Learning Languages in the New Zealand Curriculum

Paper commissioned by the New Zealand Ministry of Education

For the New Zealand Curriculum Marautanga Project

October 2005

Angela Scarino

Research Centre for Languages and Cultures Education

School of International Studies

University of South Australia

St Bernards Road

Magill South Australia 5072

Phone: +61 (08) 8302 4775

Fax: +61 (08)8302 4774

Email:

Table of contents

Executive summary

Introduction

Context of development

The context of curriculum development within an outcomes orientation

The purposes of curriculum statements

The nature of learning languages-and-cultures

Connecting teaching and learning and assessment of languages-and-cultures

Connecting teaching and learning

Connecting assessment and teaching and learning

Connecting within and across the curriculum

Connecting curriculum framework development and use

Connecting teachers in professional learning and research in languages-and-cultures education

Conclusion

References

Executive summary

This paper addresses a range of conceptual issues that pertain to the development of curriculum statements that are designed to depict the essence of learning languages and cultures at progressive levels of achievement through the primary and secondary curriculum in New Zealand. These curriculum statements, typical of educational reform internationally, seek to address two fundamental and interrelated dimensions of language teaching and learning: (1) the nature, scope and complexity of learning languages and cultures and (2) the ‘outcomes’ of learning, understood both as the nature and scope of learning and the level of complexity or standard. As well as being fundamental curriculum questions, they are also questions that form part of teachers’ ongoing consideration of their work as languages educators.

The development of a statement for Languages in the New Zealand curriculum takes place in the context of more than a decade of curriculum being framed within an ‘outcomes’ orientation. Using the construct of ‘outcome’ alone, however, is considered to be insufficient as a catalyst for engendering a revitalisation in the curriculum, teaching, learning and assessment of Languages. What is needed is a focus on the deep conceptual issues that relate to learning Languages and a curriculum framework that speaks to teachers as mediators of learning, and as people who have a major role to play in communicating learning to students, parents, educational administrators and the wider community. Thus, the purpose of the curriculum framework is best seen as providing a basis for both systemic and, most importantly, educational accountability, as well as promoting both short term and long term approaches to language learning and assessment.

This paper addresses the deep conceptual issues considered in developing a curriculum framework for Languages. These pertain to changing understandings of a set of concepts that include: language, culture, communication, learning, teaching, assessment, achievement and progress and their interrelationship. These concepts are fundamental to understanding the learning of Languages. They are interrelated through the concept of intercultural language learning. Consideration of cross-curricular competencies or capabilities affords an important opportunity to consider Languages in the context of their place in the curriculum as a whole, and in the holistic education of students.

It is highlighted that once developed, it is important to recogniseany curriculum framework as an artifact or resource designed to support reflection and change. It pertains to the intended curriculum, rather than the enacted curriculum. Their strength resides in their potential to engender important, common, conceptual dialogue. Their limit resides in the fact that they are resources that address intentions, and not practice for practice can only be enacted by people. The curriculum statement: Learning Languages in the New Zealand Curriculumtherefore, will be understood and used in different ways by different participants in the education process. In order to ensure dialogue based on the curriculum framework, it will be necessary to provide opportunities for professional development. In order to ensure understanding of the curriculum as enacted by teachers, students and their communities, based on the curriculum framework, it will be important to support an inquiry or research stance towards its use. The curriculum framework itself should also remain open to continuous refinement, based on use.

Introduction

Context of development

The preparation of the curriculum statement Learning Languages in the New Zealand Curriculum offers the Ministry, and the wider community of individuals and groups involved and interested in languages education, an opportunity to consider Languages as an area of learning in its own right within the New Zealand curriculum.The goal of such development is to create a ‘state-of-the-art’ educational resource that provides a guide to teaching, learning and assessment in the present, and that is also fruitful at least for the immediate future.

This development is part of a ‘revitalisation process’, based on a stocktake of the New Zealand Curriculum Framework of 1993 (Ministry of Education, 2002). According to the Ministry, the overall process of development involves: (1) clarifying and refining outcomes, (2) a focus on quality teaching, (3) strengthening school ownership of curriculum and (4) supporting communication and strengthening partnerships with parents and communities. It is worth observing that in setting the task of curriculum ‘revitalisation’ or renewal, the Ministry is retaining its orientation towards ‘outcomes’. Generally, within this orientation, the emphasis on outcomes tends to leave to implementers (teachers and schools)at the local level, the task of developing appropriate content and processes to yield the intended outcomes.Within this orientation it is generally understood that, provided the outcomes are met (which is not an un-complicated notion in itself), they can be realised according to the requirements of the local context. In the presentphase of development, the revitalisation process includes an emphasis on the processes of quality teaching, and issues of local ownership and community understanding. This can usefully be interpreted as a potentially ‘new generation’ view of outcomes-oriented curriculum, one that is as concerned with processes and substance, as it is with the results or ‘outcomes’ of learning through the curriculum.

The development of the curriculum statement for the Languages learning area as set out by the Ministryinvolves the preparation of an overarching statement for teaching, learning and assessment. This overarching statement includes an essence statement which is intended to capture the nature of language learning and the contribution it makes to the individual and to society. In addition, it is intended to presentachievement objectives described at eight levels of progression, to capture the range, breadth and depth of student achievements. Finally, the statement is intended to address the development of overarching “key competencies, essential skills, attitudes, motivations and values” that integrate the curriculum as a whole. These requirements too, can be interpreted as signalling a desire on the part of the Ministry to provide a resource that extends beyond a traditional depiction of ‘outcomes’. Beyond outcomes, described as ‘achievement objectives’ at various levels, the emphasis on ‘essence’ invites developers to consider deeply the intrinsic natureand substance of the Languages learning area; the requirement to consider cross-curricular skills, attitudes, motivations and values can be understood as seeking to capture broad human capabilities that are considered to be of value in students’ overall learning and development, including their linguistic and cultural development.

In considering the development of a statement for Languages in the New Zealand curriculum, I necessarily bring an ‘outsider’ perspective, as one who has not lived in the culture of education in New Zealand.Nevertheless, I have engaged with the preparation of such statements in various states and nationally in Australia, and in Hong Kong. This experience has enabled me to study the development of such statements and to come to understand both their potential value and limitations. Thus, together with the influence of my own local/national contextualisation, I bring both a generative and a critical perspective to the task of development and ongoing reflection on such developments.

In discussing the development of a curriculum statement for Languages in the New Zealand curriculum I consider: (1) the context of curriculum development within an ‘outcomes’ orientation, (2) the purposes of curriculum statements, (3) the nature of learning languages-and-cultures, (4) connecting teaching, learning and assessment of languages-and-cultures, (5) connecting within and across the curriculum, (6) connecting curriculum framework development and its use, and (7) connecting teachers in professional learningand research in languages-and-cultures education. Discussion of each of these focuses predominantly on conceptual considerationsto be addressed in the development process, with a brief consideration of the use of the curriculum frameworks.

Prior to addressing the conceptual considerations it is important to signal a distinction. This is the important distinction between the ‘intended’ and the ‘enacted’ curriculum. The intended curriculum focuses on the planning, design and organisation of learning; it addresses primarily questions of the knowledge that is to be learned, that is, the subject matter or substance of the curriculum. The enacted curriculum relates to the lived experience of learning; it addresses not only the subject matter of the curriculum but how this is understood and acted upon by teachers and learners in their particular contexts.

In the process of developing a curriculum statement, Ministries can only address the intended curriculum and the intended outcomes of learning. Their work focuses on developing a resource that is intended to guide teaching, learning and assessment. They cannot engage directly with the enacted curriculum, the lived, sociocultural complexity of teaching, learning and assessing. However, it is important in the development to take into considerations about use. Furthermore, Ministries can also seek to monitor the use of the resource and stimulate innovation and creativity in its use.

Thus the development of a statement of the intended curriculum is best undertaken with mindfulness about the context of its use in the enactment of the curriculum, and with recognition that it should be subject to continual refinement based on use.

The context of curriculum development within an outcomes orientation

Curriculum development within an outcomes orientation has been a major characteristic of educational reform throughout the 1990s. Within this orientation, knowledge and know-how, incarnated in people, is seen as a critical resource; hence,there is the need to continuously develop people, which, in turn, necessitates reform in education. The shift towards specifying outcomesis integral to this style of educational reform. While this orientation is evident in education at an international level, it is not uncontested. Governments haveassumedand acted upon a connection between education,(specifically, high standards and standardised assessment), on the one hand, and social, political and economic productivity at an international level, on the other hand, even though this relationship has not, in fact, been established through research (see Reardon, Scott and Verre, 1994:1). In response, education systemshave developed frameworks of system-wide outcomes (or ‘standards’ as they are called in some contexts) within and across areas of the curriculum, with accompanying, standardised systems for monitoring the achievement of those outcomes. Schools and teachers have becomeresponsible and accountable for ‘delivering’ the outcomes as defined.

The movement towards developing frameworks of outcomes has been seen as a characteristic of the ‘marketisation of education’ and the production of human, intellectual ‘capital’ for the competitive benefit of the nation as a whole.The emphasis then, has been seen to be on competition and accountability, within an economic rationalist ideology (see Ball 2000; Roberts, 2003). As such, the development of frameworks of outcomes has beenunderstood as a highly political process which speaks to policy makers and administrators (Brindley, 1993) more than to teachers. The NewZealand Curriculum Framework (Ministry of Education, 1993) was part of this world-wide development. It represented a shift from ‘content’, as‘input’ to the learning process, to ‘outcomes’ (Ministry of Education, 2002). In a volume on international curriculum research, Roberts (2003) discusses in detail the debates that surrounded development and use of the New Zealand Curriculum Framework.As a conclusion to his analysis he calls for a return to deeper questions about the nature, purposes and aims of the curriculum, as well as the nature of curriculum processes, and he emphasises that this deep questioning should not just be in abstract, but in a way that enriches discussion about practice. He states:

The key perhaps is not to fall into a form of abstract theorising where the practical, policy, political and pedagogical issues of the day are ignored, but rather to show how concern with fundamental curriculum questions can, by providing a new set of conceptual lenses through which to view those issues, deepen and extend an already rich conversation. (Roberts 2003, 511)

This emphasis on the deep issues of the curriculum is timely in the Languages area, given that the field of languages education is responding to major changes in how the learning of languages is understood.

From an ‘outsider’ perspective, it is difficult to fully perceive the context of the current process of revitalisation of the New Zealand curriculum, and Languages within the curriculum. There are important indications that the process of development involves more than the concept of outcomes alone as a catalyst for curriculum renewal and improving learning. At the same time, there is also a potential danger that an instrumental view of learning outcomes might prevail. If too strong an emphasis is placed on outcomes the curriculum ecology is disrupted. In formulating ‘outcomes’ (or criteria, or standards, or descriptions of any kind as educational resources)in the context of curriculum renewal, it is important to note that no amount of refinement of the language will remove the fact that statements remain open to interpretation, and will be interpreted differently by different participants in the educational process. McNamara (1999) describes the way in which the work of developing curriculum statements emphasises wording and rewording and achieving consensus around these words, a process that he calls the “nominalisation fallacy” or “wording by collective agreement”. Similarly, Moss and Schutz (2001) discuss through detailed examples the way in which efforts to achieve consensus in relation to key ideas in curriculum, learning and assessment actually may mask diversity of the kind that would broaden participants’ understanding.

Given the potential contestation surrounding an ‘outcomes’ orientation, particularly if ‘outcome’ is seen as a sufficient construct to guide curriculum renewal, it is important in the current curriculum revitalisation process to:

  • understand the political and educational context of development;
  • recognise the risk of over-emphasising outcomes in the ecology of curriculum development;
  • recognise, as suggested more generally by Roberts (2003), the need to focus on the deep questions of curriculum and their relationship to practice, which, in relation to learning languages relate to: How do we understand languages-and-cultures? How are they learned? What can be legitimately expected as learning outcomes for the increasing diversity of learners in schools and the increasing diversity of purposes of learning? How is progress in learning for each individual best nurtured and described?
  • recognise the limits of the refining of words, for they will always remain open to interpretation;
  • recognise the value of diverse perspectives, even dissensus, in broadening understanding;
  • recognise the need for the curriculum statement to speak to teachers as the mediators of learning, and as people who have a major role in communicating learning to students, parents, educational administrators and the wider community;
  • leave space for innovation on the part of users.

The purposes of curriculum statements

An understanding of the intended purposes of curriculum statements shapes both their development and subsequent use.

Three questions related to the purpose of the curriculum statement are discussed below.

1.Is the purpose to guide teaching and learning, or assessment, or both?

A central issue is whether the major purpose of the curriculum statement is to address predominantly the scope of learning or the assessment of learning, and the setting of ‘outcomes’ or ‘standards’, or both.

At a fundamental level, the purpose of the development of the curriculum statement: Learning Languages in the New Zealand Curriculum, as indeed for analogous developments in any context, can be seen as addressing two related educational questions:

  • What do students need to learn and know,that is, what is the nature, scope and complexity of learning languages-and-cultures? (i.e. with a focus on the substance of teaching and learning)
  • What are appropriate ‘outcomes’ of learning, understood both as the nature, scopeof learning andlevel of complexityor standard? (i.e. with a focus on assessment)

Both these questions require a conceptualisation of the nature and scope of languages-and-culture knowing and learning, and the level of complexity of that learning. The first question is directed primarily towards the substance of teaching and learning, identifying what is to be learned and known, and to be continuously developed. It implies the inclusion of a notion of scope, that is, the range or multidimensionality of learning, and the general level of complexity at which the curriculum, teaching and learning should be pitched. This is what, in the US context, is termed ‘content standards’, that is, what is to be learned, though it is recognised that the 1993 curriculum initiative, that installed ‘outcomes’ into the New Zealand curriculum, was precisely a reaction against a perceived over-emphasis on ‘content’. The notion of ‘content’ is itself highly problematic because users do not specify how they conceptualise it in their own minds. In traditional definitions it generally refers to the breaking down into parts of the ‘body of knowledge’ that defines the curriculum area. In more recent definitions, ‘content’ is conceptualized as including processes, strategies and metacognitive reflection. The conceptualisation of ‘content’, therefore, becomes a central issue in the development of the curriculum statement.

In the curriculum statement for Languages in the New Zealand context, the essence statement provides a base for conceptualising the nature and scope of learning languages. It also provides the curriculum architecture or structure for specifying the scope of learning through three strands: communication, language, and culture. It does not provide a map of the increasing complexity of learning across the continuum of schooling. This mapping is currently captured in the frameworks for specific languages that have been developed since 1993 (see, for example, Ministry of Education 2000a; 2000b), though these have been formulated through a different curriculum architecture. From a curriculum development perspective this raises questions about the most appropriate curriculum architecture and the nature and degree of specification that is seen to be necessary to guide teaching and learning, both at generic and at language-specific levels.