by working with teachers and educational partners across the system to advance practical understandings of learning progression. This presentation shares some findings from phase one of our project, which aimed to understand where educational partners are in the change process at the start of CfW and supports needed to move forward. We engaged in conversations with professionals from across the system to address the following research questions:

1. What influences are there on current and future curriculum realisation?

1. How are educational partners moving their identified priorities forward for curriculum realisation?

1. How can new knowledge from co-construction activity be fed back into the system in ways that are meaningful?

As a theoretical frame for this work, we bring together the concepts of curriculum coherence, co-construction, and praxis into an adapted Integrity Model of Educational Change for Wales. This model incorporates systemic integrity, personal and professional integrity, and educational integrity, three dimensions essential throughout the change process (Hayward & Spencer, 2010).

Systemic integrity reflects shared commitment and coherence between constituent parts of the education system. Within curriculum reform, coherence is sometimes conceptualised between the intended and enacted curriculum; or between curriculum, assessment, and pedagogy (Jin et al., 2019). Soini et al. (2022) explicate curriculum coherence in Finland along dimensions of the intended direction and goals of the curriculum, an integrative approach to teaching and learning, and alignment between objectives, content, and assessment. Next, personal and professional integrity reflects a belief that what one is doing matters, enabling teachers to develop their own understandings (Hayward & Spencer, 2010). Co-construction has been integral to achieve this in the context of CfW, and was empowering but also challenging for teachers engaged in curriculum design (Hayward et al., 2020). We define co-construction as a process of constructing new knowledge through collaborative practice (Parsons, 2021) and as a disposition towards learning that involves participants actively ‘knotworking’ together to negotiate solutions (Engeström, 2004, p.17). Finally, educational integrity reflects how change can enhance learning. We draw from the concept of praxis here, whereby teachers enact practice to build theory and reflect upon theory when making practical decisions. Pedagogical praxis can be a challenge in the new curriculum reform as a clear theory of progression in learning is needed to inform practice.

In this presentation, we share findings to the research questions and discuss how these inform phase two of our project. Wales has adopted a number of the OECD’s (2018) principles for the future of education systems, and thus insights gained through this research will be of interest to other countries taking similar approaches.