Towards a Democratic Algerian Curriculum Development through Secondary School EFL Teachers' Involvement

This paper seeks to recommend a democratic model to curriculum development in Algeria that involves teachers by combining top-down government directives with bottom-up teachers-based creativities. More explicitly, the paper aims at exploring and identifying perceptions of secondary school EFL teachers' on their implementation of 2003 curriculum reform. The paper also aims at revealing barriers to their autonomy and involvement in curriculum development in order to pave the way for an understanding and planning towards such involvement. The critical paradigm was the conceptual framework guiding the research with data availed through a questionnaire for teachers and interviews with EFL secondary education inspectors. The findings advocated the existence of imbalanced power relation between the government and teachers with the former controlling and dictating curriculum, and excluding teachers from the whole developmental process.