Educational reform and professional development

The literature regarding professional development shows that there is a general agreement among researchers and scholars that professional development needs to be designed in a way that supports educational reform. Educational reformers have realized that teachers are the most important agents of change and their professional development should be a key component in any reform initiative to ensure its effectiveness (^{Villegas-Reimers, 2003}). Therefore, the success of educational reform initiatives depends to a great extent on how qualified and effective teachers are (^{Day & Sachs, 2004}; ^{Garet, Porter, Desimone, Birman & Kwang, 2001}) as well as how motivated, knowledgeable and skillful they are (^{Day & Sachs, 2004}).

However, in Colombia, and particularly in Medellin, as the results of this study indicate, most in-service language teachers in schools have not been offered professional development programs by the government to help them develop the knowledge and skills to (re)design and implement a curriculum that favors students’ learning. When they have experienced a different type of professional development concerning curriculum development and implementation, this has been thanks to the efforts of some scholars in the language teaching field to provide them with such an opportunity (e.g. ^{Aguirre Garzón, 2018}; ^{Cadavid, 2003}; Clavijo et al., 2004; ^{Chaves & Guapacha, 2016}; ^{Gaona, Suárez & González, 2001}; ^{Giraldo, 2014}; ^{Ordóñez, 2011}; ^{Ortiz et al., 2006}; ^{Vargas and Abouchaar, 2001}).

Therefore, what most in-service teachers have been offered throughout the years are traditional professional development initiatives, based on a technical view of teachers’ learning and development (^{Sierra-Piedrahita, 2016}) that do not contribute much to their learning (^{Fullan, 2001}; ^{McCotter, 2001}; ^{Randi & Zeichner, 2004}), and “rarely provide sufficient follow-up and support for meaningful and lasting improvement” (^{Lieberman & Wood, 2001}, p. 174). They have been trained to implement reforms for which they are normally told what to teach and how to teach it (Robertson, Samoff, Sleeter, Tatto, & Torres, as cited in ^{Zeichner, 2011}), as is the case with the program Colombia Bilingüe 2014-2018. Within this reform - mostly through courses and workshops - teachers have been instructed regarding the content and methodologies specified by policymakers, how the reform works, and how it should be implemented in schools (^{Avalos, 2004}; ^{Sierra-Piedrahita, 2016}), normally with an imposed curriculum. The challenge of implementing a new curriculum becomes greater for teachers because they have not been invited to participate in its design, and almost no time has been devoted to preparing them for its implementation (^{Avalos, 2004}). Thus, language teachers in schools normally teach a scripted and prescribed curriculum, because the professional development they receive does not prepare them to (re)design their own school curriculum paying attention to the needs, interests and specific contexts of their students. In addition, they are not given the resources to embark on such task.

Clearly, teachers need to learn a significant amount in order to carry out the type of instruction that leads to the type of student learning that reformers contemplate (^{Ball & Cohen, 1999}). The literature about professional development indicates that the view of professional development for teachers is changing from a technical model to a teacher learning model in which teachers are seen as intellectuals who can generate knowledge through constant examination of their practice. For the national and local government and many schools, the adoption of new forms of professional development is not considered and, as discussed above, teachers still experience traditional forms of professional development. Besides, they are not invited to play the active role they could be playing in their own professional development (^{Richards & Farrell, 2005}). Therefore, professional development, as conceived and designed by the government today, has a remote possibility of significantly impacting teachers’ knowledge and skills, and students’ performance (^{Elmore, 2002}).

Language teachers in schools should be able to make informed decisions about curricula, and the professional development programs they are offered must contribute to their preparation and direction in this sense. Preparing them to be able to maintain a balance between the interests of reformers, their own needs and interests as professionals (^{Day & Sachs, 2004} as cited in ^{Sierra-Piedrahita, 2016}; ^{Martin, Kragler, Quatroche, & Bauserman , 2014}), students’ interests and needs (^{Martin et al., 2014}), and their contexts and realities, is paramount. The findings of this study point to these fundamental issues.

Data collection

Data was collected through a survey, document analysis, and focus group interviews. The survey was applied to 75 secondary school English teachers out of a pool of 610 teachers who were hired in government schools. The survey, applied through SurveyMonkey, gave us quantitative information to characterize the population and their beliefs about curricula and curriculum design practices and experiences (see appendix with the questions that were included in the survey). The document analysis was conducted in five selected urban schools. The criteria used to select these schools were: those with a greater number of teachers who participated in the survey, diversity in their geographic location, and access - i.e. schools that have been part of previous research projects with colleagues from our Language Teacher Education Program, or that were practicum sites for our pre-service teachers in our Teacher Education Program. We analyzed their institutional documents such as their Proyecto Educativo Institucional, -PEI- area plans and curricular guidelines to identify the theoretical and methodological elements that teachers consider when designing the English curriculum, and to identify the prevailing curricular structures in public schools. Finally, five focus group interviews were conducted with teachers from the selected institutions who willingly accepted to participate after signing a consent form. The number of teachers from each institution oscillated between three and eight, for a total of 21 teachers. Interviews were conducted not only to expand on the information obtained through the survey and the document analysis, but also to understand their beliefs, experiences and practices concerning curricula and curriculum design, their professional development experiences and needs, the preparation they were offered to respond to policies and curriculum guidelines, and the factors that affected the implementation of those policies and curriculum guidelines in their schools.

Data analysis

Data from the survey was analyzed using SurveyMonkey. Data from the schools’ curriculum documents and the focus group interviews were systematized and analyzed following an inductive and deductive approach and according to the recommendations of various authors such as ^{Burnaford et al. (2001)} and ^{Anderson et al. (1994)}, by which data is categorized and organized by relevant themes according to this study’s research question. We read the data several times to identify themes across the different sources of data, which helped us to establish preliminary and final categories. We wrote analytical notes based on what we found in the data and compared and contrasted categories to establish a relationship among them and to build interpretations. To guarantee validity and trustworthiness in interpretations, we triangulated the different sources of data. To be able to manage the amount of information we collected, we used NVivo, a software package used for qualitative data analysis.

Professional development offered to teachers for curriculum design and its characteristics

The preparation teachers have received has been provided by a myriad of public and private institutions such as Casa del Maestro, Caja de Compensación Familiar Comfenalco, universities, publishing houses, José Félix de Restrepo high school (INEM), and the Secretary of Education’s Office. These initiatives have focused on improving language proficiency, using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT’s) and preparing immersion experiences, but have been very limited in terms of curriculum design. Teachers complain about these initiatives because, in many occasions, they have been promised a course or workshop on language teaching methodologies, but these end up being pure grammar courses or language preparation courses with an emphasis on a particular textbook, or just courses and workshops to complete hours for a publishing house to promote their publications. Due to the focus of these initiatives, many teachers have come to believe, for instance, that the workshops they have attended in the past and that are sponsored by publishing houses and taught by native speakers to promote and sell their textbooks, are better than the workshops offered by these public or private institutions, because at least they are ludic and do not focus on grammar topics.

Teachers believe that what they have learned in these professional development initiatives - which normally translate into workshops and courses - is not significant because these are short-term and not continuous. Courses, for instance, had been offered every four years. Moreover, when they have been invited to participate in long-term initiatives, such as Expedición Currículo - an initiative being implemented in the institutions at the time we conducted the study - they felt that, as with short-term initiatives, these were intended to complete a large number of hours and assignments, but not to learn about teaching methodologies and teaching strategies. The following quote illustrates this issue:

I told the girl who was in charge of Expedición Currículo: “No, I don’t want to [attend], do not count on me, I don’t want to go there to complete a bunch of hours and assignments and a bunch of things, no.” You go there thinking that you are going to improve your methodology and [teaching] strategies and all that, but you end up completing a bunch of hours for a publishing house. (I. E.2)

In addition, programs are limited to ambitious courses with many requirements in terms of admission, weekly attendance, and assignments. Concerning admission requirements, for instance, teachers were offered a trip to Washington as an incentive to participate in courses and improve their language proficiency level, but to access this possibility one of the requirements was not to be close to the age of retirement. Therefore, teachers felt rejected or discriminated against, given that they would be still teaching for many years before they actually would retire. Another admission requirement was to have a minimum of five years of teaching experience, which left many of them unable to access training programs. In terms of assignments, the programs were neither flexible, nor offered under conditions teachers considered adequate to be able to participate, such as appropriate schedules and types of assignments. For instance, they had to submit a large number of grammar exercises from textbooks and online platform exercises. Here is what one of the teachers expressed about course schedules and assignments:

I went twice and time was definitely not sufficient in the first week because there was a lot of work and I also had a lot of work at home. So when I saw the amount of homework they assigned that first week, with the [online] platform, and that I had to be there from 8 am to 2 pm, I thought, this is impossible. I quit because of that. (I.E.3)

With so many grammar assignments, graduation requirements and hours they had to invest in courses, teachers felt they were not learning things for immediate application in their classrooms, which discouraged them from attending.

Look, the course I attended was offered by [one university], and there was a bunch of homework. And to graduate you have to submit a project. So, I said to myself: “Do I come here to learn new/different things to implement them in the classroom or do I come to study grammar again?” So I’d rather stay home. (I.E.1)

Other issues that characterized courses and discouraged teachers from attending were that many of them were consistently taught in Spanish and many instructors, according to the teachers, did not have an adequate language proficiency level, to the point that sometimes teachers felt they needed to correct their instructors’ language mistakes. This issue discouraged teachers from attending courses because they felt they did not have good English language models to follow or to learn from.

Factors affecting the implementation of language policies and curriculum guidelines

Several factors affected the implementation of curriculum guidelines in public secondary schools, some are related to the school context and others to the social context. In terms of the school context, most primary school teachers are not qualified to teach English; therefore, secondary school teachers do what they can with their students’ limited knowledge of the language once they move to secondary grades. As a result, students do not have the English language proficiency level they are expected to acquire. Moreover, in primary schools, students are only taught one hour of English per week, an insufficient amount of time that tremendously affects what they are able to learn. In addition, in many schools English is not even taught in primary grades, when this is clearly the basis for their learning process. To aggravate the situation there is the constant missing of classes due to different extracurricular activities, affecting students’ continuity in learning the language. Moreover, teachers do not have sufficient resources to teach English. The following quote illustrates the current situation in schools with the implementation of the English standards set by the national government and the local curricular initiative Expedición Currículo:

Right now [the policy] is not applicable here, because of the lack of English teachers in elementary schools and the limited amount of hours of English instruction per week […] Also, right now in secondary schools, it is impossible to implement that curriculum plan [Expedición Currículo] because the content they want us to teach in 6^th grade we are hardly teaching them in 8^th grade […]. Yesterday, we were revising the Expedición Currículo document and we concluded that it requires us to teach the simple past in 6^th grade when in reality we are teaching that in 8^th grade […] And here we are not taking into account that half of the class has difficulties in understanding simpler topics. So, right now it is impossible to apply that curriculum plan […]. [Moreover] the Ministry of Education does not assign English teachers for primary schools. English hours in schools are not enough, resources are not enough, [and] the training for teachers is not enough. (I.E.4)

Teachers are specific about the kinds of resources they need and point to the lack of technological resources to support the teaching of English.

We need to increase the possibility of using ict in the institution and [the government] should make sure that institutions are well equipped with a good English lab or at least that teachers have access to an audiovisual lab and that the children also have access to computers and all that. (I.E.5)

Students’ lack of motivation and apathy towards learning English is also evident, which affects their commitment to learn. Too often, teachers do not know what to do in terms of methodology to change this reality. Besides, the number of students per group is also an issue to consider, as expressed by one of the teachers:

Teachers should be better prepared [to use different methodologies and teaching strategies] […]. We need more hours of English per week. Teaching a language class to a group of 25 students is not the same as teaching a group of 50. That’s a difficulty. (I.E.5)

Furthermore, the examination system in schools makes it difficult for students to accomplish the level they are expected to achieve, because they can be promoted to the next grade even if they fail several subjects. Teachers get almost no support from parents to help students improve their school performance, given the fact that most of the time parents are at work, and a great number of students do not have parents and live with other relatives. Some parents also ask teachers not to be too demanding with their children. One teacher commented on some of these contextual factors and their influence on what they are expected to do with their students:

With the current education system in Colombia it is not possible to achieve the expected proficiency level for students because […] in 6th grade we have to teach all elementary grades intensively, then in 7th grade you keep reviewing topics because of the amount of hours of English in schools, three hours per week, and because there is no opportunity for practicing English […], plus the evaluation system does not help [as students can fail many subjects and still pass the grade]. (I.E.2)

Therefore, the reality is that many contextual factors affect the implementation of policies in schools, but at the same time, and most of the time, many social factors affect this implementation as well. On a daily basis, teachers must focus on what they call the social part of education so that students do not end up involved in drugs, gangs, prostitution, etc. They do not perceive their work as free of the influence of student’s social reality and this has big repercussions on what they are able to achieve with their students. Apart from teaching them the language, they feel that they need to rescue their students from bad social influences outside of school, a job that many of them have to do without parents’ support. As one teacher explains: “education has changed and has become a social work to rescue students from so many things outside [of school] that are more interesting for them [such as drugs, gangs, etc.].” (I.E.2).

In addition, they have to face and deal with other issues such as students’ affective and learning problems, poverty, hunger, domestic violence, early pregnancies, etc. In this respect, one teacher commented on the social problems they have to deal with while at the same time trying to teach English, making their work more difficult:

Then there is the social part which is a huge problem. And achieving the English level [we are expected to achieve] seems like unreal. So, one does both things at the same time, intervenes the social part and tries to teach the English competencies, but achieving something with English is very difficult because the [social] problems are huge. (I.E.4).

Clearly, school-related and social contexts have had an enormous impact on the work of teachers as they try to implement language policies and curriculum guidelines. However, this implementation has also been hindered by the way the policies were conceived, and the way teachers have been prepared to accomplish such task, as will be explained in the next section.

Teachers’ views about language policies and the government’s professional development initiatives

The implementation of policies is linked to professional development initiatives as it is assumed that if teachers participate in such initiatives, they will be able to implement policies quickly and effectively. Nonetheless, this has not been the case in schools in the city. The way in which the policies were conceived has hindered their implementation, despite the government’s efforts to prepare teachers for this task. Below we list the reasons provided by the teachers to explain this situation.

First, teachers question the lack of communication between the national and local government and teachers. They manifested that the Ministry of Education or the local government only come to them to inform them about the English standards or curricular initiatives they want to implement, but there is a lack of continuity in their visits and dialogue between them is nonexistent. They are not asked about the policies that they are required to implement, so these policies end up being completely decontextualized and designed for other realities and contexts, rather than public schools. Teachers consider that although the people involved in governmental initiatives are talented, they do not know the schools’ realities and the social and contextual issues that affect them, all of which have an effect on what can be achieved with the students. The same occurs with the professional development initiatives teachers are offered. They are invited to participate to be able to implement the policies or curriculum guidelines created by policymakers, however, the initiatives are not significant for them because they are decontextualized and do not consider their needs and interests, for instance, in terms of curriculum development.

Second, the national or local government does not give teachers sufficient time to appropriate and implement one initiative or reform and observe its results, and in the middle of its implementation they are asked to implement a new change. Teachers believe this happens because policymakers easily assume that a plan does not work, or because they realize that achieving a high language proficiency level is an impossible goal. Proof of this is that the country’s deadline to become bilingual has been extended. One teacher expressed the following about the implementation of policies:

[…] if from the Secretary of Education they are proposing a new change, it is because they see that this is not working. They see that they are not accomplishing what they wanted. […] I think that we have invested two years in the recontextualization project, which consisted in reorganizing the curriculum according to the school context and taking into account the standards set by the Ministry of Education and what the students have to achieve at the end of their learning process. What is proposed is good, but now we have Expedición Currículo and we have invested very little time in the recontextualization project, […] We have invested two or three years in this project and now they [the government] is modifying things because it supposedly didn’t work, but we are not given enough time, we are asked to change things while we are implementing them so we are not giving adequate time to projects and processes. (I.E.4)

In general, teachers believe that the plan to make the country and the city bilingual has been a failure, and that such a goal was unrealistic or almost impossible to achieve considering the actual factors and resources in public schools.

Third, there are always political and economic interests at play in the professional development initiatives teachers are offered. According to teachers, these initiatives have been numerous though not always adequate because they are intended only to account for money invested by politicians in their campaigns or by any political party during their term in office. Therefore, initiatives are created just to display numbers and account for the millions that have been invested to achieve the expected language proficiency levels in teachers and students. Nonetheless, those strategies failed to meet the goal of improving language proficiency among the targeted population. Furthermore, some teachers questioned the fact that in order to account for the huge amount of money invested in courses and workshops, too often elementary and secondary school teachers-including those who did not participate in the initiatives-were called to accept class materials as presents. In addition, those in charge of the initiatives almost begged teachers to participate in courses because, as stated above, teachers did not feel motivated to do so because these are not planned to respond to their needs and interests, and are ambitious in terms of their requirements and assignments, as one teacher stated:

I mean the courses can be good […] but the financial part is also there with the Nutresa Group, [for example], and when the National Bilingual program was launched that was super big. eafit University was in charge of the program, the Nutresa Group invested money. The government was also there represented by the city mayor. So, there is a lot of money invested there so money needed to be justified in courses. They called us and gave us presents. They almost begged us to be in those [courses] so that the money could be justified. But those courses were very ambitious, […] extremely long and we had to respond to some virtual hours, in fact, it was like doing a master’s program. (I.E.3)

Another teacher, for instance, associates the short duration of courses they have been offered to these being a mere requirement to be fulfilled in order to account for the money granted by the government.

[…] We need initiatives that are continuous because those offered by the Ministry of Education last only two or three months and that is it. And what is curious about this is that what they are looking for is to spend the money [that was invested] so [this is why] nothing is accomplished. (I.E.1)

All these issues have led teachers to consider the type of professional development they require to be able to implement the policies and curriculum guidelines in their schools and help their students achieve the expected language proficiency level. They need preparation that focuses on improving their language skills and English teaching methodologies, as well as curriculum design or a combination of these. Some teachers argued that even though they can have a good language proficiency level, they lack, for instance, the knowledge about language teaching approaches that are appropriate for their students’ needs, context, and diversity. Being updated is essential for them because many years have passed since they finished their undergraduate programs. Concerning this preparation one teacher describes what they would need or like to find in instructors and professional development initiatives:

If we have the professional that knows about curriculum [design], we don’t have the professional who talks about it in English. We need both things. We always have someone who asks us to speak English, and I love to participate in all that because we practice and remember something, but we need people who know [about curriculum design], people who are able to teach a course [about curriculum design] in English. That would be great! That is what we need […], to integrate both things. (I.E.4)

Finally, teachers expressed their desire to have universities with language teacher preparation programs working more closely with public schools to help them articulate teaching and language because these are not included at all in the initiatives offered to them and because they require a strong instruction that is led by specialists who really know about curriculum design.