Vol. 4 Issue 15 – Research Article: ‘Is a Uniform Curriculum Possible? The Clash between the Needs-based and Means-based Curriculums and Ideal Language Courses’ by Manash Pratim Borah

This paper is submitted by Manash Pratim Borah, Assistant Professor in English, Central Institute of Himalayan Culture studies (CIHCS) (An Autonomous Institute under the Ministry of Culture, Govt. of India), Dahung, Po- Tenga Valley- 790116, Dist- West Kameng, Arunachal Pradesh.

Abstract

In the present educational system of India the disparity between the needs-based and means-based language courses will be an obvious factor in practical field. Whether the curriculums prepared by states councils or central board in India which need to address and operate with a wide variety of cultures, ethnicities and languages of states and of the country as well can be reduced to any unified notion of compiling based on uniform standard and material or not is certainly a debatable issue. Specifically in North-East India, the institutes and colleges adopting the CBSE/NCERT course contents always have faced serious problems to meet up the needs of students coming from heterogeneous language background and remote areas. Even within a single territory or in colleges/institutions under an affiliated university, the curriculum that does well in some situations may not give expected results in another (Dudley-Evans and St. John 124). There should be provisions for compiling curriculums of language courses by mixing up both the needs and means analysis methods and every educational institute should be asked to compile the means-based part of own depending on the requirements of the students and the environment.

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When discussions have been made on ideal language courses to be implemented particularly in the undergraduate level with the hope to meet up the needs and challenges of today’s learners and of the global world respectively, questions of/on an efficient curriculum will certainly be raised in consequence. And when the mentioned needs and challenges are placed in a binary opposition and are read interchangeably as harbingers in reciprocity, the global demands or challenges are themselves converted in most of the time into the needs of young professionals and learners. The needs of learners, as parameters of standard are placed in opposite to the global demands and curriculums are sought to be designed to address those same. In situation like that what may be said as the irony of deceiving is that the importance and study of needs in the forms of ways of “communication in the target situation” (Chambers 29) which Chambers has termed as the Target Situation Analysis (TSA) as basic scaffolding of designing curriculums are shifted from the learners, teachers and situations to global demands and standard. As demands are increasing gradually, new professional/short term language courses are implemented to fulfill or rather to say overcome those needs. And in this entire process, the needs are themselves converted into challenges beyond comprehension and needs of the learners are envisaged to be measured by embedding them into the needs for an efficient curriculum. As laborious epistemic efforts, both the needs are blurred in this reading and thereby end with frustration and criticism. These frustrations and criticisms resulting out of the hiatus created in between the theoretical dispositions of language courses and experiences in practical fields are two basic challenges to ELT or to the entire educational system prevailing in our present India.

However, in this dichotomous reading of the binary- needs and global demands, whether the needs of the learners/for curriculums along with ESL and ESP teachings are totally commoditized irrespective to the ethical questions related with education in general or not, as Rogers (1982) remarks referring to Fiere’s thesis in his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1972)¹, that cannot be generalized, still it can be presumed that in the entire process of needs fulfilling, the context and cultural environments where the needs are needed to be placed to accomplish are often overlooked. The knowledge of the context and cultural environments in which a language course is required to embed and run are excluded not only from regular undergraduate courses running in our present time but also from most of the vocational new English language courses. Even when questions of pedagogy and efficiency of courses have come into the context, apart from developing a curriculum, such knowledge ultimately creates various problems and new challenges to us. The reasons and problems behind that exclusion are considered necessary to discuss in detail.

However before explaining various complexities related with the entire process, it would be imperative to make clear what is meant by curriculum and curriculum development. The researcher has used the word curriculum to mean “principles and procedures for planning, implementation, evaluation, and management of an educational programme” (Nunan 159). In a more generalized tone it is a “very general concept which involves consideration of the whole complex of the philosophical, social, and administrative factors which contribute to the planning of an educational program” (6). Throughout the paper the word curriculum is basically used to mean the regular undergraduate programmes along with other vocational courses like ESL or ESP. On the other hand the phrase curriculum development is used to mean “a practical activity which aims to improve the quality of language teaching through the use of systematic planning, development, and review practices in all aspects of a language program” (Richards 91).

As the researcher has aimed at critically examining the clash between the needs-based and means-based curriculums and strategies behind developing ideal language courses vis-à-vis Indian societies, what becomes provocative to the research is undoubtedly the context itself. Since the success of any language course is always domain specific, the study regarding efficiency and success of the course should be embedded into the specific domain. It is a well known fact that after the publication of Munby’s Communicative Syllabus Design (1978), the purposes and needs of learning a course have been considered as the focal point of needs analysis. Considering learners as the paramount, situation and pedagogy have been positioned secondary to them in the process. Chamber’ TSA is complementary to Munby’s model of needs analysis which too focuses on the “variables that affect communication needs by organizing them in a dynamic relationship to each other” (Munby 32). The main usefulness of Munby’s model is that it has incorporated and proposed a comprehensive area and data for needs analysis as well as for preparation of language courses. In his model what seems really fascinating to the researcher is that behind a detailed analysis of participants, “parts of socioculturally determined profile of communication needs” (42) and “the dimension of contextual appropriacy” (49) have been considered vital to needs analysis as well as in constituting a language course. Such account of needs analysis along with the parameters given by Munby provides us a detailed description of communication needs (Robinson 1991). As acknowledgers of Munby’s model, Hutchinson and waters too have recognized that “all the course designers” (54) need to operate with Munby model of communication needs in order to ask “questions about the target situation” and to give response “towards that situation of various participants in the learning process” (59). In this way present situation analysis (PSA) becomes vital to needs analysis which was first proposed by Richterich and Chancerel (1980) and which was thoroughly acknowledged by intellectuals like Robinson (1991), Jordan (1997), Dudley-Evans and St. John (1998) and so on. In this approach, as Jordan remarks, the sources of information are the learners, the teaching establishment and the place of work. For Richards (2001) such situation analysis means an “analysis of factors in the context of a planned or present curriculum that is made in order to assess their potential impact on the project” (91).

 

As it is seen clearly, it is not the learner that constitutes the basic scaffolding in developing a curriculum. Primarily the socio-cultural forces along with contextual factors of target and present situation are thoroughly taken into account when the dynamics of communication needs has to be measured. Notwithstanding such detail consideration of various issues of curriculum development, the kaleidoscopic and heterogeneous natures of those forces and factors are not adequately addressed in those models and paradigm derived from needs-based strategies of curriculum development. However, there are some dynamic approaches like deficiencies or lacks analysis and learning needs or strategy analysis proposed by Hutchinson and Waters (1987) to provide a learning-centered approach for the sake of overcoming those challenges. What seems really interesting in Hutchinson and Waters’ model is that they have marked a departure through the model from a product-oriented method to a process-oriented approach and sought to concentrate “what the learner needs to do in order to learn” (54). In their model, what they made different was an open-ended approach towards the learning-skills of learner which are traditionally being sought to confine within goal-oriented methods of learning English. For them attention should be paid on how learners learn, rather than the language needs. And what should be vindicated for the same is the learner need, which they define as “what the learner needs to do in the target situation” (ibid). This learner need is divided into three categories- necessities, wants and lacks. Out of these three, what should be analyzed and paid more attention is the lacks which are the gaps between what the learner knows and the necessities (56). Depending on situation and cultural environment, these gaps always constitute specificity of challenges to learners, teachers along with the curriculum developers. Next to the ‘gaps’ in this approach is the learning needs, including who the learners are, their socio-cultural and learning background, age, gender, background knowledge of specialized contents, background knowledge of English, attitudes towards English, attitudes towards cultures of the English speaking world and studying English. To overcome the ‘gaps’, what the learners should be taught, according to Hutchinson and Waters, is the skills; the process of learning and achieving the desired goal is a personal process. It is personal in the sense that it depends on the cognitive psychology of the learner as well as on the cultural environment in which the teaching-learning process is taking place.

This shift of perspective and approach towards curriculum development and English language teaching can be considered as the turning point out of which questions on means-based curriculums have been raised. Considering the underlying heterogeneity and diversities in the field of culture and language in a country like India, this means-based approach seems to be more relevant to address those apparent ethnic challenges and problems running rampant in most of the societies of our time. In a product-oriented approach towards curriculums all those diversities and specific problems cannot be adequately addressed from distance. Even if some action research has been made on some specific areas, those specific areas cannot be the representatives of all sorts of diversities and requirements as hindrances to language development. It is the main problem that we teachers have to face in our practical/professional life inside-outside classroom, basically in remote-rural areas. The CBSE/NCERT courses opted for the undergraduate classes have not left the required ‘room’ for learners and teachers in which both learner and teacher can fiddle with the prescribed curriculum and the cognitive side of learners respectively. Considering the requirement of the ‘room’, as Jordan (1997) quotes Bower (1980):

If we accept…that a student will learn best if what he wants to learn, less well what he only needs to learn, less well still what he either wants or needs to learn, it is clearly important to leave room in a learning programme for the learner’s own wishes regarding both goals and processes. (26)

Spatially speaking, if features and nature of the ‘room’ will be varied depending on the cultural environment and “what the learner needs to do in order to learn”, then approaches and strategies needed to make productive the ‘room’ will also be different and assorted.

Considering the rigidness of the regular undergraduate CBSE/NCERT courses, the researcher has adopted four regular undergraduate English course text books including the core courses published by NCERT for class XI and XII and has made experimental research over the curriculum and has found some ambiguous underlying paradigms in developing curriculum and courses. Whatever the model of designing the curriculum may be, all the four text books are totally ambiguous in providing an explicit contour of standard which may equally determine the level of challenge and needs that the curriculum is made for. If the curriculum is aimed at bringing the learners into a global democratic platform, the inherent cultural and linguistic heterogeneity and the line of demarcation between the rural and urban undergraduate classrooms/learners are then somehow misjudged and ignored in developing the curriculum. As Dudley-Evans and St. John have remarked, all such national curriculums often fail to acknowledge the fact that “…what works in one situation may not work in another” (124). Such national curriculums are not sensitive or responsive to the particular cultural environment in which a course /curriculum is implemented. In the name of the global democratic platform, hence, such curriculum only enhances disparities and differences between learners of English language of rural and urban areas. A striking feature of the curriculum, in a negative sense, is that in both the two text books prescribed for class XII, only two Indian prose writers namely Kalki and Bama are included as representatives. Even in both the classes, no emphasis has been paid on teaching the cultural diversities of the nation.

From that perspective, what seems interesting to us is that the CBSE/NCERT regular undergraduate English course has incorporated a wide variety of genres, nations and diversified tastes of literatures of English, but apparently fails to appeal or respond to the inherent cultural diversities and linguistic heterogeneities of the nation. In a sense it falls short in reading the real needs of learners of diversified cultural background. For both the classes two text books are prescribed with strict directives and epistemological paradigm, and thereby have confined the entire course within rigidness and inflexibility. Mention should be made of the instructions regarding “thinking about language”- a phrase repeatedly used several times as direction for language development, but those directions are too sophisticated for those students coming from vernacular medium and weak linguistic background. The study of the change agents for efficacy of curriculum is entirely missing from such nationalized curriculums. In all those colleges and professional institutions, where except that regular undergraduate English course, no vocational course has been introduced, students have to rely on such nationalized curriculums or on curriculums provided by the affiliated university for cognitive and what we say as for skills development as well. However, among those colleges and institutions, there are many of them using curriculums and courses provided by the affiliated university; but there still arises problems for those institutions and colleges affiliated from universities of another states or of long distance. For such institutions and colleges, again same problems of cultural diversities and means analysis are emerged in consequences. Same problem may come into view within a single state of varied cultural and linguistic assimilation and of economic disparities existing as gulf in between metropolis and rural areas.

 

Hence it has been considered that developing a curriculum is a complex task due to rich variety of learners’ needs, cultural assimilations, economic disparities, linguistic variety and the amount of people who play a role in decision making process. Because of these change agents, a homogeneous or uniform curriculum cannot be possible especially in a country like India where these change agents are always alarming in the process of developing curriculum and its implementation. In case of nationalized curriculums, addressing these change agents remains always far-fetched and unnoticed/untouched by dint of limitation of course and distance. Those change agents cannot be amalgamated and addressed within limited content and strategies provoked by such nationalized curriculums. If needs are varied, cultural environments, linguistic background and economic status are varied, then how can there be a uniform curriculum to integrate those alarming change agents!

However, there still remain some inevitable questions regarding the notion of standard and progress of educational system. The researcher, as a searcher of remedies of these problems is not of the opinion that standard or quality of curriculums should be compromised; rather the researcher wants to find solutions of those by incorporating the needs-based and means-based curriculums as well as the language and literature based courses. The first and foremost strategy should be that if we need to uproot those problems from the root, then obviously we need to go into the root of the problem itself; and as problems are heterogeneous and specific depending on the context, therefore remedies will too be multidimensional. There should be provisions for compiling curriculums of language courses by mixing up both the needs and means analysis methods and every educational institute/college should be asked to compile the means-based part of own depending on the requirements of the students and the environment. By this criterion, if the need-based part will maintain the uniformity of standard and quality, the means-based part thereby will bring specificity of needs, problems along with remedies into the context. Consequently, the means-based part will be a supplement to the need-based part of the curriculum itself which in turn will inculcate more efficiency and deft into the curriculum as a whole. The supplementary part will not only contextualize the needs-based part of the curriculum but also all those challenges which constitute obstructions to curriculum development and efficiency. In the process, although, before adopting the means-based part prepared by specific institutions and colleges, that should be sanctioned through panel discussion after analyzing and evaluating by a group of experts through both the mental and physical involvements with the cultural environment and other change agents.

This discussion and evaluating process must be maintained by the board/council or the affiliated university and must be repeated the process and amended the means-based part in regular interval of time. In this way the change agents with the change of time can be addressed with adequate respond and efficiency. As Richards (2001) emphasizes that the processes of “needs analysis, situational analysis, planning learning outcomes, course organization, selection and preparing teaching materials, providing for effective teaching and evaluation” (41) are all integrally interconnected, in those institutions and colleges where learners have to rely on regular undergraduate courses for language development, means-analysis and teachers should be placed at the centre of the entire system. In developing curriculums or constituting ideal language courses vis-à-vis the learners and learning needs along with global challenges, we need to think seriously about the maximum and minimum mode of standard as two upper and lower limits of selecting materials respectively. As the board or council cannot negotiate with the quality of materials in a national platform and will select materials on the basis of national or global demand, the compromising part will be maintained autonomously or rather we can say separately by the specific institution or college through means analysis. In this way we can able to address both the global and ethnic challenges as well as can deal with the needs of all those learners coming with lack of basic knowledge and from vernacular medium.

Note

1. Referring to Freire’s (1970) thesis in his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed that no syllabus is neutral, J. Rogers has found four areas of ‘dishonesty’ namely the raising of false hopes; problems of cost effectiveness; the cultural imposition of non-neutral values by ELT professionals in host countries; and a continued maintenance of teacher: learner dichotomies within mass education programmes. For Rogers there lies a big gap between the amount of English taught and learnt. Here the problems are created by practitioners. For more detail see Rogers.

List of Works Cited

Chambers, F. “A re-evaluation of needs analysis.” ESP Journal, 1/1. 1980. 25-33. Print.

Freire, P. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 1^st ed. London, Penguin. 1972. Print.

Hutchinson, T., and Waters, A. English for specific purposes: A learning-centered approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Print.

Jordan, R. R. English for academic purposes: A guide and resource book for teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Print.

Munby, J. Communicative Syllabus Design. 1^st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978. Print.

Nunan, D. The learner centered curriculum. 1^st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Print.

Richards, J. Curriculum development in language teaching. 1^st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Print.

Robinson, P. ESP today: A practitioner’s guide. 1^st ed. Prentice Hall. UK: Prentice Hall International (UK) Ltd, 1991. Print.

Rogers, J. “The World for Sick Proper.” ELT Journal. Vol. 36/3. (1982). 144-151. Print.