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LITERATURE REVIEW, DIANA, SAND
LITERATURE REVIEW
The literature review presented in this research proposal is mainly segmented in four main areas that are intended to be the theoretical background for the construction of an integrated curriculum for ASE. The document gathers ideas from: Curriculum research, assessment, materials and classroom procedures.
First, some ideas related to curriculum research and development that present an indication on what the curriculum represents for teachers and students and how it is integrated by multiple variables.
As Stenhouse (1981) states the active participation of the teachers in research and curriculum development makes them the main characters in the understanding of education. SHORT SENTENCES DON’T’ JOIN ANYTHING.
The design of a Curriculum begun GRAMMAR in the U.S. with the development in different areas, mainly in math and physics, between 1.956 and 1.958. It attempted that the new course included guides for teachers, films, laboratory experiments, tests and exams, in 1960 the first curriculum was applied and there started a corporation called Educational Service Incorporate (E.S.I) that was in charge of designing different curricula for different areas among schools and universities in the EE.UU.
In 1.966 the design of curriculum was expanded in the world, the next countries interested in developing a curriculum were England and Wales and it was initiated by the Nuffield foundation science, nuttfield maths and nutffield modern language. The Nuffield foundations and schools councils are the corporations in charge to develop projects and curriculum for universities and schools in Europe.
These ideas are very important because they give clear perceptions on curriculum facilitators, contexts, pedagogical processes, critical learning, stages of curriculum construction coming from research, the teacher as a researcher and more. These first thoughts also demonstrate how the curriculum has always been an integrated concept and its construction has to include several elements such as nature of the discipline, rationale, philosophy, aim, structure, student learning outcomes and standards.
When the need of the construction of an integrated curriculum appears, teachers have to understand that in many occasions, the various intentions that a curriculum may have will not eventually fit into the needs of educational reality. In the construction of a curriculum, the teacher-researcher must think about the educational objectives that a school intends to accomplish.
The objective of a curriculum is to improve schools through the enhancement of teaching and learning. This development focuses on the transformation of society itself, and culture. Culture is inherited, learnt and communicated, and the same path needs to be followed in the curriculum.
When a new curriculum is designed, a new method in teaching needs to arise GM. The new curriculum needs to be developed between teachers, students, and needs to keep in mind the point of view parents have of education. The integration of a curriculum also has to take into account three categories according to the curriculum connections: within one subject alone (interdisciplinary), between two or more subjects (multidisciplinary or pluri-disciplinary, and interdisciplinary), and beyond the subjects (transdisciplinary). A curriculum is fully integrated once it joints the needs of the community (students, parents, teachers, institutions) and the approaches applied in the model of integration.
Another important element in the creation of a curriculum is the fact that motivation and interest given to students, it is crucial in order to prevent and avoid prior misunderstandings caused by the different types of curriculum, based on foreign models that do not take into account the context in which they are applied. An idea on how to modify traditional teaching methods is that the curriculum has to be designed based on students´ discoveries, and also based on research that will allow students to think and reflect upon what is being taught.
A possible orientation that curriculums might have is the humanistic vision. This vision focuses on observing the school as an educational community and all its participants as a whole. Teachers think of education as a means of a democratic ambience that can be experienced in the classroom.
Other stages that have to be taken into account at the moment of curriculum design can be: analysis of the context and possible solutions to preliminary problems, construction of general goals for the project, integration and organization of possible contents, summary and organization of learning experiences, and organization of assessment stages (Tabba, in Stenhouse, 1975).
In curriculum research, education needs to be seen as a planned activity. This planned activity has to perceive contents as a part of curriculum but not as the only one. In education, students also need to have a social orientation that needs to be integrated with the contents to be studied. The goals of education and curriculum need to be in constant movement and need to focus on the contemporary life of society and other particular communities.
METHODS OF CURRICULUM DESIGN
There are different methods that can be followed when designing the curriculum, that do not depend only on reaching an objective. The methods are:
The content-based curriculum (curriculum focused on the subjects and contents students will learn and should understand) and the importance of the content, the criteria for developing a curriculum proposed by Raths (in Stenhouse, 1981) which includes a gratifying activity that allows children to choose their actions and to reflect on them afterwards, an activity where students have active roles, an activity in which students can interact with real objects and contexts (realia), the importance of taking into account the students’, parents’ and teachers’ opinions when developing the curriculum.
The process-based curriculum, which seeks a deep understanding instead of achieving high grades in the exams, and it also shows the problems between educating and examining and the fact that those problems should be solved through commitments.
The objective-based curriculum, that looks for a better performance of the students without taking into account the improvement of teachers’ and students’ quality as humans, the evaluation of the curriculum which helps in the improvement of the education delivered, but also as a tool to make decisions about the process and the people involved in it and to closely observe what failures or strengths it has, and the importance that should be given to tests, without basing the whole process on them, otherwise, students will focus on their grades and not on their learning process as a whole.
The development of the curriculum is a series of integrated elements. It is performed through the study of the perceptions of students’ needs and interests and the institution itself. To know what approach and development can adapt better to curriculum construction, some ideas can be used, for example: a researcher can think of the integration of different elements, evaluate a previous curriculum in order to construct a new one, or think of a curriculum that can focus on a specific content area.
THERE IS NOT A STATE POSITION TO SELECT THE BEST.
Some characteristics of curriculum are that it expresses global political views in a set program, offers solutions and success depending on fairness, has rules that allow continuous assessment, explores and tests hypothesis and develops knowledge.
Curriculum has been defined in many ways but one of the most relevant conceptions is given by Stenhouse (1975) who affirms that curriculum is “an ongoing process comprised of the interactions of students, teachers and knowledge”. [1]
CURRICULUM CONCEPTIONS THIS PART IS CONNECTED TO THE PROJECT
have been SUBJECT ON THE SENTENCE? defined throughout the time because it is too difficult to try to fix just one definition and “the influence of progressive education during the first half of the twentieth century brought a profound change in the conception of curriculum”[2], it shows, how important is to organize a curriculum that fits whit this concept, not a straight one, better a flexible curriculum that can move with the changing education, in consequence, some curriculum types emerged and were stated by a period of time.
Curriculum as product is the performance of the different tasks, put in a different way, it refers to the results that students must achieve; in order to carry this process out, it is necessary to have clear what the objectives to reach are and the teaching learning process to develop them because in this way the outcomes will be clear.
Curriculum as a process is an outcome and it is considered as a body of knowledge, but rather the relation of teachers, students and knowledge In a complex process, put differently, curriculum is what currently happens in the classroom and what people do in order to guide and evaluate student’s process.
As a last perspective, the Curriculum as praxis[3]” is the core in the learning teaching process looking for a commitment expressed in action to exploration of educator’s values and their practice. For instance, It may be used in a way that does not make continual reference to collective human well-being and to the emancipation of the human spirit.
In the practical discipline, the syllabus includes the Relationship between curriculum and materials because curriculum comprises activities in which learners engage under auspices of the school. This includes not only what pupils learn, but how they learn it, how teachers help them to learn, using supporting materials, styles and methods of assessment.
Syllabus determines what kind of materials will be adopted and in what ways they will be exploited for the classroom teaching. In certain educational context, the syllabus even determines how materials should be designed in the first place. However, the materials are seen as an alternative to the syllabus, but as an instrument among others used to fulfil the goals of the syllabus. Materials, whether commercially are developed or home-made, are an important element within the curriculum, and are often the most tangible and visible aspect of the curriculum, while the syllabus defines the goals and objectives.
Additionally, the syllabus includes the Relationship between curriculum and evaluation; it is pertinent to talk about evaluation because it deals with many processes in different contexts and daily lives activities. In other words, evaluation is the process that gives validity to these activities that are the proof of the outcomes of what students really learn and what they really need; these outcomes can be measured and validated thought assessment and testing procedures.
To close the perspectives in the theoretical discipline, we also can include the relationship between curriculum and classroom procedures, it refers to didactics and methodologies that make easier the curriculum development that requires taking into account some external issues that will allow in a future students and teachers to reach the goals proposed by the same curriculum. For this reason it is worthy that the teachers make decisions about how to develop a class with the appropriate tools. Thus, collecting information is one of the most important processes that give enough information to improve possible failures.
In addition, a classroom decision cannot be done without a structure; it means that the whole processes of learning and teaching have to follow a framework. In this case, this is the curriculum (David, 2002) [4] taking into account the Classroom as a social environment where they construct human activities.
In this process of English teaching, the teacher has two main roles; the first one is to facilitate the communicative process between all the participants in the classroom and the activities carried out. It means that he is a guide who helps the students in what they need to do, an activity that can conduct to a specific learning goal. The second role is to act as an interdependent participant within the learning - teaching groups, this role is connected to the first one because the teacher has to prepare resources in order to guide them.
It can be said that classroom and curriculum look for a guide for both students and teachers inside the classroom and institution, through a frame with a purpose, which must have a required result; to achieve this purpose, it is necessary to take into account some factors as the society, institution, teachers and students before starting the construction of an integrated curriculum.
As first point society is the factor in which second or foreign language teaching role differs. “In examining the impact of societal factors on language teaching, therefore, the aim is to determine the impact of groups in the community or society at large on the program”[5] for this reason, these groups are supposed to develop “self confidence and self – respect, respect by others, becoming better actors when attacking and solving the problems that they have to face, discovering and developing their talents and evaluating their own growth” (Tanner 1975. P. 330)
As a second factor to take into account in the construction of an integrated curriculum it is evident the institutional issue because it is directly related with (ASE) requirements, it refers to the interests and needs that they have (the implementation and preparation of English as a tool of business and labor world), for this reason A.S.E needs to have an organized and integrated curriculum that allows them to develop intercultural and cross-curricular competences that help people to survive in current world situations.
As third factor, the teachers have to be mentioned because they are the ones that have to determine if the curriculum changes or implementations come to be a success or a failure. In this way, they will have to pilot the curriculum, making some pedagogical changes in their beliefs, values and understandings of teaching English as a second language, testing in this way their “language proficiency, teaching experience, skill and expertise, training and qualifications, morale and motivation, teaching style and beliefs and principles”[6] that are the core in the teaching – learning process.
To end with these factors, the last one are the learners from whom the authors can get the backgrounds, beliefs and expectations to address the process in the correct way. On the other hand, teachers and learners are the ones who carry out some specific goals and objectives that should fulfill the educational purposes that are related with the social rationale of a country or a state that are reachable through an educative institution as a guide and they are manageable across learning arranged aims in the curriculum of different disciplines or subjects. To get an "educational purpose" takes a long time and it will happen at the end of the teaching process and it could be the teaching result of different influences, such a home, maturing and technology.
TEACHING AND LEARNING A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
As mentioned by Richards (2001)[7], some one SP, who learns English in a formal classroom setting, with limited or no opportunities of use outside the classroom, in a country in which English does not play an important role in internal communication is said to be learning English as a foreign language. Teachers' beliefs are to be stable constructs derived from their experience, observations, training and other sources and serve as references when teacher encounter new ideas, sometimes ones of this impeding the acceptance of new ideas or practices, forming a system or network that may be difficult to change. In teacher education a focus on belief systems is considered important since teacher development involves the development of skills and knowledge as well as the development or modification of belief systems.
Taking this last idea into account, in a Gardner´s study (1983) in multiple intelligences about various dimensions that a student could have, Felder and Enriques (1.995)[8] propose different styles of teaching and learning: sensing and intuitive, visual and verbal, active and reflective and finally sequential and global; being sensing and intuitive the most important. Sensing learners involves observing, gathering data through the senses and imply work with drills and flash card, variety of memorization strategies; intuition involve indirect perception by the way of the subconscious, it means, memory, speculating or imaging and the teachers tends to use teaching approaches that involves greater complexity and variety.
Before describing the different styles, the teacher has to question himself how the students prefer to learn, how they process and organize the information and the way that is most comfortable for them. Knowing how to recognize the individual’s learning style, provides several options to develop a class based on different student’s learning styles, intelligences or abilities that each one have. It is very important that every teacher takes into account the styles of their students, their skills and abilities to provide an adequate teaching style to reach the proposed aims in each class. Observing behaviours, attitudes and characteristics of the students define the line of the style that the teacher could use in his/her class.
According to this, one of the student´s characteristics is his culture. Intercultural approach has to be taught first in all classrooms. Chlopek (2008)[9] clarifies that Learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL) is not only important, but it is also necessary to interact with people from all over the world. EFL students take advantage of learning a foreign language because they are able to get to know different cultures, to contrast their own culture in front of others, and in that sense, they become more successful communicatively speaking because they will become intercultural speakers.
English communication is a tool in fields like art, science, technology, business, entertainment and tourism. Every country has a culture and learner needs to know about it, and know about culture English speakers countries, with this tool, they can compare, criticize and act according to the context where they will interact.
It is important to motivate students with activities that allow them to develop intercultural skills, and prevent possible misunderstandings. Teachers can use realia to stimulate those skills in the students. What teachers have to understand and take the most of is the fact that they have a lot of resources that will help them and their students to achieve a certain level of interculturalism, but this achievement will only be successful if students make their best efforts as well.
In some cases, the teacher tries to do his best effort followed by a long heritage classroom practice that [10] Littlejohn (2001) calls “McDonaldisation of society” which is the use of course books from other countries and the same methodologies of many years ago, explaining and providing indications of what teachers and students have to do in the classroom at every stage without letting them a free development. In many cases, the institutions hire teachers with little or no experience which will not prepare their classes, will not take into account students’ needs and will only followthe instructions provided by the books. Littlejohn (2001), emphasises in a shift from syllabus towards methodology, ideas from critical pedagogy, the need to structure the development of student decision-making, and a preparation for change in the subjects, contents, students’ active participation, types of exercises, tests and tasks in different contexts, etc.
An integrated approach to foreign language learning, the development of advanced students’ linguistic, strategic and sociolinguistic competences when learning English as a foreign language, is Campo´s (2002)[11] proposal. She points out the importance of communicative competence in any foreign language learning process. There are some specific parameters to follow in order to develop students’ competences in a foreign language classroom, supported on the theme-based teaching model that places equal value to content and language objectives, that will allow students to learn at their own pace in their own way in a self-access practice which is a relevant step in developing learning, through the development of communicative competences where students will be more conscious about their own learning, identifying strengths and weaknesses to be improved.
Integrated curriculum is aimed to provide strategies for learning and teaching of English as a foreign language taking into account the context and needs in which all these strategies will be based to star creating the English integrated curriculum. Students not only improve in terms of their linguistic competence but also they complement their learning process in other perspectives such as relevant areas of language learning: awareness of language as a means of communication in the foreign culture and its further implications in their learning process.
Within the curriculum, the role of the teacher is the one of a researcher that uses critical thinking in order to connect theory and practice. In addition, he is in charge of constructing, assessing and modifying the curriculum. The role of the teacher is also to become the main character in this procedure because when developing the curriculum, the learning-teaching process and his performance are improved significantly. Some of the elements involved in this development are the self, peer and co-observation to collect the necessary data for the research he is carrying out.
Another interesting point of view regarding the construction of an integrated curriculum is the inclusion of national standards. According to Guerrero, C. and Quintero, A. (2009), the national standards presented by the Ministry of education (MEN), will only guide students into becoming mechanical users of the language. This means that learners of English will be able speak English as a native speaker, but will base their knowledge on repetition and not thinking in language as a vehicle of communication that is integrated into a social context. Taking this idea into account, it can be said that the national standards as all standards used to quantify the level of English proficiency have to be seen and used as a means to an end and not as an end in itself. These standards can show students what aspects need to be included in the practice of different skills but it is the job of the curriculum to give a social and practical value to the same. Keeping this idea in mind, it can also be stated that at the moment of constructing curriculum, teachers tend to focus on pre-categorized principles that may not necessarily adapt to the integration of the context population.
Another relevant element to consider in the construction of the integrated curriculum is assessment. This element of the integrated curriculum is the one which will provide information concerning students´ and teachers´ progress, as well all the other parts that build the whole process.
An additional component of the construction for an integrated curriculum is the design, testing and use of materials. Although the term materials is not a synonym with the word curriculum, in some occasions, the two terms are seen as the same one because many course contents and guidelines are basically decided upon materials like textbooks. To illustrate this idea, Corder (1973,139) suggests that the teacher should ask himself two questions: what to teach and how to teach it. Based on these two questions the teacher will not construct a curriculum which is merely content based, but will have to integrate the target language with the necessary methodolgy that is most suitable for a particular teaching situation. When these questions are combined into the construction of the curriculum, the teacher comes face to face with having students who are learning items of the language that are not included in the syllabus that is being used, or that probably a set program of contents is not allowing the teacher to fully help students communicate naturally but only systematically and distanced from reality.
Based on Beyer and Davis (2009 p. 679), “Educational curriculum materials are intended to promote teacher learning as well as student learning” The same authors state that materials define the way students are going to learn and implicitly carry with them a hidden learning approach.
In the field of materials, we also can find a connection with the curriculum in the sense of choice depending on the level and type of students. Shepherd (2004), mentions that materials should also be selected depending on students abilities, thus having a clear purpose on the construction of the curriculum. If a curriculum is primarily focused on materials and levels in which students are classified, we would be overlooking at an idea presented by Ellis, Rod (1994, 530), that points out how the individual learner and the situational and social factors need to be considered when teaching and learning a second or foreign language. According to to these authors, the learning outcomes are the product of the integration of the individual learner.
Another idea related to materials and curriculum is the one of having instruments that are adapted or written by teachers taking into account the community and student body. A process that can be used by teachers to have a more fitting perspective on how to write student focused materials presented by Jolly and Bolitho (1998, p 270-272) is the following:
Identification: which language, meanings, functions and skills are needed.
Contextual realization: finding suitable ideas and contexts in the materials.
Pedagogical realization: finding appropriate exercises and activities with proper instructions.
Physical production: layout, type, size, tape length, visual of materials, etc.
Students´ use: introduction in class the use of worksheets at home and checking in class.
Evaluation: materials need to be corrected and identified to know if they work for the group or not.
It can be mentioned that pre-service teachers can include material design, evaluation and improvement as part of the integrated curriculum, in order to find common patterns in the individual learner that can be standardized and center the student in the core of the construction process. If teachers follow material development processes like the one above, students will have a bigger role in their own education and will be part of the integrated curriculum.
Teachers as reflective practitioners (Beyond, 2003, p. 9) can get involved in different roles, in which they solve the dilemmas of classroom practice, take into account the cultural contexts and also act as a part of the curriculum development. Through research, teachers can transform the intellectual practices and issues that affect the methods inside the classroom to improve the teaching-learning process between them and their students. Teachers should work on a reflection process based on research in order to improve the aspects mentioned above because research helps the teacher to understand through literature and professional guidance why there are certain phenomena happening in the classroom, school or educational system.
When we speak of people “teaching a discipline” such as math or biology, we are separating the knowledge or content from the activity or teaching. These traces of activity that teachers accumulate through the art of teaching are not seen as knowledge; they are referred to as experience. Experience is the only real reference point teachers share: experiences as students that influence their views of teaching, experiences in professional preparation, and experience as members of society. This motley and diverse base of experience unites people who teach, but it does not constitute a disciplinary community (Freeman, 1998, p.10).
The teacher’s role in our society is essential because it is not just about broadcasting knowledge, teaching is an activity with repetitive tasks and the assumptions of many roles in order to make our society get into the right path by giving people a sense of identity and personal fulfillment. However, teachers are part of a long chain that includes several players in order to accomplish these goals, and the possibility of using different methods in order to see how classroom processes affect student’s achievements.
We often hear educators say that teaching is both an art and a science. It means that teaching is basically a subjective activity carried out in an organized way. In fact, there are educators who believe that teaching lacks a unified or a commonly shared set of rules, and as such cannot even be considered a discipline (Beyond, 2003, p.1)
However, not many teachers consider the importance of their experience and research into the classroom in order to improve the teaching act into the classroom and teaching process. Teacher’s experience and research into the classroom are aspects that currently contribute to improve the ways of teaching and the use of new methodologies and strategies with the students.
Teachers have to reflect about their methods because these are considered as an integral part of language education and "a primary vehicle for the development of basic knowledge and skills" (Grosse, 1991). Thus, teachers might take into account, for instance, new methods related with teaching context sensitivity, local knowledge, physical settings, course and institution nature, time, and teaching resources. Another possibility teachers have is a criterion that relates to macro-social factors such as institutional, social, economic, cultural, and political environments to shape the formation and social transformation. Together, all these ideas encourage teachers to go beyond methods and promote a self-awareness of the best methods for learning and teaching.
Classroom procedures should also be considered part of the construction of a curriculum taking into account the relevance of perceiving teachers as reflective practitioners. According to [12]Kumaravadivelu (2003, page 9), “teachers are elements that can get involved in different roles, and can solve the dilemmas presented in the classroom practice, take into account the cultural contexts and also take part in the curriculum development as the fulfillment of the cycle between theory and practice”. Teachers can be agents of transformative intellectual processes and issues extending research skills for them and for students.
Classroom procedures and their task in the construction of an integrated curriculum involve a lot of elements of the curriculum; according to Richards [13](2001) the curriculum development entails some components explained as follows.
Societal factors: the impact of societal factors on language teaching forces to determinate the community at large on the program. This factor includes: government, educational organizations, citizens, teachers and students, the environment of the community and their problems inside the society.
Teacher factors: teachers are a key factor in the successful implementation of curriculum development because the teachers must be able to make an excellent labor in the following dimensions: language, skills, use of materials, teaching style, expertise, motivation, and all the tools that can be used in order to design and apply this curriculum.
Learner factors: the factors involve some important things as experiences as learner, expectations, proficiency, students group, materials, and time of the program.
During the construction of an integrated curriculum for Alianza Social Educativa (ASE) process, materials need to be corrected and identified to know if it works for the group or not and according with the results of that, teachers need to identify the way that class is being developed.
Teacher´s role in the classroom is facilitate a nice environment where students could have new experiences needed for learning, on the other hand, teacher needs to be a guide of mediation between students and process, and last but not least the teacher has to be a learner with the students developing his/ her skills acquiring new knowledge from them for following the process as a teacher.
THIS INFORMATION COMES FROM BACKGROUND
Nowadays, it is difficult to talk about curriculum because there are several ideas about this topic. For this reason, it is relevant to build meanings through adjectives to find a whole meaning about curriculum. Some of these adjectives could be: hidden, vivid, teaching, learning, teachers, programs, systems, society. As the reader can see, the term curriculum has concepts related to education and theory and it was divided in three several fields: curriculum, evaluation and practices.
In addition, “before the XX century the term curriculum did not exist because the education and selection of contents was a responsibility of the teacher and education was not part of the social system”[14] (Barriga, 2003, p. 4). However, after the French revolution, education acquired an important place in the social system because society noticed that it was linked to experiences and the human development of each student. In this sense, the philosopher and teacher John Dewey in his book: The child and the curriculum (1902), proposed a great emphasis on the experience of the learning process.
TAKE CARE ABOUT HOW TO INCLUDE THIS SECTION BECAUSE IT DOESN’T HAVE DISCUSSIONS ONCE THE LITERATURE WAS ESTABLISHED
PERCEPTIONS
In terms of perception, the following fields are taken into account for our project in order to have a wider perspective of how students and the community can possible understand and interpret their education process.
Scientific View of Perceptions
Perception is the most important tool human beings use to process all the information that is received through the senses. It also helps to retain certain information in the brain and use it when necessary in the future.
The human being is exposed to information every single second. Every time we hear, see, smell, touch and taste something, we are receiving information about the environment. This information allows us create a representation of the reality that surrounds us.
For example, when we are in the kitchen and we see a particular type of oil, our brain associates it with all the other types of food that we can combined it with. It can also remind you that you got burned with it and that you have to be careful. Another example could come through your nose. When you smell a certain fragrance, you might immediately remember somebody who used to use it. You could also remember a place, a special situation you both shared, etc. All this is able to happen thanks to the information you have previously recorded in your brain through perceptions.
The act of perceiving or in other words integrated vision, introduces to the human being into a higher dimension of understanding and of interfering reality. It is the intensification of the individual conscience
Anthropological View of Perceptions
Perceptions could have a lot of points of view coming from different fields. Taking this in mind, the anthropological field states that “perception is understood as a behavioral manner that takes into account the selection and symbolic elaboration of the sensible experience” (Vargas, 1994)
In addition, perception gives qualitative characteristics to some objects and the environment through cultural or ideological systems that can be built by the community in order to create evidences about the reality. According to Vargas (1994), the cultural systems are a biological activity of the human being that could be sensible to cultural analysis by their own components and in function of other cultural systems. However, the ideological system is organized by the social practice that depends of the historic – cultural development of a social group. This takes into account power relationships and is based on evidence.
Therefore, the evidences are built culturally or ideologically and they give sense to the immediate experiences of the quotidian life by cultural and social structures. As a result, perceptions are sources and products of evidence, taking into account that they are faced up to social learning. In this case, the ideological models help the human being to generate an ideal interpretation to construct reality.
Each society has created and classified its own evidence and at the same time transmitted from generation to generation. This is why some perceptions are not taken into account because through the transmissions of these evidences the social order is established and cannot be changed due to these evidences because they do not allow new perceptions to be positioned.
People give meaning to sensations through cultural and ideological aspects which shape the vision of the reality and shape the evidences about the world. Therefore, people obtain information related to the environment from the social and physical conditions since childhood.
Perceptions in the anthropological field have evidence as its principal element because they can structure the world through cultural and ideological values.
Philosophical view of perception
First of all, a simple appreciation is the starting point to begin a research project in order to analyze if perceptions are true when are applied into education. Having said this, at this point teachers will have to be able to reflect upon the relationship between knowledge and reality. However, teachers usually do not apply it in real life or in real context.
According to [15]Guerra González (2005, p.579) “Education should teach us how to live with what is different, even cognitively; this leads to an everyday life applicable ethical situation: to respect individual differences, source of wealth and conflicts”. As a result of it, teachers constantly repeat the same mistakes from the past because teaching should focus on making students understand societal issues such as poverty, misery, religion, and economics. These topics are usually the core of conflicts around the world.
What it has been said is connected to the concept of ethical reasoning seen as the capability to be critical with issues that clearly matter in our societies, far beyond from what is taught in a classroom. Knowledge will be useful if teachers are aware of the fact that the learning process includes many aspects such as emotions or morality in which they will have to recognize themselves with the rest of the population and not only with students. In other words, teachers must include every single situation that surrounds the human being because they cannot be isolated from a context in which they belong to.
In addition and taking into account [16] Pring (2005, p 18): “teachers are members of a profession. As such they have been initiated into a social practice with its own principles of procedure and values. These are frequently implicit. But they embody a commitment to helping young people to learn those things which are judge to be worthwhile”. Regarding this perception, it is evident that teaching practice has to involve values to form and inform citizens about the social responsibility they have when facing populations in a specific context by having in mind the differences that exist between them.
Sociological views of perception.
Social perception is the study of social influences on perception. Keeping in mind that the same qualities can produce different impressions, and that at the same time, work dynamically.
When we talk about perceptions in people, we can identify many different factors that cause an influence. For example, what kind of expectation do we have from the subject in terms of motivations, and how can we form and change our impressions of others, their effect on us, goals, experience, among others.
Sociological perception has effects like: stereotype, bias, projection and halo effect, which is the way in which we perceive the world around us. When we have a discussion about stereotype and bias, we can say that the first one is a deformation in social perception that can be true or not and those are functional in a group communication; but if we talk about bias, we can say that this is an individual way to make judgments about people or things that are so far from the social perception. Talking about projections, it is appropriate to say that this concept refers to the effect of our own emotions in front of other people or situations and finally halo effect occurs when we single something in a negative o positive way, that is to say that perceptions are interpersonal.
To summarize, sociological perception is a process of formation regarding the impressions of others. Those are the results of the possible information that we have in the environment, our attitudes in front of somebody or something and our thoughts about these. Humans have actions to get from others or to give to others depending on the reality that we have in our hands. For that reason, it is natural for humans to have different behaviors before and after that we have met someone.
[1] Stenhouse, L. (1975) An introduction to Curriculum Research and Development, London: Heineman.
[2] Tanner, D. Tanner, L. Curriculum development: Theory into practice. MacMIllan. New York: 1975 Pages 9 -10
[3] Smith, M. K. (1996, 2000) 'Curriculum theory and practice' the encyclopedia of informal education, www.infed.org/biblio/b-curric.htm.
[4] Hall, David R., and Ann Hewings, eds. Innovation in English Language Teaching, The Essentials of a communicative curriculum in language teaching (Chap1). London and New York: Routledge / The Open U / Macquarie U, 2001.
[5] RICHARD, J. ( 2001). Curriculum development in language teaching,Situation analysis, (p. 92) Cambridge Language Education. Singapore
[6] RICHARD, J. ( 2001). Curriculum development in language teaching, Situation analysis, (p. 99) Cambridge Language Education. Singapore
[7] Richards, Jack C. (2001). Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-00843-3
[8] Richard, M. Felder. (1995). Learning and teaching styles in foreign and second language education. North Carolina State University and Eunice R. Enriques, Universidad estatal de Sao Paulo. Foreign language. Annals No. 1; 1.995. p 21-31.
[9] CHLOPEK, Zofia. (2008). The Intercultural Aproach to EFL. Teaching and Learning English Teaching Forum. Number 4 pag 10 – 19
[10] Littlejohn, Andrew. (2001) http://www3.telus.net/linguisticsissues/language
[11] Campo, Emma. Hacia un enfoque integrado para el aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras. En publicacion: Folios, segunda época, no. 16. 16. DCS, Departamento de Ciencias Sociales, Facultad de Humanidades, UPN, Universidad Pedagogica Nacional, Bogotá: Colombia. DCS, Departamento de Ciencias Sociales, Facultad de Humanidades, UPN, Universidad Pedagógica Nacional, Bogotá: Colombia. 2002 0123-4870. 2002 0123-4870.
[12] Kumaravadivelu, B. (2003). Beyond Methods: Macrostrategies for Language Teaching. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
[13] RICHARDS, J. (2001). Curriculum development in language teaching. Singapore: Cambridge Language Education.
[14] Díaz Barriga, Á. (2003). Curriculum. Tensiones conceptuales y prácticas. Magazine: Electrónica de investigación educativa.(P.4)
[15] María del Rosario Guerra González (2005)., Relationship between knowledge, education and ethics. A philosophical reflection. EDUCERE artículos arbitrados 31, 579-588.
[16] Richard Pring (2005). Philosophy of education: aims, theory, common sense and research.
The literature review presented in this research proposal is mainly segmented in four main areas that are intended to be the theoretical background for the construction of an integrated curriculum for ASE. The document gathers ideas from: Curriculum research, assessment, materials and classroom procedures.
First, some ideas related to curriculum research and development that present an indication on what the curriculum represents for teachers and students and how it is integrated by multiple variables.
As Stenhouse (1981) states the active participation of the teachers in research and curriculum development makes them the main characters in the understanding of education. SHORT SENTENCES DON’T’ JOIN ANYTHING.
The design of a Curriculum begun GRAMMAR in the U.S. with the development in different areas, mainly in math and physics, between 1.956 and 1.958. It attempted that the new course included guides for teachers, films, laboratory experiments, tests and exams, in 1960 the first curriculum was applied and there started a corporation called Educational Service Incorporate (E.S.I) that was in charge of designing different curricula for different areas among schools and universities in the EE.UU.
In 1.966 the design of curriculum was expanded in the world, the next countries interested in developing a curriculum were England and Wales and it was initiated by the Nuffield foundation science, nuttfield maths and nutffield modern language. The Nuffield foundations and schools councils are the corporations in charge to develop projects and curriculum for universities and schools in Europe.
These ideas are very important because they give clear perceptions on curriculum facilitators, contexts, pedagogical processes, critical learning, stages of curriculum construction coming from research, the teacher as a researcher and more. These first thoughts also demonstrate how the curriculum has always been an integrated concept and its construction has to include several elements such as nature of the discipline, rationale, philosophy, aim, structure, student learning outcomes and standards.
When the need of the construction of an integrated curriculum appears, teachers have to understand that in many occasions, the various intentions that a curriculum may have will not eventually fit into the needs of educational reality. In the construction of a curriculum, the teacher-researcher must think about the educational objectives that a school intends to accomplish.
The objective of a curriculum is to improve schools through the enhancement of teaching and learning. This development focuses on the transformation of society itself, and culture. Culture is inherited, learnt and communicated, and the same path needs to be followed in the curriculum.
When a new curriculum is designed, a new method in teaching needs to arise GM. The new curriculum needs to be developed between teachers, students, and needs to keep in mind the point of view parents have of education. The integration of a curriculum also has to take into account three categories according to the curriculum connections: within one subject alone (interdisciplinary), between two or more subjects (multidisciplinary or pluri-disciplinary, and interdisciplinary), and beyond the subjects (transdisciplinary). A curriculum is fully integrated once it joints the needs of the community (students, parents, teachers, institutions) and the approaches applied in the model of integration.
Another important element in the creation of a curriculum is the fact that motivation and interest given to students, it is crucial in order to prevent and avoid prior misunderstandings caused by the different types of curriculum, based on foreign models that do not take into account the context in which they are applied. An idea on how to modify traditional teaching methods is that the curriculum has to be designed based on students´ discoveries, and also based on research that will allow students to think and reflect upon what is being taught.
A possible orientation that curriculums might have is the humanistic vision. This vision focuses on observing the school as an educational community and all its participants as a whole. Teachers think of education as a means of a democratic ambience that can be experienced in the classroom.
Other stages that have to be taken into account at the moment of curriculum design can be: analysis of the context and possible solutions to preliminary problems, construction of general goals for the project, integration and organization of possible contents, summary and organization of learning experiences, and organization of assessment stages (Tabba, in Stenhouse, 1975).
In curriculum research, education needs to be seen as a planned activity. This planned activity has to perceive contents as a part of curriculum but not as the only one. In education, students also need to have a social orientation that needs to be integrated with the contents to be studied. The goals of education and curriculum need to be in constant movement and need to focus on the contemporary life of society and other particular communities.
METHODS OF CURRICULUM DESIGN
There are different methods that can be followed when designing the curriculum, that do not depend only on reaching an objective. The methods are:
The content-based curriculum (curriculum focused on the subjects and contents students will learn and should understand) and the importance of the content, the criteria for developing a curriculum proposed by Raths (in Stenhouse, 1981) which includes a gratifying activity that allows children to choose their actions and to reflect on them afterwards, an activity where students have active roles, an activity in which students can interact with real objects and contexts (realia), the importance of taking into account the students’, parents’ and teachers’ opinions when developing the curriculum.
The process-based curriculum, which seeks a deep understanding instead of achieving high grades in the exams, and it also shows the problems between educating and examining and the fact that those problems should be solved through commitments.
The objective-based curriculum, that looks for a better performance of the students without taking into account the improvement of teachers’ and students’ quality as humans, the evaluation of the curriculum which helps in the improvement of the education delivered, but also as a tool to make decisions about the process and the people involved in it and to closely observe what failures or strengths it has, and the importance that should be given to tests, without basing the whole process on them, otherwise, students will focus on their grades and not on their learning process as a whole.
The development of the curriculum is a series of integrated elements. It is performed through the study of the perceptions of students’ needs and interests and the institution itself. To know what approach and development can adapt better to curriculum construction, some ideas can be used, for example: a researcher can think of the integration of different elements, evaluate a previous curriculum in order to construct a new one, or think of a curriculum that can focus on a specific content area.
THERE IS NOT A STATE POSITION TO SELECT THE BEST.
Some characteristics of curriculum are that it expresses global political views in a set program, offers solutions and success depending on fairness, has rules that allow continuous assessment, explores and tests hypothesis and develops knowledge.
Curriculum has been defined in many ways but one of the most relevant conceptions is given by Stenhouse (1975) who affirms that curriculum is “an ongoing process comprised of the interactions of students, teachers and knowledge”. [1]
CURRICULUM CONCEPTIONS THIS PART IS CONNECTED TO THE PROJECT
have been SUBJECT ON THE SENTENCE? defined throughout the time because it is too difficult to try to fix just one definition and “the influence of progressive education during the first half of the twentieth century brought a profound change in the conception of curriculum”[2], it shows, how important is to organize a curriculum that fits whit this concept, not a straight one, better a flexible curriculum that can move with the changing education, in consequence, some curriculum types emerged and were stated by a period of time.
Curriculum as product is the performance of the different tasks, put in a different way, it refers to the results that students must achieve; in order to carry this process out, it is necessary to have clear what the objectives to reach are and the teaching learning process to develop them because in this way the outcomes will be clear.
Curriculum as a process is an outcome and it is considered as a body of knowledge, but rather the relation of teachers, students and knowledge In a complex process, put differently, curriculum is what currently happens in the classroom and what people do in order to guide and evaluate student’s process.
As a last perspective, the Curriculum as praxis[3]” is the core in the learning teaching process looking for a commitment expressed in action to exploration of educator’s values and their practice. For instance, It may be used in a way that does not make continual reference to collective human well-being and to the emancipation of the human spirit.
In the practical discipline, the syllabus includes the Relationship between curriculum and materials because curriculum comprises activities in which learners engage under auspices of the school. This includes not only what pupils learn, but how they learn it, how teachers help them to learn, using supporting materials, styles and methods of assessment.
Syllabus determines what kind of materials will be adopted and in what ways they will be exploited for the classroom teaching. In certain educational context, the syllabus even determines how materials should be designed in the first place. However, the materials are seen as an alternative to the syllabus, but as an instrument among others used to fulfil the goals of the syllabus. Materials, whether commercially are developed or home-made, are an important element within the curriculum, and are often the most tangible and visible aspect of the curriculum, while the syllabus defines the goals and objectives.
Additionally, the syllabus includes the Relationship between curriculum and evaluation; it is pertinent to talk about evaluation because it deals with many processes in different contexts and daily lives activities. In other words, evaluation is the process that gives validity to these activities that are the proof of the outcomes of what students really learn and what they really need; these outcomes can be measured and validated thought assessment and testing procedures.
To close the perspectives in the theoretical discipline, we also can include the relationship between curriculum and classroom procedures, it refers to didactics and methodologies that make easier the curriculum development that requires taking into account some external issues that will allow in a future students and teachers to reach the goals proposed by the same curriculum. For this reason it is worthy that the teachers make decisions about how to develop a class with the appropriate tools. Thus, collecting information is one of the most important processes that give enough information to improve possible failures.
In addition, a classroom decision cannot be done without a structure; it means that the whole processes of learning and teaching have to follow a framework. In this case, this is the curriculum (David, 2002) [4] taking into account the Classroom as a social environment where they construct human activities.
In this process of English teaching, the teacher has two main roles; the first one is to facilitate the communicative process between all the participants in the classroom and the activities carried out. It means that he is a guide who helps the students in what they need to do, an activity that can conduct to a specific learning goal. The second role is to act as an interdependent participant within the learning - teaching groups, this role is connected to the first one because the teacher has to prepare resources in order to guide them.
It can be said that classroom and curriculum look for a guide for both students and teachers inside the classroom and institution, through a frame with a purpose, which must have a required result; to achieve this purpose, it is necessary to take into account some factors as the society, institution, teachers and students before starting the construction of an integrated curriculum.
As first point society is the factor in which second or foreign language teaching role differs. “In examining the impact of societal factors on language teaching, therefore, the aim is to determine the impact of groups in the community or society at large on the program”[5] for this reason, these groups are supposed to develop “self confidence and self – respect, respect by others, becoming better actors when attacking and solving the problems that they have to face, discovering and developing their talents and evaluating their own growth” (Tanner 1975. P. 330)
As a second factor to take into account in the construction of an integrated curriculum it is evident the institutional issue because it is directly related with (ASE) requirements, it refers to the interests and needs that they have (the implementation and preparation of English as a tool of business and labor world), for this reason A.S.E needs to have an organized and integrated curriculum that allows them to develop intercultural and cross-curricular competences that help people to survive in current world situations.
As third factor, the teachers have to be mentioned because they are the ones that have to determine if the curriculum changes or implementations come to be a success or a failure. In this way, they will have to pilot the curriculum, making some pedagogical changes in their beliefs, values and understandings of teaching English as a second language, testing in this way their “language proficiency, teaching experience, skill and expertise, training and qualifications, morale and motivation, teaching style and beliefs and principles”[6] that are the core in the teaching – learning process.
To end with these factors, the last one are the learners from whom the authors can get the backgrounds, beliefs and expectations to address the process in the correct way. On the other hand, teachers and learners are the ones who carry out some specific goals and objectives that should fulfill the educational purposes that are related with the social rationale of a country or a state that are reachable through an educative institution as a guide and they are manageable across learning arranged aims in the curriculum of different disciplines or subjects. To get an "educational purpose" takes a long time and it will happen at the end of the teaching process and it could be the teaching result of different influences, such a home, maturing and technology.
TEACHING AND LEARNING A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
As mentioned by Richards (2001)[7], some one SP, who learns English in a formal classroom setting, with limited or no opportunities of use outside the classroom, in a country in which English does not play an important role in internal communication is said to be learning English as a foreign language. Teachers' beliefs are to be stable constructs derived from their experience, observations, training and other sources and serve as references when teacher encounter new ideas, sometimes ones of this impeding the acceptance of new ideas or practices, forming a system or network that may be difficult to change. In teacher education a focus on belief systems is considered important since teacher development involves the development of skills and knowledge as well as the development or modification of belief systems.
Taking this last idea into account, in a Gardner´s study (1983) in multiple intelligences about various dimensions that a student could have, Felder and Enriques (1.995)[8] propose different styles of teaching and learning: sensing and intuitive, visual and verbal, active and reflective and finally sequential and global; being sensing and intuitive the most important. Sensing learners involves observing, gathering data through the senses and imply work with drills and flash card, variety of memorization strategies; intuition involve indirect perception by the way of the subconscious, it means, memory, speculating or imaging and the teachers tends to use teaching approaches that involves greater complexity and variety.
Before describing the different styles, the teacher has to question himself how the students prefer to learn, how they process and organize the information and the way that is most comfortable for them. Knowing how to recognize the individual’s learning style, provides several options to develop a class based on different student’s learning styles, intelligences or abilities that each one have. It is very important that every teacher takes into account the styles of their students, their skills and abilities to provide an adequate teaching style to reach the proposed aims in each class. Observing behaviours, attitudes and characteristics of the students define the line of the style that the teacher could use in his/her class.
According to this, one of the student´s characteristics is his culture. Intercultural approach has to be taught first in all classrooms. Chlopek (2008)[9] clarifies that Learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL) is not only important, but it is also necessary to interact with people from all over the world. EFL students take advantage of learning a foreign language because they are able to get to know different cultures, to contrast their own culture in front of others, and in that sense, they become more successful communicatively speaking because they will become intercultural speakers.
English communication is a tool in fields like art, science, technology, business, entertainment and tourism. Every country has a culture and learner needs to know about it, and know about culture English speakers countries, with this tool, they can compare, criticize and act according to the context where they will interact.
It is important to motivate students with activities that allow them to develop intercultural skills, and prevent possible misunderstandings. Teachers can use realia to stimulate those skills in the students. What teachers have to understand and take the most of is the fact that they have a lot of resources that will help them and their students to achieve a certain level of interculturalism, but this achievement will only be successful if students make their best efforts as well.
In some cases, the teacher tries to do his best effort followed by a long heritage classroom practice that [10] Littlejohn (2001) calls “McDonaldisation of society” which is the use of course books from other countries and the same methodologies of many years ago, explaining and providing indications of what teachers and students have to do in the classroom at every stage without letting them a free development. In many cases, the institutions hire teachers with little or no experience which will not prepare their classes, will not take into account students’ needs and will only followthe instructions provided by the books. Littlejohn (2001), emphasises in a shift from syllabus towards methodology, ideas from critical pedagogy, the need to structure the development of student decision-making, and a preparation for change in the subjects, contents, students’ active participation, types of exercises, tests and tasks in different contexts, etc.
An integrated approach to foreign language learning, the development of advanced students’ linguistic, strategic and sociolinguistic competences when learning English as a foreign language, is Campo´s (2002)[11] proposal. She points out the importance of communicative competence in any foreign language learning process. There are some specific parameters to follow in order to develop students’ competences in a foreign language classroom, supported on the theme-based teaching model that places equal value to content and language objectives, that will allow students to learn at their own pace in their own way in a self-access practice which is a relevant step in developing learning, through the development of communicative competences where students will be more conscious about their own learning, identifying strengths and weaknesses to be improved.
Integrated curriculum is aimed to provide strategies for learning and teaching of English as a foreign language taking into account the context and needs in which all these strategies will be based to star creating the English integrated curriculum. Students not only improve in terms of their linguistic competence but also they complement their learning process in other perspectives such as relevant areas of language learning: awareness of language as a means of communication in the foreign culture and its further implications in their learning process.
Within the curriculum, the role of the teacher is the one of a researcher that uses critical thinking in order to connect theory and practice. In addition, he is in charge of constructing, assessing and modifying the curriculum. The role of the teacher is also to become the main character in this procedure because when developing the curriculum, the learning-teaching process and his performance are improved significantly. Some of the elements involved in this development are the self, peer and co-observation to collect the necessary data for the research he is carrying out.
Another interesting point of view regarding the construction of an integrated curriculum is the inclusion of national standards. According to Guerrero, C. and Quintero, A. (2009), the national standards presented by the Ministry of education (MEN), will only guide students into becoming mechanical users of the language. This means that learners of English will be able speak English as a native speaker, but will base their knowledge on repetition and not thinking in language as a vehicle of communication that is integrated into a social context. Taking this idea into account, it can be said that the national standards as all standards used to quantify the level of English proficiency have to be seen and used as a means to an end and not as an end in itself. These standards can show students what aspects need to be included in the practice of different skills but it is the job of the curriculum to give a social and practical value to the same. Keeping this idea in mind, it can also be stated that at the moment of constructing curriculum, teachers tend to focus on pre-categorized principles that may not necessarily adapt to the integration of the context population.
Another relevant element to consider in the construction of the integrated curriculum is assessment. This element of the integrated curriculum is the one which will provide information concerning students´ and teachers´ progress, as well all the other parts that build the whole process.
An additional component of the construction for an integrated curriculum is the design, testing and use of materials. Although the term materials is not a synonym with the word curriculum, in some occasions, the two terms are seen as the same one because many course contents and guidelines are basically decided upon materials like textbooks. To illustrate this idea, Corder (1973,139) suggests that the teacher should ask himself two questions: what to teach and how to teach it. Based on these two questions the teacher will not construct a curriculum which is merely content based, but will have to integrate the target language with the necessary methodolgy that is most suitable for a particular teaching situation. When these questions are combined into the construction of the curriculum, the teacher comes face to face with having students who are learning items of the language that are not included in the syllabus that is being used, or that probably a set program of contents is not allowing the teacher to fully help students communicate naturally but only systematically and distanced from reality.
Based on Beyer and Davis (2009 p. 679), “Educational curriculum materials are intended to promote teacher learning as well as student learning” The same authors state that materials define the way students are going to learn and implicitly carry with them a hidden learning approach.
In the field of materials, we also can find a connection with the curriculum in the sense of choice depending on the level and type of students. Shepherd (2004), mentions that materials should also be selected depending on students abilities, thus having a clear purpose on the construction of the curriculum. If a curriculum is primarily focused on materials and levels in which students are classified, we would be overlooking at an idea presented by Ellis, Rod (1994, 530), that points out how the individual learner and the situational and social factors need to be considered when teaching and learning a second or foreign language. According to to these authors, the learning outcomes are the product of the integration of the individual learner.
Another idea related to materials and curriculum is the one of having instruments that are adapted or written by teachers taking into account the community and student body. A process that can be used by teachers to have a more fitting perspective on how to write student focused materials presented by Jolly and Bolitho (1998, p 270-272) is the following:
Identification: which language, meanings, functions and skills are needed.
Contextual realization: finding suitable ideas and contexts in the materials.
Pedagogical realization: finding appropriate exercises and activities with proper instructions.
Physical production: layout, type, size, tape length, visual of materials, etc.
Students´ use: introduction in class the use of worksheets at home and checking in class.
Evaluation: materials need to be corrected and identified to know if they work for the group or not.
It can be mentioned that pre-service teachers can include material design, evaluation and improvement as part of the integrated curriculum, in order to find common patterns in the individual learner that can be standardized and center the student in the core of the construction process. If teachers follow material development processes like the one above, students will have a bigger role in their own education and will be part of the integrated curriculum.
Teachers as reflective practitioners (Beyond, 2003, p. 9) can get involved in different roles, in which they solve the dilemmas of classroom practice, take into account the cultural contexts and also act as a part of the curriculum development. Through research, teachers can transform the intellectual practices and issues that affect the methods inside the classroom to improve the teaching-learning process between them and their students. Teachers should work on a reflection process based on research in order to improve the aspects mentioned above because research helps the teacher to understand through literature and professional guidance why there are certain phenomena happening in the classroom, school or educational system.
When we speak of people “teaching a discipline” such as math or biology, we are separating the knowledge or content from the activity or teaching. These traces of activity that teachers accumulate through the art of teaching are not seen as knowledge; they are referred to as experience. Experience is the only real reference point teachers share: experiences as students that influence their views of teaching, experiences in professional preparation, and experience as members of society. This motley and diverse base of experience unites people who teach, but it does not constitute a disciplinary community (Freeman, 1998, p.10).
The teacher’s role in our society is essential because it is not just about broadcasting knowledge, teaching is an activity with repetitive tasks and the assumptions of many roles in order to make our society get into the right path by giving people a sense of identity and personal fulfillment. However, teachers are part of a long chain that includes several players in order to accomplish these goals, and the possibility of using different methods in order to see how classroom processes affect student’s achievements.
We often hear educators say that teaching is both an art and a science. It means that teaching is basically a subjective activity carried out in an organized way. In fact, there are educators who believe that teaching lacks a unified or a commonly shared set of rules, and as such cannot even be considered a discipline (Beyond, 2003, p.1)
However, not many teachers consider the importance of their experience and research into the classroom in order to improve the teaching act into the classroom and teaching process. Teacher’s experience and research into the classroom are aspects that currently contribute to improve the ways of teaching and the use of new methodologies and strategies with the students.
Teachers have to reflect about their methods because these are considered as an integral part of language education and "a primary vehicle for the development of basic knowledge and skills" (Grosse, 1991). Thus, teachers might take into account, for instance, new methods related with teaching context sensitivity, local knowledge, physical settings, course and institution nature, time, and teaching resources. Another possibility teachers have is a criterion that relates to macro-social factors such as institutional, social, economic, cultural, and political environments to shape the formation and social transformation. Together, all these ideas encourage teachers to go beyond methods and promote a self-awareness of the best methods for learning and teaching.
Classroom procedures should also be considered part of the construction of a curriculum taking into account the relevance of perceiving teachers as reflective practitioners. According to [12]Kumaravadivelu (2003, page 9), “teachers are elements that can get involved in different roles, and can solve the dilemmas presented in the classroom practice, take into account the cultural contexts and also take part in the curriculum development as the fulfillment of the cycle between theory and practice”. Teachers can be agents of transformative intellectual processes and issues extending research skills for them and for students.
Classroom procedures and their task in the construction of an integrated curriculum involve a lot of elements of the curriculum; according to Richards [13](2001) the curriculum development entails some components explained as follows.
Societal factors: the impact of societal factors on language teaching forces to determinate the community at large on the program. This factor includes: government, educational organizations, citizens, teachers and students, the environment of the community and their problems inside the society.
Teacher factors: teachers are a key factor in the successful implementation of curriculum development because the teachers must be able to make an excellent labor in the following dimensions: language, skills, use of materials, teaching style, expertise, motivation, and all the tools that can be used in order to design and apply this curriculum.
Learner factors: the factors involve some important things as experiences as learner, expectations, proficiency, students group, materials, and time of the program.
During the construction of an integrated curriculum for Alianza Social Educativa (ASE) process, materials need to be corrected and identified to know if it works for the group or not and according with the results of that, teachers need to identify the way that class is being developed.
Teacher´s role in the classroom is facilitate a nice environment where students could have new experiences needed for learning, on the other hand, teacher needs to be a guide of mediation between students and process, and last but not least the teacher has to be a learner with the students developing his/ her skills acquiring new knowledge from them for following the process as a teacher.
THIS INFORMATION COMES FROM BACKGROUND
Nowadays, it is difficult to talk about curriculum because there are several ideas about this topic. For this reason, it is relevant to build meanings through adjectives to find a whole meaning about curriculum. Some of these adjectives could be: hidden, vivid, teaching, learning, teachers, programs, systems, society. As the reader can see, the term curriculum has concepts related to education and theory and it was divided in three several fields: curriculum, evaluation and practices.
In addition, “before the XX century the term curriculum did not exist because the education and selection of contents was a responsibility of the teacher and education was not part of the social system”[14] (Barriga, 2003, p. 4). However, after the French revolution, education acquired an important place in the social system because society noticed that it was linked to experiences and the human development of each student. In this sense, the philosopher and teacher John Dewey in his book: The child and the curriculum (1902), proposed a great emphasis on the experience of the learning process.
TAKE CARE ABOUT HOW TO INCLUDE THIS SECTION BECAUSE IT DOESN’T HAVE DISCUSSIONS ONCE THE LITERATURE WAS ESTABLISHED
PERCEPTIONS
In terms of perception, the following fields are taken into account for our project in order to have a wider perspective of how students and the community can possible understand and interpret their education process.
Scientific View of Perceptions
Perception is the most important tool human beings use to process all the information that is received through the senses. It also helps to retain certain information in the brain and use it when necessary in the future.
The human being is exposed to information every single second. Every time we hear, see, smell, touch and taste something, we are receiving information about the environment. This information allows us create a representation of the reality that surrounds us.
For example, when we are in the kitchen and we see a particular type of oil, our brain associates it with all the other types of food that we can combined it with. It can also remind you that you got burned with it and that you have to be careful. Another example could come through your nose. When you smell a certain fragrance, you might immediately remember somebody who used to use it. You could also remember a place, a special situation you both shared, etc. All this is able to happen thanks to the information you have previously recorded in your brain through perceptions.
The act of perceiving or in other words integrated vision, introduces to the human being into a higher dimension of understanding and of interfering reality. It is the intensification of the individual conscience
Anthropological View of Perceptions
Perceptions could have a lot of points of view coming from different fields. Taking this in mind, the anthropological field states that “perception is understood as a behavioral manner that takes into account the selection and symbolic elaboration of the sensible experience” (Vargas, 1994)
In addition, perception gives qualitative characteristics to some objects and the environment through cultural or ideological systems that can be built by the community in order to create evidences about the reality. According to Vargas (1994), the cultural systems are a biological activity of the human being that could be sensible to cultural analysis by their own components and in function of other cultural systems. However, the ideological system is organized by the social practice that depends of the historic – cultural development of a social group. This takes into account power relationships and is based on evidence.
Therefore, the evidences are built culturally or ideologically and they give sense to the immediate experiences of the quotidian life by cultural and social structures. As a result, perceptions are sources and products of evidence, taking into account that they are faced up to social learning. In this case, the ideological models help the human being to generate an ideal interpretation to construct reality.
Each society has created and classified its own evidence and at the same time transmitted from generation to generation. This is why some perceptions are not taken into account because through the transmissions of these evidences the social order is established and cannot be changed due to these evidences because they do not allow new perceptions to be positioned.
People give meaning to sensations through cultural and ideological aspects which shape the vision of the reality and shape the evidences about the world. Therefore, people obtain information related to the environment from the social and physical conditions since childhood.
Perceptions in the anthropological field have evidence as its principal element because they can structure the world through cultural and ideological values.
Philosophical view of perception
First of all, a simple appreciation is the starting point to begin a research project in order to analyze if perceptions are true when are applied into education. Having said this, at this point teachers will have to be able to reflect upon the relationship between knowledge and reality. However, teachers usually do not apply it in real life or in real context.
According to [15]Guerra González (2005, p.579) “Education should teach us how to live with what is different, even cognitively; this leads to an everyday life applicable ethical situation: to respect individual differences, source of wealth and conflicts”. As a result of it, teachers constantly repeat the same mistakes from the past because teaching should focus on making students understand societal issues such as poverty, misery, religion, and economics. These topics are usually the core of conflicts around the world.
What it has been said is connected to the concept of ethical reasoning seen as the capability to be critical with issues that clearly matter in our societies, far beyond from what is taught in a classroom. Knowledge will be useful if teachers are aware of the fact that the learning process includes many aspects such as emotions or morality in which they will have to recognize themselves with the rest of the population and not only with students. In other words, teachers must include every single situation that surrounds the human being because they cannot be isolated from a context in which they belong to.
In addition and taking into account [16] Pring (2005, p 18): “teachers are members of a profession. As such they have been initiated into a social practice with its own principles of procedure and values. These are frequently implicit. But they embody a commitment to helping young people to learn those things which are judge to be worthwhile”. Regarding this perception, it is evident that teaching practice has to involve values to form and inform citizens about the social responsibility they have when facing populations in a specific context by having in mind the differences that exist between them.
Sociological views of perception.
Social perception is the study of social influences on perception. Keeping in mind that the same qualities can produce different impressions, and that at the same time, work dynamically.
When we talk about perceptions in people, we can identify many different factors that cause an influence. For example, what kind of expectation do we have from the subject in terms of motivations, and how can we form and change our impressions of others, their effect on us, goals, experience, among others.
Sociological perception has effects like: stereotype, bias, projection and halo effect, which is the way in which we perceive the world around us. When we have a discussion about stereotype and bias, we can say that the first one is a deformation in social perception that can be true or not and those are functional in a group communication; but if we talk about bias, we can say that this is an individual way to make judgments about people or things that are so far from the social perception. Talking about projections, it is appropriate to say that this concept refers to the effect of our own emotions in front of other people or situations and finally halo effect occurs when we single something in a negative o positive way, that is to say that perceptions are interpersonal.
To summarize, sociological perception is a process of formation regarding the impressions of others. Those are the results of the possible information that we have in the environment, our attitudes in front of somebody or something and our thoughts about these. Humans have actions to get from others or to give to others depending on the reality that we have in our hands. For that reason, it is natural for humans to have different behaviors before and after that we have met someone.
[1] Stenhouse, L. (1975) An introduction to Curriculum Research and Development, London: Heineman.
[2] Tanner, D. Tanner, L. Curriculum development: Theory into practice. MacMIllan. New York: 1975 Pages 9 -10
[3] Smith, M. K. (1996, 2000) 'Curriculum theory and practice' the encyclopedia of informal education, www.infed.org/biblio/b-curric.htm.
[4] Hall, David R., and Ann Hewings, eds. Innovation in English Language Teaching, The Essentials of a communicative curriculum in language teaching (Chap1). London and New York: Routledge / The Open U / Macquarie U, 2001.
[5] RICHARD, J. ( 2001). Curriculum development in language teaching,Situation analysis, (p. 92) Cambridge Language Education. Singapore
[6] RICHARD, J. ( 2001). Curriculum development in language teaching, Situation analysis, (p. 99) Cambridge Language Education. Singapore
[7] Richards, Jack C. (2001). Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-00843-3
[8] Richard, M. Felder. (1995). Learning and teaching styles in foreign and second language education. North Carolina State University and Eunice R. Enriques, Universidad estatal de Sao Paulo. Foreign language. Annals No. 1; 1.995. p 21-31.
[9] CHLOPEK, Zofia. (2008). The Intercultural Aproach to EFL. Teaching and Learning English Teaching Forum. Number 4 pag 10 – 19
[10] Littlejohn, Andrew. (2001) http://www3.telus.net/linguisticsissues/language
[11] Campo, Emma. Hacia un enfoque integrado para el aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras. En publicacion: Folios, segunda época, no. 16. 16. DCS, Departamento de Ciencias Sociales, Facultad de Humanidades, UPN, Universidad Pedagogica Nacional, Bogotá: Colombia. DCS, Departamento de Ciencias Sociales, Facultad de Humanidades, UPN, Universidad Pedagógica Nacional, Bogotá: Colombia. 2002 0123-4870. 2002 0123-4870.
[12] Kumaravadivelu, B. (2003). Beyond Methods: Macrostrategies for Language Teaching. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
[13] RICHARDS, J. (2001). Curriculum development in language teaching. Singapore: Cambridge Language Education.
[14] Díaz Barriga, Á. (2003). Curriculum. Tensiones conceptuales y prácticas. Magazine: Electrónica de investigación educativa.(P.4)
[15] María del Rosario Guerra González (2005)., Relationship between knowledge, education and ethics. A philosophical reflection. EDUCERE artículos arbitrados 31, 579-588.
[16] Richard Pring (2005). Philosophy of education: aims, theory, common sense and research.
BACKGROUND INAN AND CARLOS, CARLOS A
DEAR STUDENTS
IT IS THE HARDEST PART TO CORRECT
1. SOME TOPICS WERE MOVED TO LITERATURE REVIEW THEY AREN’T IN THE CURRENT SECTION SO YOU NEED TO READ AND TRY TO GIVE YOUR POINTS OF VIEW BASED ON WHAT YOU ARE READING, REMEMBER IS JUST TELLING US THE BEGINNIG OF THE PROJECT, THE TRANSITIONS IT HAS TAKEN DURING THE LAST TWO YEARS, AND WHAT IS EXPECTED FROM THIS.
2. REMEMBER THE BACKGROUND FOCUS ON SHOWING THE STATE OF THE ART MORE THAT DISCUSSIONS.
BACKGROUND
During the last sections, this proposal has talked about the meaning of three constructs, now the researchers want to show some background that these constructs have.
First of all, the background regarding curriculum focused on two articles from two educational magazines. One of them is called “Tensiones conceptuales y prácticas” and the other one is an article from Universidad Nacional about revising a foreign language curriculum in a public school in Bogotá. It also mentions some aspects regarding the Common European Framework and the improvement of English learning in real contexts.
The second background concept is related to perceptions, in which Zuleta (1995) displays two points of view in order not to confuse the fact that through perceptions the students can get information or learn.
Finally, the background about teaching and learning English as a foreign language took one important reference from the California Foreign Language Project in 1989 which talks about the importance of the community’s needs. In order to design a coherent and useful curriculum, it is necessary to take into account some projects that have developed the issue of curriculum design.
The first part needs to mention the history of curriculum to understand how it is possible to develop curriculum in one social context. In this sense, the article written by Barriga (2003), is important because it mentions curriculum through the XX and XXI century. He says that there are two divergent curricular trends: “The first one is the curriculum as a set of different plans and syllabus proposal, and the second one appears divergent in the sense that it is associated to concepts like everyday life, curriculum as an intellectual practice and curricular reality”[1](p.2). The idea in this document is to find the articulation between these points of view.
Until the last century, the main notion of curriculum was to promote the curriculum as conceptual and practical development. However, there are a lot of concepts related to curriculum and it is very important to focus on them because these concepts help to achieve a whole meaning about curriculum. According to Diaz, the idea in this research is to emphasize on the concepts and elements of curriculum to find the articulation between these elements.
According to Barriga (2003), “The term curriculum acquired new ideas, perspectives and programs because a lot of countries think approaches about this topic, the main approach regarding curriculum was that it must have a diagnostic of the needs in each educational community to see the social demands” (p.7) [2], in this way, curriculum would help to the development of the country.
PLEASE BASED ON THIS INFORMATION MAKE A COMPARISON IN ORDER TO OBSERVE HOW IT IS VALUABLE TO OUR CURRENT PROJECT.
In this way, the curriculum must be evaluated taking into account the needs of society, community and context. As a matter of fact, the curriculum is not an educative subject but a social subject due to the society must think about contents, standards, resources to create an integral education for the members of the society. Also, and according to Herbart the society needs an education where the human being is shaped not only in one subject but is shaped in a lot of knowledge and competences to propose new strategies for improving the quality of life.
A useful article for this proposal was taken from Profile Magazine (2006), from Universidad Nacional de Colombia. This article was developed by a team of teachers interested in improving the English learning process in a technical school.
They explain that designing a curriculum is an ample topic that requires time and important factors from analyzing the needs of the community, and everything about curriculum such as methodologies, evaluation and many more. The main objective of this project is design a curriculum that transmits the interests of the community.[3]
Additionally, they took opinions and ideas of English teachers who want to improve their work in class and that want to facilitate the learning process of the students based on their needs as a specific aspect of the curriculum
This contribution is not only based on teachers’ experiences but also on developing research parameters on teachers in their daily practice. Besides that, another important contribution of their work was to take a critical evaluation, not as a judgment without a process, but also as a consideration of assessment that offers feedback of a learning progress. They also analyzed the previous curriculum with the intention of enhance and standing out the strengths and changing some aspects with lack of connection between them.
In this way, an important conclusion of this project can be taken from this cite: “a successful curriculum requires that community members become active participants, researchers and authors and not only “evaluators” or “performers”[4].
A curriculum is meaningful to the people who have helped design it.” They consider that teachers as students, opinions and perception according with their English teaching and learning process are important in the curriculum design
Finally, in order to reach these intentions and objectives, they applied surveys where they could ask questions that let them know some students and teachers needs, even parents, which have different perspectives seen since other context “in or out of class”
Furthermore, the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (Iztapalapa), talks about the conditions to create competence in linguistic, communicative, intercultural, interdisciplinary and critical thinking skills as a fundamental requirement for teaching English as a foreign language in order to ensure our students´ full personal, professional and social development. This article presents an outline of the multiregional guidelines underlying the curriculum design of the General Study Program, English: An interdisciplinary and Intercultural Perspective, designed by the Interdisciplinary Studies in the English Language and Anglophone Cultures Research team of the Philosophy Department at the Iztapalapa Campus.WRONG CITED POOR INFORMATION
The 21st century is full of expectations in which a better educational system development is needed, always taking in mind quality development, improvement and an education for our English language students. This article discusses different innovation guidelines underlying the curriculum design of the General Study Program. In order to created communicative, linguistic, competence are fundamental requirements for teaching English as a foreign language in order to ensure student´s full personal, professional and social development as publisher declare.
This is a useful text for our field because it be evidence how a communicative curriculum is part of the teaching and learning process, how it could act in an education context and how is important a social context to integrates the process. It discusses methodologies in a communicative learning integrated curriculum as a methodology by learning and teaching.
In addition to that, the common European Framework and Standards for Foreign Language learning, those integrated intercultural understanding, communicative process, learning strategies and resources, it is a great contribution to focus in communicative curriculum, methodologies to classroom and it could be taking into account when the field will be construct and development. The publisher (2006) WHO IS HE? WRONG CITED describes a communicative approach and how guidelines could contribute to improve English language learning in a social environment and evaluation process according to some standard levels.
The curriculum developer prioritizes what the students will be learning from a specific subject matter and the explicit goals and objectives the students must achieve. Additionally, the curriculum developer would plan for the structuring of the learning environment that would be conducive for student learning. However, it has to integrate the aims, goals and objectives to develop parameters with the students.
Curriculum structures learning as a way to take students to a cognitive process in order to develop strategies to process knowledge. This also includes staff participation and requires appropriate and materials. The materials have to be a base to speed up the process and could apply components to promote the acquisition of knowledge. These process help the students achieve their goal and objectives. The mission is to acquire a sequence at the learning process, and be able to use important materials (text books, worksheets, recording tapes, videos) that could be introduced in ASE. THAT’S NOT NEEDED TO BE CONCRETE
Another important factor is the method of evaluation. It clarifies some components of the learning process: first acquire an excellent result (goal), second with the program and third a good material. The important concept is that the students are actually creating and participating in their own learning process. For this reason the curriculum is the main path of learning process.
In the last part the reader can see that the perceptions can be defined from different points of view, human, philosophy and psychology processes, however perceptions better describe one's ultimate experience of the world and typically involves further processing of sensory input. In practice perception can be related with several practices including education where many authors have written important articles. CONFUSING IDEAS
READ CAREFULLY THIS ASPECT
For more than 132 years, when Weber introduces his first study about Weber–Fechner law, the studies of the human response to a physical stimulus, researches and writers around the world feel the necessity to study meticulously how perceptions affect human behaviors in different contexts. Education is one of the most mentioned, showing innumerable studies about how knowledge is acquired through the perception and how teachers use it to improve educational processes.
[5] Zuleta who is an extraordinary critic regarding the current conception of education says: “The education is being thought more and more with the methods and the models of the industry. To give an amount of information in the minimum time and with the minimum of effort” , this means that teachers who use different technological systems like audiovisual teaching do not know what they are doing, however he or she uses the minimum of time, the fastest and less expensive way, confusing education with information.
From the positive perspective of education through perceptions and the use of senses and technology to acquire knowledge [6]Arikewuyo (2007) in his research of Teacher Perception of Principals Leadership Capacities in Nigeria, Principals are correctly trained in managed decisions and in the area of vision in the school, but the study recommended that principals of secondary schools should be given adequate training in information and communication technology and modern management techniques because the world is changing and students prefer modern techniques to acquire knowledge.
Another experimental study was investigating students' [7]perceptions of research and research paper anxiety; they integrated quantitative and qualitative designs to collect complimentary data. A survey instrument used the Critical Incident Technique to solicit writings in students' own words about a memorable past research and writing experience at the beginning of the semester and the current research and writing at the end of the semester.
This study may provide a detailed description of the experimental design and reports on quantitative results, as well as the reports on content analysis of students' writings about their experiences of the research projects.
At the end, the analysis of the data confirmed Kuhlthau's Information Search Process (ISP) model and revealed additional affective and cognitive aspects related to research and writing. SHORT INFORMATION WRONG CITED NOT LINKED.
After reviewing the background of curriculum and perception, this part wants to show the background about the teaching and learning English as foreign language, the aspect that the researchers need to improve in ASE’s community.
Teaching a foreign language may be a difficult task. This entails perseverance and strong commitment from the teacher, in our case ASE teacher and researchers. This will also require full understanding, not only of the language itself, but also of the needs of the ASE students.
There are interesting researches projects related with this enormous topic and the project which show different perspectives, principal goals, the steps and all develop. The first is “The California Foreign Language Project”[8] it was established in 1989 by mandate of the California Legislature through Senate (1882). Since that time, CFLP has vigorously pursued the goal of challenging language professionals to improve and expand language programs in California and to promote access and equity within educational institutions for every student. The Project strongly supports efforts to involve every language teacher in a supportive professional community which respects diverse ideas, provides opportunities for leadership, promotes linguistic and cultural competence and advocates for the retention, expansion and articulation of foreign and indigenous language offerings across educational levels beginning in the elementary grades.
The CFLP project? Are you going to apply, use, reply or what, there isn’t a position derived from it.
The CFLP project has strong common ideals with our project in ASE. It clearly shows the general purpose of teaching a new language in a community that is characterized by several key needs, one of them is to learn English to improve their profile or knowledge with a team teachers.
Another point of view related with ASE project are the multiple approaches to fulfilling its mission like. All students have the ability to learn another language and should be provided that opportunity, meaningful communication which is the purpose of language learning and also a variety of implementing strategies to develop an Integrated Curriculum. At the same time, it shows that there are specific principles supported by research and practice regarding the teaching and learning of language to which the community of language students can get a good level, in other words define the essence of the ASE courses.
During the process in CFLP they could analyze that the language educators or teachers developed strategies and selected content which build upon students' interests and they were appropriate for increasing their linguistic competence. The teachers developed instructional programs that were standards-based and link classroom learning to activities that students could perform with speakers of the language, and that lean to the expansion of their knowledge and ability to successfully interact in the target language and culture.
The other article[9] describes the results of an interpretative qualitative research study in the field of teacher education carried out to identify the processes of innovation in the language curriculum by a group of public school teachers in Bogotá. The innovation process was observed in three stages: identification of the area of intervention, planning, and implementation of the innovation. Data was collected through interviews, videotaped sessions, tutors’ reports, and the final documents of the innovation projects. The unit of analysis was the declarative statements of teachers. Two broad aspects of the process of innovation were identified: the process of curricular innovation and the group processes in managing the innovation. In the data analysis, three categories emerged that are described in the discussion of findings: shifting the focus of the curriculum, adopting a curricular perspective to support innovative practices, and acting reflectively and dynamically in the innovation. The results tell us that teachers planned and carried out curricular innovations thinking critically about students’ needs and interests. They adopted curricular perspectives that helped them construct and support their classroom projects. Finally, teachers acted reflectively during the implementation of the innovation by adjusting their pedagogical practices in order to benefit students’ learning and to achieve their institutional goal.
In these two articles is evident that one effective teaching and learning take place in classrooms and in the construction of the project where the target language is the medium of instruction and is embedded in authentic cultural content and contexts. It is important built successful language classrooms, teachers must create culturally authentic, language-rich environments where the target language is the medium of instruction and students have ongoing opportunities for communicative interaction which prepares them for the world beyond the classroom
As a conclusion ww to this section, the researchers can say that the curriculum always have into account the community needs and involve all the participants in order to get a good results. As a final construct, the teaching and learning of English as foreign language based on research, show the importance that the teacher has to give to the students’ interest and that language is a medium of instruction to get cultural knowledge in real context.
BE MORE SYNTHETIC ON THIS SECTION, BASED ON THE INFORMATION, WRITE CONNECTIONS TO THE PROJECT AND THE PROCESS YOU NEED TO DEVELOP.
[1] Díaz Barriga, Á. (2003). Curriculum. Tensiones conceptuales y prácticas. Magazine: Electrónica de investigación educativa.(P.2)
[2] Díaz Barriga, Á. (2003). Curriculum. Tensiones conceptuales y prácticas. Magazine: Electrónica de investigación educativa, (p.7)
[3]Camelo, M. et al. (2006). “Revising a Foreign Language Curriculum: A Challenging and Enhancing Experience at a Public School in Bogotá”. Profile No.7 Bogotá Jan. /dec. 2006. http://www.scielo.org.co/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1657-07902006000100002&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en
[4]Camelo, M. et al. (2006). “Revising a Foreign Language Curriculum: A Challenging and Enhancing Experience at a Public School in Bogotá”. Profile No.7 Bogotá Jan. /dec. 2006. http://www.scielo.org.co/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1657-07902006000100002&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en
[5] Suárez, Hernán (1995). Educación y Democracia. Entrevista realizada a Estanislao Zuleta, Cali Colombia, (paper).
[6] Arikewuyo, Olalekan , (2007). Teachers Perceptions of Principals Leadership Capacities in Nigeria: Volume 5 - Issue 3.
[7] Kraker Jackeline, USA (2002). Research anxiety and students' perceptions of research: An experiment. Part II. Journal of the American Society for information science and technology, pages 295-307
[8] Lorraine D’Ambruoso / California Language Teachers Association. (1989). the California Foreign Language Project.
[9] Dra. Amparo Clavijo Olarte / Claudia Torres Jaramillo (ene.-dic. 2004).Teachers Acting Critically Upon the Curriculum: Innovations that Transform Teaching. Íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, Volumen (9), no. 15
IT IS THE HARDEST PART TO CORRECT
1. SOME TOPICS WERE MOVED TO LITERATURE REVIEW THEY AREN’T IN THE CURRENT SECTION SO YOU NEED TO READ AND TRY TO GIVE YOUR POINTS OF VIEW BASED ON WHAT YOU ARE READING, REMEMBER IS JUST TELLING US THE BEGINNIG OF THE PROJECT, THE TRANSITIONS IT HAS TAKEN DURING THE LAST TWO YEARS, AND WHAT IS EXPECTED FROM THIS.
2. REMEMBER THE BACKGROUND FOCUS ON SHOWING THE STATE OF THE ART MORE THAT DISCUSSIONS.
BACKGROUND
During the last sections, this proposal has talked about the meaning of three constructs, now the researchers want to show some background that these constructs have.
First of all, the background regarding curriculum focused on two articles from two educational magazines. One of them is called “Tensiones conceptuales y prácticas” and the other one is an article from Universidad Nacional about revising a foreign language curriculum in a public school in Bogotá. It also mentions some aspects regarding the Common European Framework and the improvement of English learning in real contexts.
The second background concept is related to perceptions, in which Zuleta (1995) displays two points of view in order not to confuse the fact that through perceptions the students can get information or learn.
Finally, the background about teaching and learning English as a foreign language took one important reference from the California Foreign Language Project in 1989 which talks about the importance of the community’s needs. In order to design a coherent and useful curriculum, it is necessary to take into account some projects that have developed the issue of curriculum design.
The first part needs to mention the history of curriculum to understand how it is possible to develop curriculum in one social context. In this sense, the article written by Barriga (2003), is important because it mentions curriculum through the XX and XXI century. He says that there are two divergent curricular trends: “The first one is the curriculum as a set of different plans and syllabus proposal, and the second one appears divergent in the sense that it is associated to concepts like everyday life, curriculum as an intellectual practice and curricular reality”[1](p.2). The idea in this document is to find the articulation between these points of view.
Until the last century, the main notion of curriculum was to promote the curriculum as conceptual and practical development. However, there are a lot of concepts related to curriculum and it is very important to focus on them because these concepts help to achieve a whole meaning about curriculum. According to Diaz, the idea in this research is to emphasize on the concepts and elements of curriculum to find the articulation between these elements.
According to Barriga (2003), “The term curriculum acquired new ideas, perspectives and programs because a lot of countries think approaches about this topic, the main approach regarding curriculum was that it must have a diagnostic of the needs in each educational community to see the social demands” (p.7) [2], in this way, curriculum would help to the development of the country.
PLEASE BASED ON THIS INFORMATION MAKE A COMPARISON IN ORDER TO OBSERVE HOW IT IS VALUABLE TO OUR CURRENT PROJECT.
In this way, the curriculum must be evaluated taking into account the needs of society, community and context. As a matter of fact, the curriculum is not an educative subject but a social subject due to the society must think about contents, standards, resources to create an integral education for the members of the society. Also, and according to Herbart the society needs an education where the human being is shaped not only in one subject but is shaped in a lot of knowledge and competences to propose new strategies for improving the quality of life.
A useful article for this proposal was taken from Profile Magazine (2006), from Universidad Nacional de Colombia. This article was developed by a team of teachers interested in improving the English learning process in a technical school.
They explain that designing a curriculum is an ample topic that requires time and important factors from analyzing the needs of the community, and everything about curriculum such as methodologies, evaluation and many more. The main objective of this project is design a curriculum that transmits the interests of the community.[3]
Additionally, they took opinions and ideas of English teachers who want to improve their work in class and that want to facilitate the learning process of the students based on their needs as a specific aspect of the curriculum
This contribution is not only based on teachers’ experiences but also on developing research parameters on teachers in their daily practice. Besides that, another important contribution of their work was to take a critical evaluation, not as a judgment without a process, but also as a consideration of assessment that offers feedback of a learning progress. They also analyzed the previous curriculum with the intention of enhance and standing out the strengths and changing some aspects with lack of connection between them.
In this way, an important conclusion of this project can be taken from this cite: “a successful curriculum requires that community members become active participants, researchers and authors and not only “evaluators” or “performers”[4].
A curriculum is meaningful to the people who have helped design it.” They consider that teachers as students, opinions and perception according with their English teaching and learning process are important in the curriculum design
Finally, in order to reach these intentions and objectives, they applied surveys where they could ask questions that let them know some students and teachers needs, even parents, which have different perspectives seen since other context “in or out of class”
Furthermore, the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (Iztapalapa), talks about the conditions to create competence in linguistic, communicative, intercultural, interdisciplinary and critical thinking skills as a fundamental requirement for teaching English as a foreign language in order to ensure our students´ full personal, professional and social development. This article presents an outline of the multiregional guidelines underlying the curriculum design of the General Study Program, English: An interdisciplinary and Intercultural Perspective, designed by the Interdisciplinary Studies in the English Language and Anglophone Cultures Research team of the Philosophy Department at the Iztapalapa Campus.WRONG CITED POOR INFORMATION
The 21st century is full of expectations in which a better educational system development is needed, always taking in mind quality development, improvement and an education for our English language students. This article discusses different innovation guidelines underlying the curriculum design of the General Study Program. In order to created communicative, linguistic, competence are fundamental requirements for teaching English as a foreign language in order to ensure student´s full personal, professional and social development as publisher declare.
This is a useful text for our field because it be evidence how a communicative curriculum is part of the teaching and learning process, how it could act in an education context and how is important a social context to integrates the process. It discusses methodologies in a communicative learning integrated curriculum as a methodology by learning and teaching.
In addition to that, the common European Framework and Standards for Foreign Language learning, those integrated intercultural understanding, communicative process, learning strategies and resources, it is a great contribution to focus in communicative curriculum, methodologies to classroom and it could be taking into account when the field will be construct and development. The publisher (2006) WHO IS HE? WRONG CITED describes a communicative approach and how guidelines could contribute to improve English language learning in a social environment and evaluation process according to some standard levels.
The curriculum developer prioritizes what the students will be learning from a specific subject matter and the explicit goals and objectives the students must achieve. Additionally, the curriculum developer would plan for the structuring of the learning environment that would be conducive for student learning. However, it has to integrate the aims, goals and objectives to develop parameters with the students.
Curriculum structures learning as a way to take students to a cognitive process in order to develop strategies to process knowledge. This also includes staff participation and requires appropriate and materials. The materials have to be a base to speed up the process and could apply components to promote the acquisition of knowledge. These process help the students achieve their goal and objectives. The mission is to acquire a sequence at the learning process, and be able to use important materials (text books, worksheets, recording tapes, videos) that could be introduced in ASE. THAT’S NOT NEEDED TO BE CONCRETE
Another important factor is the method of evaluation. It clarifies some components of the learning process: first acquire an excellent result (goal), second with the program and third a good material. The important concept is that the students are actually creating and participating in their own learning process. For this reason the curriculum is the main path of learning process.
In the last part the reader can see that the perceptions can be defined from different points of view, human, philosophy and psychology processes, however perceptions better describe one's ultimate experience of the world and typically involves further processing of sensory input. In practice perception can be related with several practices including education where many authors have written important articles. CONFUSING IDEAS
READ CAREFULLY THIS ASPECT
For more than 132 years, when Weber introduces his first study about Weber–Fechner law, the studies of the human response to a physical stimulus, researches and writers around the world feel the necessity to study meticulously how perceptions affect human behaviors in different contexts. Education is one of the most mentioned, showing innumerable studies about how knowledge is acquired through the perception and how teachers use it to improve educational processes.
[5] Zuleta who is an extraordinary critic regarding the current conception of education says: “The education is being thought more and more with the methods and the models of the industry. To give an amount of information in the minimum time and with the minimum of effort” , this means that teachers who use different technological systems like audiovisual teaching do not know what they are doing, however he or she uses the minimum of time, the fastest and less expensive way, confusing education with information.
From the positive perspective of education through perceptions and the use of senses and technology to acquire knowledge [6]Arikewuyo (2007) in his research of Teacher Perception of Principals Leadership Capacities in Nigeria, Principals are correctly trained in managed decisions and in the area of vision in the school, but the study recommended that principals of secondary schools should be given adequate training in information and communication technology and modern management techniques because the world is changing and students prefer modern techniques to acquire knowledge.
Another experimental study was investigating students' [7]perceptions of research and research paper anxiety; they integrated quantitative and qualitative designs to collect complimentary data. A survey instrument used the Critical Incident Technique to solicit writings in students' own words about a memorable past research and writing experience at the beginning of the semester and the current research and writing at the end of the semester.
This study may provide a detailed description of the experimental design and reports on quantitative results, as well as the reports on content analysis of students' writings about their experiences of the research projects.
At the end, the analysis of the data confirmed Kuhlthau's Information Search Process (ISP) model and revealed additional affective and cognitive aspects related to research and writing. SHORT INFORMATION WRONG CITED NOT LINKED.
After reviewing the background of curriculum and perception, this part wants to show the background about the teaching and learning English as foreign language, the aspect that the researchers need to improve in ASE’s community.
Teaching a foreign language may be a difficult task. This entails perseverance and strong commitment from the teacher, in our case ASE teacher and researchers. This will also require full understanding, not only of the language itself, but also of the needs of the ASE students.
There are interesting researches projects related with this enormous topic and the project which show different perspectives, principal goals, the steps and all develop. The first is “The California Foreign Language Project”[8] it was established in 1989 by mandate of the California Legislature through Senate (1882). Since that time, CFLP has vigorously pursued the goal of challenging language professionals to improve and expand language programs in California and to promote access and equity within educational institutions for every student. The Project strongly supports efforts to involve every language teacher in a supportive professional community which respects diverse ideas, provides opportunities for leadership, promotes linguistic and cultural competence and advocates for the retention, expansion and articulation of foreign and indigenous language offerings across educational levels beginning in the elementary grades.
The CFLP project? Are you going to apply, use, reply or what, there isn’t a position derived from it.
The CFLP project has strong common ideals with our project in ASE. It clearly shows the general purpose of teaching a new language in a community that is characterized by several key needs, one of them is to learn English to improve their profile or knowledge with a team teachers.
Another point of view related with ASE project are the multiple approaches to fulfilling its mission like. All students have the ability to learn another language and should be provided that opportunity, meaningful communication which is the purpose of language learning and also a variety of implementing strategies to develop an Integrated Curriculum. At the same time, it shows that there are specific principles supported by research and practice regarding the teaching and learning of language to which the community of language students can get a good level, in other words define the essence of the ASE courses.
During the process in CFLP they could analyze that the language educators or teachers developed strategies and selected content which build upon students' interests and they were appropriate for increasing their linguistic competence. The teachers developed instructional programs that were standards-based and link classroom learning to activities that students could perform with speakers of the language, and that lean to the expansion of their knowledge and ability to successfully interact in the target language and culture.
The other article[9] describes the results of an interpretative qualitative research study in the field of teacher education carried out to identify the processes of innovation in the language curriculum by a group of public school teachers in Bogotá. The innovation process was observed in three stages: identification of the area of intervention, planning, and implementation of the innovation. Data was collected through interviews, videotaped sessions, tutors’ reports, and the final documents of the innovation projects. The unit of analysis was the declarative statements of teachers. Two broad aspects of the process of innovation were identified: the process of curricular innovation and the group processes in managing the innovation. In the data analysis, three categories emerged that are described in the discussion of findings: shifting the focus of the curriculum, adopting a curricular perspective to support innovative practices, and acting reflectively and dynamically in the innovation. The results tell us that teachers planned and carried out curricular innovations thinking critically about students’ needs and interests. They adopted curricular perspectives that helped them construct and support their classroom projects. Finally, teachers acted reflectively during the implementation of the innovation by adjusting their pedagogical practices in order to benefit students’ learning and to achieve their institutional goal.
In these two articles is evident that one effective teaching and learning take place in classrooms and in the construction of the project where the target language is the medium of instruction and is embedded in authentic cultural content and contexts. It is important built successful language classrooms, teachers must create culturally authentic, language-rich environments where the target language is the medium of instruction and students have ongoing opportunities for communicative interaction which prepares them for the world beyond the classroom
As a conclusion ww to this section, the researchers can say that the curriculum always have into account the community needs and involve all the participants in order to get a good results. As a final construct, the teaching and learning of English as foreign language based on research, show the importance that the teacher has to give to the students’ interest and that language is a medium of instruction to get cultural knowledge in real context.
BE MORE SYNTHETIC ON THIS SECTION, BASED ON THE INFORMATION, WRITE CONNECTIONS TO THE PROJECT AND THE PROCESS YOU NEED TO DEVELOP.
[1] Díaz Barriga, Á. (2003). Curriculum. Tensiones conceptuales y prácticas. Magazine: Electrónica de investigación educativa.(P.2)
[2] Díaz Barriga, Á. (2003). Curriculum. Tensiones conceptuales y prácticas. Magazine: Electrónica de investigación educativa, (p.7)
[3]Camelo, M. et al. (2006). “Revising a Foreign Language Curriculum: A Challenging and Enhancing Experience at a Public School in Bogotá”. Profile No.7 Bogotá Jan. /dec. 2006. http://www.scielo.org.co/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1657-07902006000100002&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en
[4]Camelo, M. et al. (2006). “Revising a Foreign Language Curriculum: A Challenging and Enhancing Experience at a Public School in Bogotá”. Profile No.7 Bogotá Jan. /dec. 2006. http://www.scielo.org.co/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1657-07902006000100002&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en
[5] Suárez, Hernán (1995). Educación y Democracia. Entrevista realizada a Estanislao Zuleta, Cali Colombia, (paper).
[6] Arikewuyo, Olalekan , (2007). Teachers Perceptions of Principals Leadership Capacities in Nigeria: Volume 5 - Issue 3.
[7] Kraker Jackeline, USA (2002). Research anxiety and students' perceptions of research: An experiment. Part II. Journal of the American Society for information science and technology, pages 295-307
[8] Lorraine D’Ambruoso / California Language Teachers Association. (1989). the California Foreign Language Project.
[9] Dra. Amparo Clavijo Olarte / Claudia Torres Jaramillo (ene.-dic. 2004).Teachers Acting Critically Upon the Curriculum: Innovations that Transform Teaching. Íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, Volumen (9), no. 15
CARLOS ADAN
TABLE OF CONTENTS Page
INTRODUCTION 3
JUSTIFICATION 7
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM, RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND OBJECTIVES
DEAR CARLOS PLEASE CORRECT SOME GRAMMAR MISTAKES AND USE SYNONYMS, GO DEEPLY TO REFERENCES SOME OF THEM ARE NOT INCLUDED.
THE WORDS ARE BOLD
INTRODUCTION
The construction of an integrated curriculum at ASE (Alianza Social Educativa) represents the main core of the authors’ study. ASE is a social foundation dedicated to give informal education as English courses, French courses, accounting courses at low cost. ASE works with population ranging from 6 to 50 years old. Alianza social Educativa (ASE) is the place where the authors are working as pre- service teachers and developing their final dissertation project.
Within the organization of this macro-project, different areas of curriculum and pedagogy have been arranged to work together in search of positive results in the relationship between socio-cultural factors and perceptions from teachers’ pedagogical orientations regarding the English curriculum. When mentioning the social and cultural factors, it is important to keep in mind the main principles of ASE, and their orientation towards social changes, values, and solidarity. These principles are part of this integrated curriculum. The curriculum needs to have clear thoughts on an initial philosophy that is created after reviewing and understanding the context and population to be instructed and enrolled in an English course.
This macro project has three main axes. The first axe is material because these are the support of the pre - service teachers to implement English courses but due to the resources at ASE these are limited. In this construction of an integrated curriculum the materials will play a pertinent role because with a group of ideas, facts, data, etc., they may provide the basis for or be incorporated into some integrated work. The second axe are the classroom procedures that take part of the construction of an integrated curriculum taking into account the relevance of perceiving teachers as reflective practitioners. Also, it is where the process of teaching - learning is motivated by the teachers in order to achieve a successful English course; where the students' and teachers' ideas, perceptions, beliefs are taking into account to improve this process and at the same time are the base where the project starts with the construction of the curriculum. And the third axe is evaluation: according to Richards (2.001; p 286-287 ) It is an examination of many aspects in the context and in the structure of a course; it involves the goals, the students and teacher’s expectations, the syllabus and program content, classroom procedures among others. In other words, the evaluation analyses is the how the teaching and learning process takes place during the course, for this reason it is necessary that ASE tries to give an structure to the courses. In this way it is going to be easier to set up goals and program contents that carry out the teaching- learning process to be suitable with the population needs.
After adding the previous introduction to the academic branches or subfields of study [assessment, classroom procedures (teaching and learning), materials, and curriculum research], this proposal purpose to construct the bridge between theory and practice, adapting the development of the curriculum to the reality of the activities happening in the classroom.
English teachers are always looking for better ways to guide people in different educational processes, and thus, help more students by offering tools that will enhance their future careers. Based on this concept, this macro-project is founded on the interest for teaching and researching about these tools, the students’ future and their role in a demanding society.
In the following chapters you will find the justification of this project - The justification explains the “why” of this macro project, the impact that they expect in ASE, the population where the authors are working and which will be the results. These results will be seen in the improvement of the courses, in the organization of the topics and materials and basically in the level of English that each course will have.
The statement of the problem mentions the needs and the solution that the team is going to solve - The research questions are the starting point of an investigation, in this case a pedagogical research that is based on the main research question that may find which are the socio-cultural and pedagogical factors that connect ASE’s project and English integrated curriculum? and the sub question of how are those connections integrated in the construction of an integrated curriculum?; the main objectives that aim to construct an integrated curriculum through the socio - cultural factors that the community has with pedagogical strategies.
The literature review is about all the books, articles, magazines, authors and previous researches that help to support the macro project in theory and practice, the research design is the organization and the distribution of roles, places, methods and data collection in the research, finally the timeline is the organization of schedule of task, assessments, dates of evaluations, meetings and the seminary class.
JUSTIFICATION
The direct impact of this project has to do with the construction of an EFL integrated curriculum. It has the goal of making the community part of the construction of it. The integrated curriculum can provide students the suitable pedagogical elements needed for constructive learning.
This research has two main elements. The first one is the setting or the community itself. Through the development of this project, the authors expect the ASE’s community can gain multiple assets and understand the meaning of an enhanced orientation of their educational goals.
Keeping this idea in mind, the authors have found the opportunity to integrate the gap between what is planned and thought to be carried out within the English curriculum and its components and what the context really needs in order to learn a new language and the ASE project.
Furthermore, the community has had a positive contact with the second element which is the English teachers. In this case, teachers will have a full cycle experience offered by research that it is about of the creation of a more objective,INCLUDE STH ABOUT PERCEPTIONS AND PEDAGOGICAL FACTORS professional and assertive vision of educational processes. In other words, the teachers are going throughout a journey that goes from literature, approaches and prior assumptions to an improved and more objective perception of multiple pedagogical practices.
PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
The purpose of this study is to know which are the socio-cultural and pedagogical factors that connect ASE’s project and English curriculum, and how are those connections integrated in the construction of a curriculum. The intention is also to carry out the construction of the integrated curriculum based on the essential pedagogical strategies that are suitable to work in a specific context.
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
During the pre-service teaching in ASE, and based on the data collection instruments like journals, meetings, activities like opening, closing session and the developing of lessons plans, the authors have realized that ASE has a curriculum that is not attending student’s needs; instead of that the authors wonder to improve the educational process.
The statement of the problem is based on the need of a curriculum that can be constructed and evidenced through the perceptions of pre-service teachers, the community and follows the philosophy of ASE. The initial idea is also generated by the need of an integrated curriculum that can give a renewed sense of achievement and organization to the educational processes carried out with the community.
Based on the socio-cultural, socio- economic characteristics, the perceptions of the population and student’s needs, the pre- service teachers decided to write the research questions. YOU CAN GO A LITTLE DEEPLY ON THIS IDEA ONE BY ONE YOU CUT OFF PREVIOUS IDEAS THAT NEED TO BE INCLUDED ATTENDING TO EACH ELEMENT.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
· Which are the socio-cultural and pedagogical factors that connect ASE’s project and an English integrated curriculum?
How are those connections integrated in the construction of an integrated curriculum? WHAT connections ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT BE CLEAR.
OBJECTIVES
Main objective: To identify the relationship between the community's socio - cultural aspects and the English curriculum in order to build up an integrated curriculum for Teaching English based on those findings.
Secondary Objectives:
1. Standardize the level of each English course CONNECT TO RESEARCH QUESTIONS.
2. Include the community in the construction of an English foreign language integrated curriculum.
INTRODUCTION 3
JUSTIFICATION 7
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM, RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND OBJECTIVES
DEAR CARLOS PLEASE CORRECT SOME GRAMMAR MISTAKES AND USE SYNONYMS, GO DEEPLY TO REFERENCES SOME OF THEM ARE NOT INCLUDED.
THE WORDS ARE BOLD
INTRODUCTION
The construction of an integrated curriculum at ASE (Alianza Social Educativa) represents the main core of the authors’ study. ASE is a social foundation dedicated to give informal education as English courses, French courses, accounting courses at low cost. ASE works with population ranging from 6 to 50 years old. Alianza social Educativa (ASE) is the place where the authors are working as pre- service teachers and developing their final dissertation project.
Within the organization of this macro-project, different areas of curriculum and pedagogy have been arranged to work together in search of positive results in the relationship between socio-cultural factors and perceptions from teachers’ pedagogical orientations regarding the English curriculum. When mentioning the social and cultural factors, it is important to keep in mind the main principles of ASE, and their orientation towards social changes, values, and solidarity. These principles are part of this integrated curriculum. The curriculum needs to have clear thoughts on an initial philosophy that is created after reviewing and understanding the context and population to be instructed and enrolled in an English course.
This macro project has three main axes. The first axe is material because these are the support of the pre - service teachers to implement English courses but due to the resources at ASE these are limited. In this construction of an integrated curriculum the materials will play a pertinent role because with a group of ideas, facts, data, etc., they may provide the basis for or be incorporated into some integrated work. The second axe are the classroom procedures that take part of the construction of an integrated curriculum taking into account the relevance of perceiving teachers as reflective practitioners. Also, it is where the process of teaching - learning is motivated by the teachers in order to achieve a successful English course; where the students' and teachers' ideas, perceptions, beliefs are taking into account to improve this process and at the same time are the base where the project starts with the construction of the curriculum. And the third axe is evaluation: according to Richards (2.001; p 286-287 ) It is an examination of many aspects in the context and in the structure of a course; it involves the goals, the students and teacher’s expectations, the syllabus and program content, classroom procedures among others. In other words, the evaluation analyses is the how the teaching and learning process takes place during the course, for this reason it is necessary that ASE tries to give an structure to the courses. In this way it is going to be easier to set up goals and program contents that carry out the teaching- learning process to be suitable with the population needs.
After adding the previous introduction to the academic branches or subfields of study [assessment, classroom procedures (teaching and learning), materials, and curriculum research], this proposal purpose to construct the bridge between theory and practice, adapting the development of the curriculum to the reality of the activities happening in the classroom.
English teachers are always looking for better ways to guide people in different educational processes, and thus, help more students by offering tools that will enhance their future careers. Based on this concept, this macro-project is founded on the interest for teaching and researching about these tools, the students’ future and their role in a demanding society.
In the following chapters you will find the justification of this project - The justification explains the “why” of this macro project, the impact that they expect in ASE, the population where the authors are working and which will be the results. These results will be seen in the improvement of the courses, in the organization of the topics and materials and basically in the level of English that each course will have.
The statement of the problem mentions the needs and the solution that the team is going to solve - The research questions are the starting point of an investigation, in this case a pedagogical research that is based on the main research question that may find which are the socio-cultural and pedagogical factors that connect ASE’s project and English integrated curriculum? and the sub question of how are those connections integrated in the construction of an integrated curriculum?; the main objectives that aim to construct an integrated curriculum through the socio - cultural factors that the community has with pedagogical strategies.
The literature review is about all the books, articles, magazines, authors and previous researches that help to support the macro project in theory and practice, the research design is the organization and the distribution of roles, places, methods and data collection in the research, finally the timeline is the organization of schedule of task, assessments, dates of evaluations, meetings and the seminary class.
JUSTIFICATION
The direct impact of this project has to do with the construction of an EFL integrated curriculum. It has the goal of making the community part of the construction of it. The integrated curriculum can provide students the suitable pedagogical elements needed for constructive learning.
This research has two main elements. The first one is the setting or the community itself. Through the development of this project, the authors expect the ASE’s community can gain multiple assets and understand the meaning of an enhanced orientation of their educational goals.
Keeping this idea in mind, the authors have found the opportunity to integrate the gap between what is planned and thought to be carried out within the English curriculum and its components and what the context really needs in order to learn a new language and the ASE project.
Furthermore, the community has had a positive contact with the second element which is the English teachers. In this case, teachers will have a full cycle experience offered by research that it is about of the creation of a more objective,INCLUDE STH ABOUT PERCEPTIONS AND PEDAGOGICAL FACTORS professional and assertive vision of educational processes. In other words, the teachers are going throughout a journey that goes from literature, approaches and prior assumptions to an improved and more objective perception of multiple pedagogical practices.
PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
The purpose of this study is to know which are the socio-cultural and pedagogical factors that connect ASE’s project and English curriculum, and how are those connections integrated in the construction of a curriculum. The intention is also to carry out the construction of the integrated curriculum based on the essential pedagogical strategies that are suitable to work in a specific context.
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
During the pre-service teaching in ASE, and based on the data collection instruments like journals, meetings, activities like opening, closing session and the developing of lessons plans, the authors have realized that ASE has a curriculum that is not attending student’s needs; instead of that the authors wonder to improve the educational process.
The statement of the problem is based on the need of a curriculum that can be constructed and evidenced through the perceptions of pre-service teachers, the community and follows the philosophy of ASE. The initial idea is also generated by the need of an integrated curriculum that can give a renewed sense of achievement and organization to the educational processes carried out with the community.
Based on the socio-cultural, socio- economic characteristics, the perceptions of the population and student’s needs, the pre- service teachers decided to write the research questions. YOU CAN GO A LITTLE DEEPLY ON THIS IDEA ONE BY ONE YOU CUT OFF PREVIOUS IDEAS THAT NEED TO BE INCLUDED ATTENDING TO EACH ELEMENT.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
· Which are the socio-cultural and pedagogical factors that connect ASE’s project and an English integrated curriculum?
How are those connections integrated in the construction of an integrated curriculum? WHAT connections ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT BE CLEAR.
OBJECTIVES
Main objective: To identify the relationship between the community's socio - cultural aspects and the English curriculum in order to build up an integrated curriculum for Teaching English based on those findings.
Secondary Objectives:
1. Standardize the level of each English course CONNECT TO RESEARCH QUESTIONS.
2. Include the community in the construction of an English foreign language integrated curriculum.
GENERAL INFORMATION
1. THE FEEDBACK IS GIVEN IN THIS SITE, BUT YOU CAN GET BETTER FROM THE ORIGINALLY IN YOUR E-MAILS.
2. THE APA NORMS INCLUDE:
2. THE APA NORMS INCLUDE:
- INDEED EACH PARAGRAPH WITH 5 LINES AT THE BEGINNING, SO THERE ISN'T SPACE B/W PARAGRAPHS
- CHECK THE FOLLOWING SYMBOLS CORRECTIONS
- CORRECTION SYMBOLS USED
SERIOUS ERRORS (global errors)
RO run-on sentence
INC incomplete (fragment) sentence
AUX auxiliary verb
T verb tense
AG subject-verb agreement
WO word order: adverb, adjective + noun, questions,etc.
Ag modifier-noun agreement
? not understandable
AWK awkward construction
Ref reference word, pronoun error
vt incorrect verb tense
vf verb incorrectly formed
modal incorrect use or formation of a modal
cond incorrect use or formation of conditional sentence
pass incorrect use or formation of passive voice
ss incorrect sentence structure
conn incorrect or missing connecting words
LOCAL ERRORS
com comparisons
missing word
// non parallel construction
wp wrong preposition
art article
x not needed
wc/ww incorrect word choice/ wrong word
s/pl problem with the singular or plural noun
MECHANICS
p punctuation
sp spelling
cap capitalization
ind indentation of paragraphs
mar margins
l every-other-line
div division of words by syllables on different lines
/ divide words
close up space
coh coherence- one idea does not lead to the text
cs comma splice- two independent clauses joined by a comma
dm dangling modifier-phrase or clause with no word(s) to modify in a sentence
frag fragment incomplete sentence
nonidiom nonidiomatic-not expressed this way in English
unclear unclear-message not clear
MAURA DIAZ
LANGUAGES COORDINATOR
Integrated Curriculum ASE corrected April 29/2010
Dear students welcome to our Blog in order to carry the best results of our research proposal I think this way can help us to give solutions sooner all together.
I hope you can read your assignments and give feedback a.s.a.p as you can.
1. Read the introduction and check if it is in agreement with the justification and the statement of the problem, research questions and objectives. for CARLOS ADAN
2. Background needs a deeply analysis and correction, focus on your personal perceptions on language teaching and learning in that context, foreign language acquisition procedures nowdays, and the need to improve a new curriculum. for IVAN, CARLOS MACHADO Y CARLOS ANDRES CHAPARRO.
3. The Literature Review needs to focus on; 1.Perceptions of language learning and teaching, (keep in mind the socio cultural anf pedagogical factors ), 2.Foreign Language Teaching and Learning, 3. Curriculum. for MAIN GROUP; DIANA PEDRAZA, SANDRA MARTINEZ, GIOVANNY RODRIGUEZ, ASK FOR SUPPORTED INFORMATION TO PAOLA CALDERON, ANGELICA ACOSTA AND CAROLINA MARTINEZ.
4. RESEARCH DESIGN= DONE
5. DATA ANALYSIS COLLECT IT a.s.a.p as you can we need to run on. for ALEJANDRA VALENCIA, JENIFFER PACHON, ELINA TRUJILLO Y CAROLINA HERNANDEZ.
6. RESULTS, FINDING AND OR PEDAG OGICAL IMPLICATIONS IT IS UP TO YOU.
For DIANA MENDEZ, CLAUDIA VARGAS, SONIA RAMIREZ.
I THINK THIS IS A GOOD SOLUTIONS IN ORDER TO CHECK THE WHOLE GROUP IS WORKING WE ARE GOING TO PUBLISH EVERYTHING WE ARE DOING BASED ON THE GROUPS DESIGNED, THE SECUENCE OF THE PROJECT IS NOT CHANGED.
TOGETHE WE CAN DO IT!
HOPE YOUR COMMENTS
I hope you can read your assignments and give feedback a.s.a.p as you can.
1. Read the introduction and check if it is in agreement with the justification and the statement of the problem, research questions and objectives. for CARLOS ADAN
2. Background needs a deeply analysis and correction, focus on your personal perceptions on language teaching and learning in that context, foreign language acquisition procedures nowdays, and the need to improve a new curriculum. for IVAN, CARLOS MACHADO Y CARLOS ANDRES CHAPARRO.
3. The Literature Review needs to focus on; 1.Perceptions of language learning and teaching, (keep in mind the socio cultural anf pedagogical factors ), 2.Foreign Language Teaching and Learning, 3. Curriculum. for MAIN GROUP; DIANA PEDRAZA, SANDRA MARTINEZ, GIOVANNY RODRIGUEZ, ASK FOR SUPPORTED INFORMATION TO PAOLA CALDERON, ANGELICA ACOSTA AND CAROLINA MARTINEZ.
4. RESEARCH DESIGN= DONE
5. DATA ANALYSIS COLLECT IT a.s.a.p as you can we need to run on. for ALEJANDRA VALENCIA, JENIFFER PACHON, ELINA TRUJILLO Y CAROLINA HERNANDEZ.
6. RESULTS, FINDING AND OR PEDAG OGICAL IMPLICATIONS IT IS UP TO YOU.
For DIANA MENDEZ, CLAUDIA VARGAS, SONIA RAMIREZ.
I THINK THIS IS A GOOD SOLUTIONS IN ORDER TO CHECK THE WHOLE GROUP IS WORKING WE ARE GOING TO PUBLISH EVERYTHING WE ARE DOING BASED ON THE GROUPS DESIGNED, THE SECUENCE OF THE PROJECT IS NOT CHANGED.
TOGETHE WE CAN DO IT!
HOPE YOUR COMMENTS
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