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Worldwide, learners in non-English-speaking state education systems today spend a growing proportion of their school lives studying English. The following quote from the Ministry of Education in Japan outlines some reasons for this.

With the progress of globalisation in the economy and in society, it is essential that our children acquire communication skills in English, which has become a common international language in order for living in the 21st century. This has become an extremely important issue both in terms of the future of our children and the further development of Japan as a nation.

To meet this perceived need for citizens with communication skills in English, curriculum planners have rewritten English language curricula to express expected learning outcomes in terms of such skills. Many education systems into which these new curricula are introduced retain a broadly knowledge-transmission based view of teaching and learning. However, developing learners’ communication skills requires more than the teaching and learning of knowledge about language. Successful classroom implementation of such curricula thus involves a degree of adjustment to many English teachers’ beliefs and behaviours that amounts to a change in ‘teaching culture’.

This paper reports on a study carried out with English teachers in China. It concludes that if teachers are to accept the challenge of helping learners to achieve expected change outcomes, then their process of culture change can only be supported by parallel changes to the leadership and management cultures of those planning and administering change implementation at all (but especially local and institutional) levels.

Stream: Change

Paper: A paper has not yet been submitted.

Since 1998 I have been a Senior Lecturer and Director of International Development at the School of Education at the University of Leeds, UK. From 1977 to 1998 I worked as a curriculum designer, teacher/trainer trainer, test and materials writer in Africa, the Middle East, East Asia and Eastern Europe. My research interests include
the macro and micro management of educational change in a manner that supports teachers, and
the relationships between educational cultures,roles of teachers and learners in classrooms and approaches to teaching and learning