Abstracts - Plenary Sessions

1. Keynote address

Is there Life after Headway?  Separating Textbook from Curriculum

Ms Psyche Kennett

Textbook equals curriculum: this is the reality in France, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Cambodia.  Or, curriculum stands apart from textbook and can be realised through any number of published titles: this is the reality in Australia, Thailand, Britain, the United States.  Perhaps the approach you adopt is just as much about culture and tradition as it is about experience and expertise.  For as many good teachers who prefer to create their own materials there are good teachers who like to follow a textbook.  And with a large, relatively untrained teaching force, or in a context where schools simply can't afford a range of resources, textbook as curriculum is a sensible way to proceed.  But as educators and professionals, many of us are concerned that textbook alone cannot ensure real learning takes place in the classroom.  We need students to come out the other end speaking English rather than knowing what colour Jane's dress is on page fifty seven. 

The process of separating textbook from curriculum involves an operation, but is it heart surgery, brain surgery, or a case of separating Siamese twins at the hip?  For many teachers there is an emotional attachment to the book they use.  Is there, indeed, Life after Headway?  For other teachers and educational managers, the move from textbook to curriculum standards may be warranted but just too big a step to take all at once, and what is needed is a keener understanding of the process.  For yet others, particularly teachers in Britain implementing the National Key Stage Strategies, the curriculum and its support documents have in fact become another textbook.

I believe it's time for Cambodia to move beyond the textbook and take a wider look at curriculum, to a document with flexibility rather than page-turning, a document with standards rather than answer keys.  More important still, it's time to examine a system of curriculum standards design and implementation, and how this affects testing, materials development, textbook selection, school management and teacher training.  In management terms, you can't move to action before you've moved from the general to the specific.  This presentation looks at some of the critical specifics and pitfalls in developing a curriculum standards approach and how to use the experience of other countries to avoid making the same mistakes.

2. Closing Plenary

Teaching Speaking and Listening with Scarce Resources

Dr Jonathan Hull

There may be advantages to teaching in an environment that is rich in resources such as textbooks, DVD players, computers and the internet. Nevertheless, in all contexts, even in supposedly resource-challenged ones, there remains a crucially important resource: teachers. However, many teachers, even those with considerable experience, feel reliant on published materials and do not realise that they can produce their own. Focusing on listening and speaking, this presentation seeks to show that teachers can write their own materials and that these materials may be far more suitable to the local context than those written for the global market.