The Relationship Between Teacher Training and Teaching Innovative Syllabuses in Real-Time Classrooms: A Context Specific Approach (CSA) For TEFL in Bangladesh

Curricular innovation in teaching EFL has been studied around the world. But the underlying complexities of English teachers’ perspectives in the Bangladesh context remain absent in academic literature even two decades after switching from a transmission-oriented and teacher-centered mode of delivery to a learner-centered communicative approach. This study explores how far the classroom teachers actualized their training skills and knowledge they acquired in implementing a curricular innovation at the end-users’ level, as well as how far contextual factors work as a barrier for the implementation of a top-down model of innovation. Through an ethnographic approach, this study investigates the context from the perspective of actual participants to identify the gap between what is intended as innovation by policy makers and what are teachers’ prevailing experiences in real-time classrooms. This study follows longitudinal multi-site case studies through various qualitative multi-method data gathering instruments such as document analysis, classroom observation, and post-observation interviews and also cross-checks the thematic categories identified in Phase 1 with a further questionnaire to trainees and practicing teachers in Phase 2. A major finding of this study is that a technician-like approach to teachers’ training in the name of teacher development does not help much to change teachers’ in-class practice following a context-isolated method or prescriptive approach which ignores local teachers’ tacit knowledge. Finally, the results of this study reveal that in most cases teachers’ voices are aligned positively with the communicative approach. However, these same teachers did not make much difference in their genuine practice at classroom level, as they rather felt more comfortable to revert to their traditional as-usual way of teaching. This research underscores the need to set up an appropriate local knowledge base to guide curriculum renewal to establish an independent approach to language teaching-learning which is suitably grounded in the specific social context.