Developing a New Curriculum for Adult Learners

Curriculum innovations succeed or fail according to the extent to which teachers, and to some extent students, feel that they are meaningfully involved in the process of change. For change to be effective, it cannot be simply imposed from above; rather it depends absolutely on the people who implement it. The innovations described in this book have all resulted in improvements in the quality of language education and in opportunities for the students. The chapters in this volume cross a variety of educational contexts in countries around the world, including Brazil, the United Arab Emirates, Japan, and the United States. Some programs were built where no program existed before, whereas others arose because developers looked critically at existing programs and decided to rebuild from the base up. Yet there is a unifying theme that runs through all chapters: The importance of one of more people with a strong vision of what the program might be, as well as effective communication among the various stakeholders, cannot be overemphasized. The book includes ten chapters: (1) Creating a New Program: Leadership and Communication (Michael Carroll); (2) From Back Door to Center Stage: The Evolution of an ESL Program (Anne Bollati); (3) Engulfed in the Gulf: Procedures and Complications in Starting an Intensive English Program in the United Arab Emirates (John Shannon); (4) The Development and Features of a Multidimensional Curriculum With Integrated Assessment (Jean Turner and Jon Phillips); (5) Please Don't Shake the Mouse: A CALL Curriculum for Adults With Zero and Low Levels of Computer Literacy (Audrey Kucia); (6) Pulling a Curriculum Together: Addressing Content and Skills Across English and Japanese (Tamara Swenson and Steve Cornwell); (7) Building Out and Building Within: The Development of a Communicative English Program (Juanita Heigham); (8) Curriculum Design: Furniture for a College EFL Program (Gregory Strong); (9) Focusing on Teaching From the Get-Go: An Experience From Brazil (Denise M. de Abreu-e-Lima, Luciana C. de Oliveira, and Eliane H. Augusto-Navarro); and (10) Building Teacher Preparation Programs for TESL/TEFL (Klaus Gomlich, Sarah Rilling, and Karl Uhrig). Also included are references, a section about the editors and contributors, and an index.