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Curriculum development 1AbstractThis essay discusses how curriculum development, professional development, and actionresearch are linked within an educational system. Language learning is used as an examplethroughout in order to provide a subject-area example. Professional development and actionresearch are considered part of closing the gap between the ideal (i.e., the written curriculum)and reality (i.e., taught curriculum) as teachers develop not only pedagogical skills but also theirpersonal development, career development, moral development, overall school improvement,and improvement of the teaching profession as a whole. Action research permits teachers to bepart of the solution as learning principles are to be established and adhered to. It was determinedthat shifting teachers to become more curriculum functioning will better provide the knowledgeand skill necessary to increase understandings among learners and common assessments acrossdisciplines.
 
Curriculum development 2Curriculum development, professional development, and action research:A foreign language perspectiveIf the hypothesis is true
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that any subject can be taught effectively insome intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development
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 then it should follow that a curriculum ought to be built around the greatissues, principles, and values that a society deems worthy of the continualconcern of its members (Bruner, 1960, p. 33 & p. 52)Bruner's hypothesis, now almost 50 years old, not only is still relevant to the generalclassroom of today but is also relevant to foreign language learning as well. Curriculumdevelopment, professional development, and action research provide the means for linking thedesired results with individualistic and collective ends. In language learning, like other skill-based subjects (e.g., sports, drama, and music), the curriculum tends to focus on behavioralobjectives for each skill (Glickman, Gordon, and Ross-Gordon, 2007) which then leads toprofessional development and action research - should the gap between the desired results andcurrent reality warrant it. Instead, a more integrated curriculum merges concepts,understandings, facts, and skills such that subsequent professional development and actionresearch would together establish language acquisition as both means and ends.Building a curriculum around the acquisition of a language is best served when basedon the growing of understandings. Wiggins and McTighe (2005) highlight several distinguishingfeatures of understandings as follows:a)
 
an important inference, drawn from the experience of experts, states as a specific anduseful generalization
 
Curriculum development 3b)
 
referring to transferable, big ideas having enduring value beyond a specific topicc)
 
involving abstract, counterintuitive, and easily misunderstood ideasd)
 
 being best acquired by “uncovering” (
i.e., it must be developed inductively,
coconstructed by learners) and “doing”
the subject (i.e., using the ideas in realisticsettings and with real-world problems).e)
 
Summarizing important strategic principles in skill areas (pp. 128-129)Thus, instead of adhering to a curriculum that is based on a behavioral-objective format
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onethat progresses from an objective to an activity then concludes with an evaluation
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an integratedcurriculum begins with creating the overall desired results in the form of understandings. Forlanguage learners to achieve understandings, they must demonstrate a level of communicativecompetence that provides the evidence of both language skill and content knowledge. Fisher andFrey (2007) list the following formative assessment means for checking for understanding: a)oral language, b) questioning, c) writing, projects and performances, d) tests, and e) commonassessments and consensus scoring. Recognizing that all these techniques should be a part of any assessment program, the focus here remains on performance tasks and the importance of building common assessments as part of an overall curriculum development practice.Once the desired results have been established, designing common performance tasks
 precedes the instructional planning through a “backward design” (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005).
Fisher an
d Frey (2007) add that “creating an assessment, even an imperfect one, allows groups of 
teachers to talk about the standards, how the standards might be assessed, where students areperforming currently, and what learning needs to take place for students to demonstrate
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