Teachers’ beliefs and practices of implementing secondary english curriculum reform in Bangladesh: A phenomenological study

Abstract

The study focuses on the implementation of communicative English language curriculum reform of four secondary school teachers in Bangladesh. The study is explorative, interpretive, and qualitative in nature. A phenomenology approach, under the qualitative method, was adopted to explore how teachers experience the phenomenon of communicative language teaching (CLT) based curriculum reform. The classroom practices of CLT curriculum were observed for one week for each teacher. Teachers’ beliefs regarding the curriculum reform were explored through a semi-structured interview. The finding of the study revealed the existing mismatch between curriculum intention and implementation. The study reflected on the teachers' views of their being teachers and how it enacts with the curriculum. Teachers’ prior beliefs regarding English teaching and learning and their practices are found to be barriers to implement the curriculum. Numerous factors such as assessment, lack of teacher training and lack of learners’ ability contributed to the phenomenon. Nevertheless, the study shed light on the limited implementation of the CLT reform in the context of Bangladesh, since the cognitive and contextual realities of teachers’ work were not taken into consideration while reforming the curriculum.