An Autoethnography on Language Ideologies in ...

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Sino-US English Teaching, ISSN 1539-8072 August 2014, Vol. 11, No. 8, 553-566

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An Autoethnography on Language Ideologies in English Curriculum Development GAO Yang Kent State University, Kent, United States

The paper examines how language ideology in English education affects its curriculum development. By exploring the topic from an autoethnographic perspective, the researcher describes how his transnational learning and teaching experience informed his perception of language ideological changes in English curriculum development. The researcher’s lived experiences from China to the United States witness how English curriculum develops in an ideological continuum from functional ideology to critical ideology, with cultural ideology and progressive ideology existing between the two extremes. The author then concluded: While language ideology has evolved from stage to stage, due to effects of factors like student acceptance and political ideology, English curriculum in China is still dominated by functional ideology. The paper finally proposes how English language curriculum development should go at the current stage of internationalization. Keywords: autoethnography, English curriculum, language ideology

Introduction Several factors have triggered me to write this paper. First, as an English as a foreign language (EFL) teacher for 10 years, I am sensitive to any news that is concerned about EFL learners and EFL education. Recently, a series of blast news about China begins to reform and de-emphasize English education in its country keeps catching my eyes. The tentative reform leads me to think about what plays an important role in changing English educators in China to make such a policy. Second, after having been working and studying in the United States for years, I went back to China to teach a summer session to Chinese EFL students at colleges last summer. I had taken it for granted that my learning and teaching experiences gained from the United States would benefit my Chinese EFL students. However, some techniques or strategies I used to teach during the summer did not work well with the college students I taught. While some students favored my class design, some others thought it was a waste of time to “play” in class, i.e., being assigned with more activities and reflective time did not make any sense. Behind the scene lies a big issue: Do my American experience really benefit my teaching and my students? If not, what makes the situation different than I expected? Third, with the Common Core States Standards (CCSS) prevailing in the United States nowadays, I become more and more conscious that policy and ideology play an important role in language education and education in general. Therefore, I decided to write this paper, investigating how language ideology affects its curriculum reform, regardless of in China and the United States. In particular, I explored the topic from a transnational narrative GAO Yang, Ph.D. candidate, School of Teaching, Learning and Curriculum Studies, Kent State University.  

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perspective, i.e., how I as an experienced EFL learner and teacher perceived the changes in language ideologies that informed my perception on English curriculum development.

Language Ideology in English Education Galindo (1997) defined ideology as “systems of ideas that function to create views of reality that appear as the most rational view; a view that is based on ‘common sense’ notions of how the social world ought to be” (p. 105). Ideology, which is sometimes termed as power, penetrates into all aspects of human being’s life. Apple (1990) pointed “the knowledge that now gets into schools… often reflects the perspectives and beliefs of powerful segments of our social collectivity” (p. 8). While teachers are sometimes unaware of the politics, they cannot deny the fact that “all forms of education are political because they enable or inhibit the questioning habits of students, thus developing or disabling their critical relation to knowledge, schooling and society” (Shor, 1992). As a core subject at schools, English is connected with ideology in one way or another. Auerbach (1991) stated: “There can be no disinterested, objective, and value-free definition of literacy: The way literacy is viewed and taught is always and inevitably ideological” (p. 71). Cadiero-Kaplan (2002), by talking with her colleagues, found that ideology accounted for why one reading curriculum or program, or a teaching method was promoted over others. She contended “it is ideology that has the most profound impact on policy and curricula decisions made from the federal, state, and local levels of schooling” (Cadiero-Kaplan, 2002, p. 373). Generally, ideology can be defined in different forms, which are either total or specific. A political ideology can be socialism or capitalism (YOU, 2005); a philosophical ideology can be idealism, educationism, or instrumentalism (Stier, 2011); a specific ideology can be any ideology in a specific content area, e.g., literary ideology (Cadiero-Kaplan, 2002). This paper is based on specific language ideologies, which have evolved from one stage to another in the history of English language/literacy education. Totally ideologies influence specific ideologies in a way or another. For example, by examining literacy ideologies in language arts curriculum, Cadiero-Kaplan (2002) proposed how to define a literate person is always “based on an ideological construct that is inherently political” (p. 373).

Language Ideology in Chinese English Education Studies on language ideology in English education have been conducted for the past four decades in China (Cortazzi & JIN, 1996; Adamson, 2001; 2004; HU, 2002; L. X. JIN & Cortazzi, 2003). There are numerous studies that proposed a counter-hegemonic language ideology which criticizes the Standard English and embraces the World Englishes (e.g., DU & JIANG, 2001; Kirkpatrick, 2007; S. LI, 2005; YOU, 2008). There are also some researches that revealed ideology exists in teaching materials, especially for English textbooks (e.g., XIONG & QIAN, 2012; YOU, 2005). XIONG and QIAN (2012) pointed that “dominant language ideologies are discursively reproduced and turned into legitimate knowledge in the textbook” (p. 76). While numerous studies on ideology in English education have been conducted for last few decades, the majority of the works focused on the following three aspects: (1) how to analyze and critique the ideological issues from a critical lens (e.g., Auerbach, 1991; Cox & Assis-Peterson, 1999), (2) how to analyze ideology in language education from a perspective of writing (e.g., Winterowd, 1989; XU, 1989), and (3) how textbooks embodied the ideology (e.g., XIONG & QIAN, 2012; YOU, 2005). Few studies have been done on how  

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ideology affects English language curriculum, especially through a narrative lens; therefore, the present study aims to study the topic from a narrative perspective.

Why Narrative Inquiry? By telling and listening to stories, narrative inquiry has been attracting teachers and teacher educators’ attention for decades (Clandinin, Pushor, & Orr, 2007). Advances of using narrative inquiry in education are numerous. Bell (2002) summarized three main points as: (1) Narrative inquiry makes researchers or teachers understand experience, (2) it helps researchers grasp information that is often neglected or unconsciously known even by themselves, and (3) it also assists researchers to perceive the experiential changes of people and events. Several typical types of narrative inquiry are autobiographies (Davidson, 1993; Kaplan, 1993; Mori, 1997), reflection journals or diary studies (Lvovich, 1997; Numrich, 1996), life history or auto ethnography (Hatch & Wisniewski, 1995; Kouritzin, 2000), and narrative case studies (Angélil-Carter, 1997; Lam, 2000; Spack, 1997). Narrative inquiry is much more than the telling of stories (Clandinin et al., 2007), especially in the field of language education. Researchers have established norms on how to provide narrative accounts for patterns of language use. For example, ethnographers helped produce powerful narratives that have helped inform the understanding of language use (Heath, 1983; Willett, 1995; Toohey, 2000). As a research method, narrative inquiry has been greatly analyzed by Clandinin (2006), who provided researchers with knowledge on its methodological applications. While “narrative inquiry shares features in common with other forms of qualitative inquiry such as the emphasis on the social in ethnography and the use of story in phenomenology” (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006, p. 479), it definitely differs from other qualitative research methods. By referring to the notion of commonplaces from Schwab’s (1978), Connelly and Clandinin (2006) analyzed and clarified the three designed features, the commonplaces, of narrative inquiry. The three commonplaces of narrative inquiry, that is, “temporality”, “sociality”, and “place”, specify “dimensions of an inquiry space”, and serve as “check points” of a narrative inquiry (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006, p. 479), thus providing the conceptual framework for a narrative inquiry. Based on the above, the paper is an attempt to investigate effects of language ideology in English curriculum development through the lens of narrative inquiry. It aims to illustrate English curriculum design, regardless of in the Chinese context or the US context, is influenced by language ideologies which are inherently political.

Language Ideology in English Curriculum Development The following section introduces how language ideologies evolved in the Chinese EFL context. I will first introduce the historical background of Chinese EFL education since China opened its door to the Western world, then I will elaborate on how language ideologies affected English curriculum developments, through the lens of my own learning and teaching experiences. Historical Background of English Education in China: The Emergence of Functional Ideology While I was born at the early 1980s, it is necessary for me to introduce the origin of English language education in China at the time before I was born to serve as the background knowledge of how political ideologies influence language ideologies. Before my Ph.D. study in the United States, all my learning experiences occurred in China, a country fostering tenets like Taoism and Confucianism in the ancient times,  

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and worshiping post-positivism and constructivism in the modern times. As China fully opens its door to the Western world in the 1970s, some of the Western theories did not swarm into China until then. For centuries before the Economic Reform in 1978, China had been relatively conservative, embracing cultures of “way” or “wisdom” (Tao), “virtue” (De), and “classics” (Ching) as in Taoism, and “mercy”, “social order” and “responsibilities” as in Confucianism (Chan, 1963). Thanks to the Economic Reform, people born in the 1980s like me, began to have English as one of the compulsory courses from grade three to grade nine. English for me is not only a language, but a mediator leading me to perceive a different world. However, years later, when I began to look at English education in China from a teacher’s perspective, I agreed with some scholars that policies on basic English language education in China have been closely linked to political, economic, and social development (HU, 2005). When political ideology penetrates into education, it turns out to be an influence to other types of ideologies, such as schooled ideologies, language ideologies, etc. Around the late 1970s when China launched its open-door policy, the new Chinese Chairperson DENG simultaneously set up a national modernization program, which required English language education to steer towards modernization (Adamson & Morris, 1997). DENG firmly believed that advanced science and technology was the key to China’s modernization and access to international stage is in need of a great number of talents proficient in English (HU, 2005). However, as the prior Cultural Revolution had wreaked havoc on the infrastructure for foreign language education (L. X. JIN & Cortazzi, 2003), English instruction existed with a great challenge of no teaching or learning human resources. That resulted in an acute shortage of English-proficient personnel when China kicked off the modernization program; therefore, human resources for English language teaching (ELT) were not of good quality, with many teachers from other areas being “borrowed” to teach English. ELT syllabus at this period “reflected both the emerging modernization orientation and the strong influences of a leftist ideology” (HU, 2005, p. 8). Based on the shortage of teaching personnel and the strong political ideology, a prototype of functional ideology began to emerge in China. The functional language ideology prevailed in China at this time, which embodies the tenet of “school as factory” (Myers, 1996; Giroux, 1983). The emphasis of the functional language ideology is on “learning to read”, rather than “reading to learn”. Cadiero-Kaplan (2002) criticized functional ideologies fail to engage texts or stories through a critical lens. Early Stage: From Functional Ideology to Cultural Ideology My preschool life happened during the early round of curriculum reform for basic education in China. HUANG (2004) stated “after a long time of ferment during the late 1970s and the early 1980s, a further curriculum reform for elementary and high schools was initiated in 1986” (p. 101). As mentioned earlier, due to the shortage of teaching personnel and resources, HU (2005) concluded that ELT efforts at the late 1970s “has largely failed” and “the quality of secondary ELT was deplorably low” (p. 8). The failure of ELT in China at the late 1970s led the government and Ministry of Education (MOE) to have made some changes within the following 10 years, when I began to take my formal English education at elementary school. These changes guided by the political ideology resulted in a schooled ideology that dominated the English language education for a long time. The schooled ideology can be defined as functional and politics-driven. Eight years later, in 1994, when I was already a fourth-grader at primary school, a new curriculum for the compulsory school, namely, the elementary and junior high school was issued. This is a good mark and new  

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page for the students in China, as it indicates that all students have to have at least nine years’ (from grade one at primary school to grade nine at junior high school) compulsory education in order not to be an illiterate. Curricula at primary school during that time were Chinese, mathematics, music, physical education, nature, and labor, etc.. English was only offered to students above grade three at that time, while now it is offered even at the most preschools. As political ideology influences the theories or worldviews that dominate the concurrent time, designing or implementing curricula in China at that time were basically the embodiment of behaviorism and structuralism. Teachers parroted what the textbooks said to their students, and students jotted down and memorized all the notes. This is especially true when it comes to the English curriculum design, when English teachers paid great attention to the rules of English as a language, and made sure that every sentence they uttered was grammatically correct. Grammar-translation is the typical means to learn and teach the English. English reading and writing were over emphasized, with little attention to the speaking and listening. I remember clearly that I had been taught to read and repeat sentences like “How do you do?”, and “My name is…” for several years, even before I actually knew the meanings of every single word in the sentences. All the features embody what a functional ideology conveys, and English curriculum at that time is static and structured. Another feature of English curriculum design at this time is unidirectional. Generally, the MOE served as the highest level of issuing any news on new curriculum, and it passed down a “general syllabus”, which is similar to Common Core State Standards in the United States now, to all the school boards. Then, school boards passed down the syllabus to teachers, and teachers taught based on the syllabus. To sum up, the functional language ideology at this period can be defined as structured, static, and unidirectional. The functional ideology when reflected in English curriculum is in the way that teachers teach students the basic skills which are crucial to their schooling, thus helping students to be qualified and productive citizens to support marketplace ideologies (Apple, 1995; Kelly, 1997). Due to the functional ideology at this time, a new form of schools began to spring out which is still popular nowadays in China. The new form of school is called “crammed school” which primarily provides students with language training services and test-prep courses. As the president of one of these types of schools now, I am quite conscious of its merits and demerits, which I will elaborate later in this paper. The rapid socioeconomic growth and political factors in the later 1990s contributed to the development of language ideology. The language ideology at this time began to be twofold: While functional ideology still prevailed in the English curriculum, cultural ideology began to appear at this time. A cultural ideology stressed “the information readers bring to discourse” (Cadiero-Kaplan, 2002). The cultural ideology resulted in a cultural curriculum, which is connected with a “core knowledge approach”. The approach proposed that students must master core knowledge in order to succeed in climbing up a higher level in their study. In terms of the effect of cultural ideology on the English curriculum, it is evident that the textbooks at this time were full of texts about British culture and American culture. Linguists and educators proposed that learning the culture was of great importance to the success of learning the language. Developing Stage: Transition to Progressive Ideology The second round of curriculum reform in China occurred in 1999, when I was studying at my senior high school, bearing the pressure from the high-stake tests. At this period, the first “expert group on curriculum  

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reform for basic education” was created, which contributed to the Chinese curriculum development in five aspects: the background, current conditions, guiding thoughts and essential tasks, general principles, and policy and strategy (Basic Education Department of Ministry of Education, 1999). In addition, the MOE (1998) proposed an “action project for the education vitalization facing the 21st century” aiming to set up a new and “modernized” curriculum for basic education by 2000 (HUANG, 2004). Besides the expert group, several other contributors also made the Chinese curriculum development at this point more progressive and dynamic: For example, an influx of Western theories came into China, making Chinese education system filled with numerous creative ideas; the development of technologies and internet also led curriculum design a further step closer to the modernization; the good relationship between China and Russia made China import more great tenets from Piaget (1962) and Vygotsky (1978) to enrich its curriculum theories; the rapidity economic growth also accelerated the speed of educational development. Despite these great effects, educational ideology in China at this stage began to show progressive features, which stressed individual development and creativity (HU, 2005). However, as educational theory development was still immature in China, there were several drawbacks existing in the English education at this stage. For example, borrowing and developing theories from other countries were still the primary means used in Chinese English education; students’ English proficiency levels were of huge gaps at this time, due to DENG’s policy of asking some regions in China to be developed first, etc. As post structuralism and constructivism dominated the world around the 1990s, English curriculum development at that time was more influenced by theories from cognitive psychologists and development psychologists like Piaget (1962) and Vygotsky (1978). Vygotsky’s social constructivism proposed that students’, especially the children’s, learning experiences occur through interaction with all sorts of mediators, for example, textbooks, peers, and teachers in their social settings, for example, schools or communities, to achieve their higher order of thinking. Simultaneously, American educator John Dewey’s (1916) tenets were spread to China at this time. Among his considerable theories, “learning through experiences”, or “learning by doing” seemed to have resonance with Vygotsky’s social constructivism and thus have the greatest influence on Chinese curriculum development, especially in the field of English education. Curriculum design then became bi-directional between students’ responses and teachers’ feedback, and the classrooms were communicative and dynamic. While the MOE remained the agent of issuing the general syllabus, teaches became more empowered to design their own curriculum. All these effects from theories, socioeconomic growth, and political factors lead to the emergence of another language ideology: progressive ideology. Kelly (1997) defined a progressive language ideology as “advocates personal discovery with a curriculum that is student centered and liberal” (p. 10). As mentioned earlier, due to the influence from theorist like John Dewey and Lev. Vygotsky, a curriculum in the progressive ideology embraces democratic ideas and requires the idea interchange between teachers and students (Cadiero-Kaplan, 2002). A great contribution at this time, based on constructivism, is the whole language curriculum, which requires English learners to focus more on comprehension instead of simply words and sentences. However, as the population in this country became the largest in the world, one of the most ever important credos the country kept claiming from then is “to select, and to educate” (ZHAO, 2012). Therefore, high-stake tests became the theme of the education system in this country, which kept functional ideology as the top tenet  

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in English curriculum. The 1990s is just the time I spent at my junior and senior high schools, so I definitely knew how I “survived” from the tons of exams and tests. For me, the years before the entrance exams to senior high school and college are the most dreary and overwhelming. I witnessed how functional ideology still outperformed others, i.e., cultural ideology and progressive ideology. Coming to the 21st century, I commenced my life journey at the college. However, the prevailing effect of functional ideology kept influencing me on both my learning and teaching experience for quite a long time. When I was a sophomore, I began to teach in a language training school, the so-called cram school, to help students who were preparing for their entrance exams to senior high school with their academic achievement. I taught these students for nearly three years, including their vacations. Different from a tutor or mentor who primarily helps students to answer their questions, it was the first time I actually prepared for a course or curriculum that helped my students improve their overall abilities. However, as China was high-stake-test-based at that time, I primarily focused on how to teach students’ test-taking skills, and how to improve their test scores. Years later when I was doing my master study in Applied Linguistics, I realized that the way I was teaching at that time is typically an example of structuralism. In the field of linguistics, Saussure (1967) is the founder of structuralism, who proposed that language is rule-based. All I taught at that time was language rules, grammatical knowledge, and test-taking strategies. In a broader sense, structuralism embodies what behaviorism conveys. Psychologists like Pavlov (1897) and Skinner (1953) with their renowned experiments hypothesized learning is a stimulus-and-response process. Applying the hypothesis into language learning, researchers held that learning occurs when learners repeat what they have learned. Therefore, when I designed my curriculum at this time, I selected the materials which I thought best expressed language rules and test-taking skills, and used them to teach my curriculum. Now, this reminds me of the debate in the field for curriculum theories that if “canon” works should be used in the field. Generally, my experience at this time still made me regard English curriculum as something static, unidirectional, and structured. This idea even lasted for years before I taught the college students. However, in a world full of high-stake tests, the functional ideology at this point indeed got some fruits: My students in the cram school improved their academic achievements, and now they are all college students. Re-conceptualizing Stage: Progressive Ideology in a Dynamic, Dialogic, and Critical Curriculum The third reform in China occurred after we entered the 21st century. In 2006, the new Compulsory Education Law implemented stated, “No tuition or fees are charged for the implementation of compulsory education.” (Compulsory Education Law, Article 2, 2006). In 2007, free compulsory education was implemented throughout the entire country, starting from the rural area; subsequently, in 2008, all tuition and miscellaneous fees were waived for compulsory education in the urban areas. In some sense, Chinese compulsory education completed what Bush proposed at “No Child Left Behind” in the United States. I did not enjoy the free basic education, as I had already been teaching college students in 2007 and studying for my master degree in 2008. However, I did hear of the great news and witness these great achievements. While some of my former students had already been in the junior high school at that time, I kept hearing their complaints about more burden and stress in their study for entrance exams. Therefore, the credo of “to select; to educate” was not changed or improved at that time; instead, the situation deteriorated. Generally, curriculum studies at this stage made some achievements. Different from the previous stage in  

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which educators primarily borrowed some tenets from the Western world, this stage witnessed some changes in the creativity and practicality of curricula in China. The postmodernism cast the Chinese curriculum reform in the following positive aspects: (1) difference and pluralism; (2) organic and ecological ideas; (3) open-ended and inherent relation–oriented ideas; (4) creative and practical ideas; (5) uncertainty and humanity; and (6) integrative neo-conservatism and futurism. These postmodern ideas bring about the postmodern practice of the current curriculum reform. (Y. JIN & L. LI, 2011, p. 25)

However, there were also some flaws at this stage. With the rapid economic growth, more and more cram schools sprung out at this stage. Cram schools, like a bi-bladed sword, are different from public schools in that they only offer exam prep courses to the students. For the parents and teachers, they are fond of the cram schools, because these schools teach students’ great test-taking skills which help students succeed in their exams. For the educators, they are opposed to these schools, because the cram schools hindered the way that educators examined their curriculum reform. This kind of situation is still a common scenario in China nowadays. When I began my master study in China, I have already commenced my journey to the Western world. I had my Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics, a program with numerous sub-fields like sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, semantics, pragmatics, and second language acquisition (SLA), etc.. For many people out of the field in China, they regard it as only a master in English studies. In a narrow sense, it is correct, as all of my courses, textbooks, and communication in class are in English, and the majority of the students in the program are once English major students in their bachelor programs. More importantly, most of the tenets in the field come from English-speaking countries. Therefore, my “transnational” experience to some extent begins in my master program. My understanding on curriculum studies began to change at this stage, and it can be attributed to the following aspects: First of all, my increasing knowledge on my content area led me to regard curriculum as a dynamic concept. The more I read and learned, the more blood I input into the field of curriculum. Sometimes, I thought one theory, for example, Chomsky’s (1957) Universal Grammar, was useful to shape my understanding on curriculum; but on some occasion, I found, for example, Halliday’s (1994) Functional Grammar made more sense on my curriculum design. The constant shifts among different tenets made my curriculum beliefs linger around different schools, thus making curriculum a dynamic concept. Years later, I got some resonance with this sort of experience when I went through the credos from a couple of scholars, as Deleuze’s (1994) “multiplicity”, and Larsen-Freeman’s (2008) “complex systems” in SLA. Second, my curriculum understanding at this stage also made me think curriculum is dialogic. This idea was generalized when I went through Pinar’s Presidential Address in the first triennial meeting of the International Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies in Shanghai, China. Pinar (2005) referred to Ted Aoki in his address and highlighted the importance of a dialogue between curriculum developer and curriculum theories. For me, a dialogic curriculum involves the constant conversation between teachers and students, teachers and school boards, as well as school boards and governments, etc.. Feedbacks from each role reinforce the feasibility of any curriculum. This is especially true when I was teaching college students at this stage. Different from young learners, adult students had their own voices which they would like teachers to hear. When I was working as the director for English test-prep courses at a cram school, I kept receiving feedbacks or sometimes even complaints from students at that school, and made some changes on the curricula  

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accordingly. I also went to parties with these students sometimes, observing their performance and analyzing their characteristics, as at that time I learned from Rod Ellis (1994) that individual differences play an important role in students’ learning. The last thing I made change in my curriculum belief at this stage is that I became more critical thinking. The first time I heard of the term “critical thinking” was from a lecture offered by a foreign professor from my adjacent university in the second year of my master program. Before the lecture, I just understood critical thinking from the literal level, viewing it as some trait that people have to criticize and think about something. After the lecture, I found it a way to see things from objective, reasonable, and multiple perspectives. It is not a tool that makes one hypercritical, but, instead, a way that helps people reach their conclusion in a reasonable process. Curriculum theories should also be critical, as there is no one-size-fits-all approach in the field to make all teachers and school faculties satisfied. What we should do is to keep a critical eye on the curriculum we are implementing, and make timely update on it when we notice something inappropriate. Internationalizing Stage: Critical Ideology in a Transformative, Multidirectional, and Deliberative Curriculum At the end of 2011, I came to the United States for my Ph.D. study. With five years college teaching experience in China, I was hoping that I would absorb much North American thoughts on curriculum and instruction and mediate them with my Asian perspectives to better serve my EFL students. For the first time, I read so many great canon works in the North America circle of curriculum studies. For example, both Paulo Freire (1968) and Michael Apple (2006) led me to a world of radical, oppressive, and multicultural curriculum; both Maxine Greene (1988) and Nel Noddings (2005) paved my way to see curriculum studies through the lens of feminism, with the Greene focusing more on the aesthetic sense of curriculum and Noddings more on the caring and love in education; William Pinar (2013), who embodies Ted Aoki’s spirit, taught me how to regard curriculum as a progressive journey, “currere”, instead of something static and conservative. Eisner (1994), who proposed more imagination should be incorporated in education and curriculum design, also shares the same aesthetic sense of curriculum with Greene. Personally, I am not the big fan for Bobbit (1918) and Tyler (1949), whose traditional tenets resemble Taosim in ancient China to some extent. All these new reading and learning experiences led me a step closer to viewing curriculum theories as a science. My experience as a Ph.D. student learning from numerous tenets from scholars all over the world led me to perceive English curriculum from an international perspective. First of all, “internationalization” is the current phase that curriculum theories stay at. Pinar (2005) gave this idea when he talked about the theoretical connection in the field of curriculum studies between the East and the West at his Presidential Address in Shanghai, China. For him, internationalization does not mean that we transfer some great ideas from one culture to another, which is definitely against critical thinking. Instead, it means we gain insights from these great tenets, but keep an eye of critical thinking on them. We synthesize these great ideas together and apply them to the curriculum we are implementing. When these updated theories work well, we should deliberate them to all the roles in the field of curriculum studies, including policy-makers, administrators, school faculties, teachers, parents, and students. Only in this way can a curriculum theory be transformative, and only in this way can a curriculum theory be curriculum theorizing. Therefore, instead of transferring from the East to the West or vice versa, we should “linger” between the two (Pinar, 2005). It is a process of critical synthesis, which keeps nutrients from all the theories working at their best.  

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This reminds me of my first semester taking Dr. Henderson’s class. I found his theory of 3S Understanding (subject matter—self-learning—social learning) inspirational and helpful, and then I began to frame a paper, which is also one of his assignments, on how to incorporate the 3S Understandings into Chinese EFL context. It turns out that I failed to take one factor, political ideology, into consideration when I drafted the paper. Henderson’s theory is transformative in nature, which is easily spotted on the book cover. However, while China now claims a diversified ideology, it still primarily holds post-positivism and constructivism in hand. Transformativism may take some time to be embraced in China; therefore, directly transferring the theory does not work well in its way. I also reflect from my failure on what Deleuze (1994) criticized as dogmatism, which worships the tenets from canon works but never ponders on these ideas from a critical perspective. I also had a similar experience showing the demerits of dogmatism. I had taken it for granted that my learning experience gained from the United States would benefit my Chinese EFL students before I came back to China last summer for a semester teaching. However, as I mentioned earlier why I draft this paper, some techniques or strategies I used during the summer did not work well with the college students I taught. An analysis on this issue helped me realize that I cannot directly transfer great theories into a specific context. I have to take all factors that matter into account to make a sound and reasonable curriculum decision. My learning experience informed my understanding on language ideology and English curriculum, which in turn led me to a new language ideology: critical ideology. Kelly (1997) characterized a critical language ideology as “a literacy of social transformation in which the ideological foundations of knowledge, culture, schooling, and identity-making are recognized as unavoidably political, marked by vested interests and hidden agendas” (p. 10). Cadiero-Kaplan (2002) summarized that by situating language curriculum into a historical and cultural context, critical language ideology has “a sense of place through historicity”, which allows students to read any text through a connecting lens between their lived experiences and present experiences. Critical ideology is no longer a static and structured ideology, but the one questioning historical, social, and political information. Critical ideology reveals what Freire and Macedo (1987) proposed: “The production of knowledge is a relational act. For teachers this means being sensitive to the actual historical, social, and cultural conditions that contribute to the forms of knowledge and meaning that students bring to school” (p. 15). While the ideology has some feature of accommodationism, it is constructive and progressive, keeping a critical eye in accommodating language curriculum to the status quo.

Conclusion My learning experience at the doctoral level led me to distinguish a conceptual “curriculum” and an ongoing “currere” (Pinar, 2012). The former represents the curriculum I used to plan and implement when I was in China as a novice teacher, and the latter stands for the curriculum I am now deliberating to design and implement as an experienced teacher. Given the ongoing nature of currere, I would like to name curriculum theories as curriculum theorizing, an ongoing process rather than a finished product. I would also like to metaphorically term curriculum theorizing as a “journey”, full of deliberation, imagination, and critical thinking. The metaphor has some connotations. First, as scholars fail to reach consensus about whether there is indeed theories in the field of curriculum studies, I will keep myself away from blindly giving positive answer to the question. Second, given the dynamic, critical, and multiplicit nature of curriculum theorizing, I prefer to name it as something ongoing and nonstop. Third, like Greene (1988) and Blumenfeld-Jones (2012), I would like to give curriculum theorizing a name from the aesthetic perspective.  

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Based on the above, I suggest English language curriculum development being an ongoing journey of transformation, deliberation, and multiplicity. For each of the constructs in the journey, it embraces a couple of characteristics. For transformation, it requires scholars to be critical thinking and caring. It is only when a teacher or educator cares about their students or the education that curriculum theorizing can occur. Without thinking about others, teachers will take it for granted that they just need to parrot what they read and prepared to their students. Without critical thinking, teachers or curriculum developers will be dogmatic and blindly preach the tenets from canon works. I acknowledge the importance of canon works in any field, curriculum studies included. These canon works serve as the base or starting point from which curriculum transformation occurs. However, we can never take it for granted all the knowledge in these canon works are absolutely true or appropriate. For deliberation, it calls for scholars to be more creative and persistent. Regardless of the Montage in Pinar’s (2012) term or the imagination in Eisner’s (1994) word, these great educators all give credits to the creativity in the journey of curriculum theorizing. Without imagination or creativity, we cannot generate, develop, and deliberate new tenet in the field of curriculum studies. Like any research in any field, curriculum theorizing also needs scholars to raise their ideas and share their inspirations. However, also like any research in any field, the cause of deliberation is time-consuming and demanding, thus challenging teachers and educators to be more persistent. For multiplicity, it needs teachers or educators to have a multicultural and international sense. I cannot emphasize too much on the importance of having an international sense of curriculum theorizing, as we are now facing a stage of curriculum internationalization (Baker, 2009; Hendry, 2011; Pinar, 2012; Walker, 2003). Just as I mentioned above, curriculum theorizing does not mean we transfer tenets from one curriculum culture to another, but instead it means we need to figure out the interconnection between cultures, making one better reinforce another. “Lingering” among cultures is important, as it will give us enough time to ponder on the feasibility of applying one theory to another. My understanding on curriculum theorizing led me to ponder on the relation between language ideologies and English curricula. To embrace a curriculum of multiplicity, transformation, and deliberation means we need critical teachers who are willing to embrace multiple language ideologies co-exist and co-construct at the same time. Overly relying on or criticizing any specific language ideology will undoubtedly lead teachers to make the dogmatic mistakes and deprive their creativities in curriculum design. For example, Cadiero-Kaplan (2002) proposed that while we attach importance to the whole language curriculum, it does not mean that skill-based curriculum is totally eliminated from the school. As a good tailor will always measure our sizes to make our clothes, we as critical teachers should hold appropriate language ideologies which may influence English curricula in a positive way for our students.

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