English Language at Secondary Level in Bangladesh: (Dis)connections Between Policy and Practice of Oral Skills

Authors

S.M. Akramul Kabir, University of Canterbury, New ZealandFollow

Abstract

The development of curriculum, textbooks and assessment is a continuous process for better teaching and learning outcomes. The National Curriculum & Textbook Board (NCTB) revised its secondary curriculum in 2012 for English education considering the 2010 National Education policy. The only textbook for the whole country for secondary level, English for Today has been developed accordingly in 2013 for grades 6 to 10, to help students attain competency in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. This qualitative study is based on semi-structured interviews and content analysis of pertinent policy documents. The semi-structured interview data includes a set of English curriculum policy implementation stakeholders including teacher trainers, school principals and English teachers. This paper aims to explore the reasons for the existing disconnections coherently through the analytical lens of the Constructive Alignment (CA) Model for curriculum design to achieve the intended learning outcomes for secondary English education in Bangladesh. The findings support the argument that if the coherence of secondary curriculum, classroom teaching and learning activities and assessment system is not aligned, the aspirations of the National Education Policy 2010 may not be achieved.

Keywords

English Language Teaching (ELT), Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), curriculum policy, curriculum implementation, semi-structured interviews, constructive alignment model

Author Bio(s)

S. M. Akramul Kabir works for Otago University, New Zealand as a Research Assistant. He holds a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. Earlier, he obtained his MA in TESOL from Macquarie University, Australia. He has been teaching English to both local and international students for more than 12 years. His areas of research interest include listening skill for language competence, teacher education, discourse analysis, and ICT in education. Please direct correspondence to sak103@uclive.ac.nz.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Emeritus Professor Janinka Greenwood for her continuous research support.

Publication Date

1-30-2023

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

DOI

10.46743/2160-3715/2023.5761

Recommended APA Citation

Kabir, S. (2023). English Language at Secondary Level in Bangladesh: (Dis)connections Between Policy and Practice of Oral Skills. The Qualitative Report, 28(1), 301-322. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2023.5761

ORCID ID

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6082-3477