Dokumen - Pub - Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching The Case of The Middle East and North Africa 1st Ed 978 3 030 13412 9978 3 030 13413 6

NEW LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING ENVIRONMENTS
Innovation
in Language Learning
and Teaching
The Case of the
Middle East and North Africa
Edited by
Hayo Reinders · Christine Coombe
Andrew Littlejohn · Dara Tafazoli
New Language Learning and Teaching
Environments
Series Editor
Hayo Reinders
Department of Education
Anaheim University
Anaheim, CA, USA
Department of Languages
King Mongkut’s University of Technology
Thonburi, Bangkok, Thailand
New Language Learning and Teaching Environments is an exciting new
book series edited by Hayo Reinders, dedicated to recent developments
in learner-centred approaches and the impact of technology on learning
and teaching inside and outside the language classroom. The series aims
to:
• Publish cutting-edge research into current developments and innova-

tion in language learning and teaching practice.
• Publish applied accounts of the ways in which these developments
impact on current and future language education.
• Encourage dissemination and cross-fertilisation of policies and prac-
tice relating to learner-centred pedagogies for language learning and
teaching in new learning environments.
• Disseminate research and best practice in out-of-class and informal
language learning.
The series is a multidisciplinary forum for the very latest developments

in language education, taking a pedagogic approach with a clear focus
on the learner, and with clear implications for both researchers and
language practitioners. It is the first such series to provide an outlet for
researchers to publish their work, and the first stop for teachers inter-
ested in this area.
More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14736
Hayo Reinders · Christine Coombe ·
Andrew Littlejohn · Dara Tafazoli
Editors
Innovation
in Language
Learning
and Teaching
The Case of the Middle East
and North Africa
Editors
Hayo Reinders Christine Coombe
Department of Education General Studies
Anaheim University Dubai Men’s College
Anaheim, CA, USA Dubai, United Arab Emirates
King Mongkut’s University of Technology
Dara Tafazoli
Thonburi, Bangkok, Thailand
Department of English and German
Philology
Andrew Littlejohn
University of Córdoba
Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah Institute of
Córdoba, Spain
Education
Universiti Brunei Darussalam
Brunei, Brunei Darussalam
New Language Learning and Teaching Environments

ISBN 978-3-030-13412-9 ISBN 978-3-030-13413-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13413-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019932119
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019

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Praise for Innovation in Language
Learning and Teaching
“The Middle East and North Africa, torn though it remains by political
problems, and made of nations that generally support a national lan-
guage (Arabic, Turkish, Persian or Hebrew) has responded to globali-
zation by innovative programs in teaching English. This pioneering
collection provides a fine picture of this important development and
offers many lessons to other regions.”
—Bernard Spolsky, Professor Emeritus, Bar-Ilan University, Israel
v
Contents
1 Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching:

The Case of the MENA 1
Christine Coombe, Hayo Reinders, Andrew Littlejohn
and Dara Tafazoli
2 Refugees from MENA Learning Languages: Progress,

Principles and Proposals 19
John Traxler, Elena Barcena and Timothy Read
3 Plugging the Gap: Supporting Primary School

Teachers to Create Culturally Appropriate English
Language Teaching (ELT) Materials 39
Sarah Rich, Samantha Weekes, Maryam al Jardani
and Salima al Sinani
4 Task-Based Learning and Teaching in Egypt 61

Deena Boraie, Ebtihal El Badry and Maged Habashy
vii
viii
Contents
5 Innovation in Writing Instruction: Towards Nurturing

Confident, Motivated and Academically Honest L2
Writers 85
Fatima Esseili
6 Innovation in Reading in the United Arab Emirates 109

Melanie Gobert and Helene Demirci
7 Reading for Science: Anatomy as a Metaphor

for a Holistic College-Wide Innovation 133
Roger Nunn, Caroline Brandt, Asli Hassan
and Curtis Bradley
8 Towards English for Academic Purposes Curriculum

Reform: Linguistic, Educational or Political
Considerations? 153
Elana Spector-Cohen, Lisa Amdur, Ingrid Barth,
Rosalie Sitman and Linda Weinberg
9 The Evolution of a Research Paper Course 177

Andrew Littlejohn and Sandhya R. Mehta
10 Developing Communication Skills Through

Participation in Course-Based Undergraduate
Research Experiences 203
Robert Craig and Brian Bielenberg
11 Preparing for a Digital Future: CALL Teacher

Education in Iran 223
S. Susan Marandi
12 Online Language Teacher Education for a Challenging

Innovation: Towards Critical Language Pedagogy
for Iran 241
Arman Abednia and Graham V. Crookes
Contents
ix
13 Telecollaboration Among Qatari and US Undergraduates

in a Multicultural Course: Opportunities and Obstacles 263
Zohreh R. Eslami, Valerie Hill-Jackson, Svetlana Kurteš
and Lobat Asadi
Index 283
Notes on Contributors
Arman Abednia holds a Ph.D. in TEFL from Allameh Tabataba’i

University, Iran, and a Ph.D. in Education from Edith Cowan
University (ECU), Australia. His research interests include critical ped-
agogy and literacy, teacher education, and teacher identity. His research
has appeared in journals such as Teaching and Teacher Education, System,
and Language Awareness. Arman has conducted workshops on critical
pedagogy and literacy for second language teachers in Iran, Australia,
and New Zealand. Currently, he is teaching literacy in the teacher edu-
cation program at Murdoch University, Australia.
Maryam al Jardani has been a teacher trainer at the Ministry of
Education in the Sultanate of Oman since 2007. Prior to this, she
worked as an English teacher and then as a senior English teacher for
11 years. She holds an M.A. in teacher education from the University
of Leeds. She is interested in researching her professional practice,
and has published a number of papers and given talks at international
conferences.
Salima al Sinani holds an M.A. degree from the University of Leeds.
She worked as a teacher and then as a senior English teacher before
xi
xii
taking up her current post as a teacher trainer in the Ministry of

Education in the Sultanate of Oman. Salima has published in the area
of language teacher education and presented at a number of interna-
tional conferences.
Lisa Amdur holds a doctorate from the School of Education at Tel
Aviv University in Israel. Lisa has worked for the Ministry of Education
as a teacher, teacher trainer, and materials and test developer, and in var-
ious teacher training colleges. She currently teaches EAP and language
assessment at Tel Aviv University.
Lobat Asadi is a Ph.D. candidate in Curriculum and Instruction at
Texas A&M University, USA. Lobat has instructed culturally and lin-
guistically diverse populations of students and teachers for over a dec-
ade as a TESOL instructor. Her research is at the crossroads of teacher
education for K-12+ and TESOL teachers, and curriculum develop-
ment in multicultural education, STEAM and arts-based pedagogies.
Lobat studies identity and sociocultural issues using narrative inquiry
and other qualitative methods while engaging critical theories to address
pedagogy and policy issues in racialized populations. Lobat’s dedication
to diversity and post-colonial methodologies is evidenced by publica-
tions about LGBTIQ+, teacher and student identities, translanguaging,
educational inequity and performance-based narrative inquiry.
Ebtihal El Badry worked as a teacher for over 25 years in higher edu-
cation and teaching adults at the School of Continuing Education
(SCE) of the American University in Cairo, Egypt before starting an
administrative career in 2007 as the principal of an American school in
Cairo. In 2009, she joined SCE as an administrator. She was promoted
several times and is now Director of the Languages Department. She
has presented at various conferences locally and internationally includ-
ing TESOL International, NileTESOL and TESOL Arabia.
Elena Barcena is a professor in the Department of Modern Languages
at UNED, Spain. She has co-directed the ATLAS (Applying
Technologies to LAnguageS) research group since 1997, working on
technological and methodological innovation in applied linguistics. She
has been the director of several national and European-funded research
xiii
projects. She is also an expert adviser for national and international

research institutions and a member of the editorial board of several spe-
cialized journals. She is currently working on the boundaries between
non-formal and formal language teaching/learning in blended and
online contexts, particularly on MALL and Language MOOCs.
Ingrid Barth is head of research projects in the Division of Foreign
Languages at Tel Aviv University, Israel. She has an M.A. in curriculum
design and a Ph.D. in education from Bar Ilan University. She special-
izes in designing instructional technology, and her main areas of inter-
est are effective design of video-based learning and English-medium
instruction.
Brian Bielenberg is an educational linguist with over 20 years of teach-
ing experience. Holding degrees in engineering and education, he cur-
rently serves as Academic Effectiveness Specialist at Khalifa University
of Science and Technology in Abu Dhabi, UAE, where he is engaged
in engineering curriculum assessment and enhancement. He has taught
freshman introduction to engineering and sophomore cornerstone
design courses, as well as courses in linguistics and English as an addi-
tional language. His research interests include academic language and
literacy needs in engineering design and entrepreneurship courses, and
engineering education reform.
Deena Boraie is the Dean and professor of practice of the School of
Continuing Education at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. She
leads a school that offers a wide range of continuing education pro-
grammes in English language, IT, business studies, Arabic language,
translation and teacher development. She is a past president (2013–
2014) of the TESOL International Association. She is also a language
testing expert, and an assessment and evaluation consultant and trainer.
She teaches research methods in the M.A./Ph.D. Applied Linguistics
programme at the Faculty of Arts, English Department of Cairo
University.
Curtis Bradley is an associate professor of physics at the Petroleum
Institute in Abu Dhabi, UAE. His research areas include atomic and
optical physics, and physics education. Most recently, he has worked
xiv
on the connections between language and science learning and on pro-

gramme-level academic continuous improvement and quality assurance.
As head of the Physics Department, he led an effort to transform the
department’s core courses using a ‘Studio Physics’ approach—involving
the introduction and development of new pedagogies, revised curricula,
cognitive tutoring software and redesigned laboratory spaces to create stu-
dent-centred environments for the active learning of introductory physics.
Caroline Brandt is an associate professor of communication and
Acting Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the Petroleum
Institute in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Her research interests include the devel-
opment of academic literacy, academic acculturation, reflexivity in
curriculum design, transfer of learning and qualitative research meth-
ods. She has published widely in these areas, including Read, Research
and Write: Academic skills for ESL Students in Higher Education (2008,
SAGE Publications Ltd), currently on required reading lists in several
universities.
Christine Coombe has a Ph.D. in foreign/second language education
from Ohio State University. She is currently associate professor in gen-
eral studies at Dubai Men’s College in the UAE. She has authored and/
or edited numerous volumes on assessment, leadership, teacher effec-
tiveness, research and task-based teaching and learning. Her most recent
publications are: The Role of Language Teacher Associations on Professional
Development (2018, Springer) and An A to Z of Second Language
Assessment (2018, British Council). She served as TESOL President
(2011–2012) and was a member of the TESOL Board of Directors
(2010–2013). Christine received the British Council’s International
Assessment Award for 2013. Her most recent honour was being named
TESOL’s 50@50 which “recognizes professionals who have made signif-
icant contributions to the TESOL profession within the past 50 years”.
Dr. Coombe is the 2018 recipient of the James E. Alatis Award which
recognizes exemplary service to TESOL.
Robert Craig was raised in Britain and attended the universities of
Sheffield, London and Essex. He has been involved in education for 40
years and has worked in the UK, Oman, Angola, Brunei, Morocco and
xv
the UAE. He has spent the last 15 years at the Petroleum Institute (now
part of Khalifa University of Science and Technology) in Abu Dhabi,
UAE. His main research interests include the integration of content and
language, effective communication, outcomes-based curriculum design
and assessment. He believes strongly in the potential of collaborative
learning and undergraduate research which he has been employing in
his teaching for over 20 years.
Graham V. Crookes is a professor (and Chair) in the Department of
Second Language Studies, University of Hawai’i. His main research
interests are critical language pedagogy and development of language
teachers’ philosophies of teaching. His recent books are Critical ELT
in Action (Routledge) and Values, Beliefs, and Philosophies of Teaching
(Cambridge University Press).
Helene Demirci is a member of the English Foundations faculty at
Abu Dhabi Men’s College, UAE. She has taught EFL at primary, sec-
ondary and tertiary levels over the last 22 years in England, Turkey and
the UAE. Her interests lie in engaging students in extensive reading
and technology integration. She has served as the SIG Coordinator for
an ESL professional development organization and is a member of the
Applied Linguistics and Language Learning conference organizing team.
She is currently serving as a board member of the Extensive Reading
Foundation and an Associate Editor for the Algerian Scientific Journal
Platform.
Zohreh R. Eslami is a professor at Texas A&M University, USA and
is currently serving as the Program Chair of the Liberal Arts at Texas
A&M University, Qatar. She has published more than 100 articles in
journals such as Intercultural Pragmatics, System, ELT Journal, Modern
Language Journal, System, Journal of Pragmatics, Journal of Asian Pacific
Communication and Bilingual Education Journal. Her research interests
include intercultural communication, instructional and intercultural
pragmatics, cyber-pragmatics, L2 literacy development, L2 literacy in
content areas, and task-based language teaching and technology.
xvi
Fatima Esseili is an associate professor of applied linguistics and

TESOL in the Department of English at the University of Dayton,
Ohio, USA. Her research interests include second language writing,
world Englishes, language testing and assessment, language policy, inter-
cultural rhetoric and teacher preparation.
Melanie Gobert is on the faculty of Abu Dhabi Men’s College at
the Higher Colleges of Technology. She was a featured speaker at the
Third World Congress on Extensive Reading, the Australian College of
Kuwait’s Annual Conference and the International Academic Forum.
She publishes and presents regularly on reading, assessment, vocabulary,
writing and online learning. She is a past president of TESOL Arabia,
and editor of Perspectives, a peer-reviewed ELT Journal.
Maged Habashy holds an M.A. in international and comparative edu-
cation. He has more than 16 years’ experience teaching English as a sec-
ond language for K-12 and adult learners as well as teaching English
for academic purposes for both undergraduate and graduate learners.
He has five years of administrative experience in higher education. His
current post is assistant director of the Languages Department in the
School of Continuing Education at the American University in Cairo,
Egypt. Internationally, he is a frequent participant in educational con-
ferences including that of the Comparative Education Society of Europe
(CESE).
Asli Hassan is an assistant professor of communication and head
of the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT) at the
Petroleum Institute in Abu Dhabi, UAE. She is a multilingual educator
devoted to research that impacts student learning and innovative profes-
sional development programmes. She has over 20 years of teaching and
teacher training experience in the USA and UAE.
Valerie Hill-Jackson is the Director of Educator Preparation Programs
and Partnerships in the College of Education and Human Development
and a Clinical Professor of Educator Preparation in the Department
of Teaching, Learning, and Culture at Texas A&M University, USA.
She is an American Educational Research Association/Spencer Fellow
and received the Lead Star Award for her research in childhood
xvii
lead poisoning and community education. Dr. Hill-Jackson won a

2013 Upton Sinclair Award, a 2013 Fulbright Fellowship to Cardiff
University and a 2018/2019 Melbern G. Glasscock Non-Tenure Track
Faculty Research Fellowship. Her books include: Transforming Teacher
Education: What Went Wrong with Teacher Training and How We Can Fix
It; Better Principals, Better Schools: What Star Principals Know, Believe,
and Do; Better Teachers, Better Schools: What Star Teachers Know, Believe,
and Do; Teacher Confidential: Personal Stories of Stress, Self-Care, and
Resilience; and What Makes a Star Teacher: 7 Dispositions That Support
Student Learning (forthcoming).
Svetlana Kurteš is a UK-based scholar with extensive international
experience in the area of linguistic and intercultural education span-
ning well over two decades, having held academic positions at a num-
ber of universities in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. The focus of
her research interests clusters around interdisciplinary approaches to
communication, culture and society, and issues surrounding their
pedagogical implications and applications. Since 2010 she has been
Vice President of the European Network for Intercultural Education
Activities (ENIEDA), having initiated, coordinated and convened a
significant number of its activities. A member of several professional
and scholarly associations and editorial boards of academic journals,
Svetlana is also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, UK, and
a member of the Research Centre for Local and Regional Studies,
University of Madeira, Portugal. She regularly presents as an invited
speaker and publishes internationally.
Andrew Littlejohn is associate professor of language education in
the Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah Institute of Education, at the Universiti
Brunei Darussalam. He previously taught in the Department of English
Language and Literature at Sultan Qaboos University, Oman, where he
was coordinator of the Research Project course, and at the Institute of
Education, University College London and Lancaster University. He
has published widely on English language teaching, and is the author of
numerous courses for primary, secondary and adult education, mainly
published by Cambridge University Press.
xviii
S. Susan Marandi is currently an associate professor and head of the

English Department at Alzahra University, Iran. Her major interests
are CALL, language assessment and indigenizing teaching practices,
and she has supervised a range of theses and dissertations on these top-
ics, and published numerous articles. She has also presented at various
national and international conferences, and was awarded a scholar-
ship to WorldCALL 2008 in Japan for her CALL-related activities in
Iran, which include co-authoring an award-winning educational CD,
English at Home, and establishing and teaching CALL teacher educa-
tion courses. She has published in journals such as ReCALL, Computer
Assisted Language Learning, CALL-EJ, Computers and Education,
Interactive Learning Environments, Australasian Journal of Educational
Technology, Educational Technology Research & Development, and
Computers in Human Behavior.
Sandhya R. Mehta works in the Department of English Language and
Literature, Sultan Qaboos University, Oman. She has published widely
in language studies and is the editor of Language and Literature in a
Glocal World (Springer) and co-editor of Language Studies: Stretching the
Boundaries (CSP). She is the current coordinator of the Research Project
course at the university.
Roger Nunn is head of the Department of Writing Studies at the
American University of Sharjah, UAE. He is interested in holistic learn-
ing and the development of academic literacy. He is chief editor of the
Asian ESP Journal and believes strongly in multi-centricity in interna-
tional scholarship, in particular in the field of competence in English
as an international academic language. He is a founding member of
English Scholars Beyond Borders, a circle of international scholars that
promotes multi-centricity and the intercultural translatability of learn-
ing across cultures and disciplines.
Timothy Read is a senior lecturer at UNED, Spain. He has held
several positions in the government of the university and is cur-
rently the Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Methodology and
Innovative Technology. He is the cofounder of the ATLAS (Applying
Technologies to LAnguageS) research group and has directed national
xix
and international funded projects on applying ICT to LSP and

sub-languages. He is currently working in the area of MALL, language
MOOCs and their applications for social inclusion. He has also been a
member of diverse scientific committees and has collaborated as an eval-
uator of national and international research project proposals.
Hayo Reinders is professor of applied linguistics at KMUTT in
Thailand and TESOL professor and director of the doctoral programme
at Anaheim University in the USA. He is the founder of the global
Institute for Teacher Leadership (www.teacherleadership.ac). Hayo has
published over 25 books and 100 articles in the areas of autonomy,
technology, teacher education and out-of-class learning. He edits a book
series for Palgrave Macmillan and is editor of the journal Innovation in
Language Learning and Teaching.
Sarah Rich has been involved in language teacher education for more
than 30 years. She directed the Masters in TESOL programme at the
University of Exeter in the UK from 1999–2010 and the Professional
Doctorate in TESOL from 2010–2012. She worked as an adviser
on language teacher education for the Ministry of Education in the
Sultanate of Oman from 2012–2016 and is now working to support the
development of a new primary curriculum in Lao People’s Democratic
Republic.
Rosalie Sitman holds a doctorate in Latin American History from
Tel Aviv University and an M.A. in Modern Languages from Oxford
University. She is the head of the Division of Foreign Languages and
a researcher in Latin American cultural and intellectual history at the
Sverdlin Institute for Latin American History and Culture, both at Tel
Aviv University, Israel. She has published extensively on the application
of new technologies to language teaching, as well as on Latin American
cultural history.
Elana Spector-Cohen is the head of English programmes in the
Division of Foreign Languages and director of the International M.A.
TESOL programme at Tel Aviv University, where she teaches courses in
curriculum development, materials design and EAP. Elana has worked
on various projects for the Israeli Ministry of Education in the areas
xx
of testing, teacher training, curriculum development and professional

standards for English teachers. Her main areas of interest are virtual
exchange, internationalization in higher education, curriculum and
materials design, and educational technology.
Dara Tafazoli taught English at several universities and language
institutes in Iran for eight years before starting his Ph.D. in language
and culture at the University of Cordoba, Spain. His research interests
are educational technology and cross-cultural studies related to lan-
guage learning and teaching. Dara has published nine books, includ-
ing Language and Technology: Computer Assisted Language Learning
(edited with S. Chirimbu, 2013), Game-Assisted Language Learning
(with P. Aqaee, 2014), Multiculturalism and Technology-Enhanced
Language Learning (edited with M. Romero, 2017), and Cross-Cultural
Perspectives on Technology-Enhanced Language Learning (edited with
M. E. Gomez Parra and C. Huertas Abril, 2018).
John Traxler was the world’s first Professor of Mobile Learning and
is now professor of digital learning in the Institute of Education at the
University of Wolverhampton, UK. He is a pioneer of mobile learn-
ing and has been associated with mobile learning projects since 2001
when he was evaluator for m-learning. He is a founding director of
the International Association for Mobile Learning. He is co-editor
of Mobile Learning: A Handbook for Educators and Trainers; Mobile
Learning: the Next Generation; Mobile Learning and Mathematics; Mobile
Learning and STEM: Case Studies in Practice; and Mobile Learning in
Higher Education: Challenges in Context.
Samantha Weekes has been a materials writer at the Ministry of
Education in the Sultanate of Oman since 2013. Prior to this, she
worked as a materials writer in Thailand and has taught English as a
second language in several European and Asian countries. She holds an
M.Sc. in TESOL from the University of Edinburgh, UK. She is inter-
ested in researching and developing teaching and learning materials
related to phonics, reading skills and literacy development.
xxi
Linda Weinberg heads the English Studies Unit at Braude College of

Engineering, Israel. She has experience in multicultural and anti-racist
curriculum design and has been involved in several European projects
for promoting language development. Her Ph.D. in applied linguistics
is from the University of Reading, UK. Her research interests include
English-medium instruction and language learning motivation.
List of Figures
Fig. 4.1 An example of a pre-task, task, and post-task sequence

on Google Maps 65
Fig. 4.2 The key components of the curriculum innovation 67
Fig. 9.1 Brief descriptions of the four language development courses 179
Fig. 9.2 Flowchart for the refinement of a research question 185
Fig. 10.1 Learning to research across the curriculum 211
Fig. 13.1 Intercultural communications: progression from
theoretical knowledge to heightened self-efficacy 265
xxiii
List of Tables
Table 3.1 Checklist for designing shared reading texts 57

Table 4.1 Learners’ and instructors’ views on how the new approach
enhances learning 73
Table 4.2 Learners’ and instructors’ views on how the new approach
helps achieve learning goals 73
Table 4.3 Qualitative analysis of questionnaire data 75
Table 4.4 Assessment blueprint of A2B course 81
Table 5.1 Success rate in official examinations in languages 88
Table 5.2 In-class writing by preference 93
Table 5.3 Self-reports on plagiarism and cheating 95
Table 5.4 Comparing pre- and post-semester responses 99
Table 6.1 Mean reading bands for the IELTS Academic Module
for L1 Arabic test takers, UAE test takers, and rest
of the world 114
Table 6.2 Summary of the results of the Reading Challenge
questionnaire 119
Table 6.3 What skill did the Reading Challenge help to improve? 121
Table 10.1 Sample of recent research topics from COMM 101
and 151 211
Table 11.1 World Internet usage and population statistics,
30 June 2018 226
xxv
1
Innovation in Language Learning
and Teaching: The Case of the MENA
Christine Coombe, Hayo Reinders, Andrew Littlejohn
and Dara Tafazoli
Introduction
The focus of this volume is the study of innovation in English language
teaching (ELT) and learning environments in the Middle East and
North Africa (MENA). The chapters draw on classroom, administrative
and learning experiences from seven of the countries in the region. This
chapter begins with the establishment of a definition of innovation and
what it means to be innovative in education and ELT. What follows is
a description of the current status of English language education in the
region and a look at next steps and innovations that are currently being
C. Coombe (*) 
General Studies, Dubai Men’s College, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
e-mail: ccoombe@hct.ac.ae
H. Reinders 
Department of Education, Anaheim University, Anaheim, CA, USA
School of Liberal Arts, King Mongkut’s University of Technology
Thonburi, Thonburi, Thailand
© The Author(s) 2019 1
H. Reinders et al. (eds.), Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching,
New Language Learning and Teaching Environments,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13413-6_1
2
C. Coombe et al.
implemented. A brief introduction to the other 12 chapters in this

volume rounds out this chapter.
Defining Innovation in Education

In educational contexts worldwide, everyone these days is striving to be
innovative in their classrooms as they want their students to be engaged
in their own learning. Innovation for many simply means doing what
is best for all students, piquing their curiosity about learning and
finding ways to keep students interested. For others it means provid-
ing them with the tools and knowledge they need to be effective and
efficient twenty-first-century learners. A more traditional definition of
innovation and how it applies to education has been put forward by the
Society of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (2018, p. 1):
The practice of effective and meaningful teaching can benefit immensely

when educators thoughtfully experiment and apply new or different
pedagogical approaches, technologies, curricular enhancements, course
design and organization and assessments.
In more simplistic terms, innovation can also be defined as “the p

rocess
of making changes to something established by introducing something
new” (O’Sullivan & Dooley, 2009, p. 3). Innovation is about help-
ing organizations grow. In business terms, growth is often measured
in terms of turnover and profit, but it can also occur in knowledge, in
human experience, and in efficiency and quality. It is these latter con-
cepts that relate innovation to education.
A. Littlejohn 
Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah Institute of Education,
Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Brunei, Brunei Darussalam
e-mail: andrew@andrewlittlejohn.net
D. Tafazoli 
Department of English and German Philology, University of Cordoba,
Cordoba, Spain
1 Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching …
3
In education today, experts opine that the term ‘innovation’ is an

overused one (Alexander, 2017; Darasawang, Reinders, & Waters,
2015; O’Brien, 2013) or a buzzword that implies a big breakthrough.
At its core, however, is that innovation is the pairing of tried and tested
ideas to yield new results. Two well-known non-educational examples of
this premise include the car and Apple technology. In the former, fac-
tory assembly lines and cars already existed, but Henry Ford was the
person who had the insight to combine the two. In the latter, Steve Jobs
sparked a technological revolution by combining easy-to-use mobile
technology interfaces with intuitive software (Alexander, 2017). So, to
innovate is to look beyond what we are currently doing and develop a
novel idea that helps us to do our job in a new way.
Whatever your definition of innovation, it is most probably associ-
ated with terms like change, something new and/or something benefi-
cial or successful.
Innovations in Education
For an individual, a nation and mankind to survive and progress in
life, innovation is essential. Innovation in education is particularly
important because education plays a crucial role in creating a sustain-
able future (Serdyukov, 2017). The need for educational innovation has
become acute as “it is widely believed that countries’ social and eco-
nomic wellbeing will depend to an ever-greater extent on the quality of
their citizens’ education and the emergence of a so called ‘knowledge
society’” (p. 5). According to a report by the Organisation for Economic
Cooperation and Development, “the pressure to increase equity and
improve educational outcomes for students is growing around the
world” (Vieluf, Kaplan, Klieme, & Bayer, 2012, p. 3), which in turn
increases the pressure on institutions to innovate. Innovation in edu-
cation is generally understood as “the successful introduction of a new
thing or method” (Brewer & Tierney, 2012, p. 5). Brewer and Tierney
set out a three-phase innovation plan for education which they feel
requires three things: an idea, its implementation, and the outcome that
results from the execution of the idea and produces a change.
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C. Coombe et al.
Key Areas for the Promotion of Educational

Innovation
Paniagua (2018) has identified three key areas in the promotion of
teaching innovation. The first is the belief that the social and caring
nature of learning is the common principle underpinning innovative
practice. This means that teachers should allocate the time and resources
necessary to allow learners to interact and experiment. The role of the
teacher is at the forefront, as is the stakeholders’ need to regard teachers
as champions in the promotion of more interactive and caring relation-
ships with students.
The second key area put forward by Paniagua (2018) concerns teach-
ers and their practices. It is critical that teachers review their own prac-
tices in order to identify and better align their creative, intuitive and
personal capacities with innovative pedagogies.
Having the necessary scaffolding structures in place to make teachers
integrate, rather than assimilate, new practices into their repertoire of
teaching tools and designs is the third key area.
Yet another area that can be used to promote educational inno-
vation is that of technology. With the emergence of accessible smart-
phone technology, the Internet and low-cost computers and laptops,
there is the possibility of delivering student-centred learning to under-
served individuals and communities in a systematic and innovative way.
Innovation through the use of technology is a key element of innova-
tion in the MENA, most particularly in the Gulf countries.
These four key factors show how important it is to have the requisite
continuous professional development programmes to assist teachers in
fostering the skills needed to be innovative as well as the confidence to
promote innovation in their classrooms.
Innovation in English Language Teaching

Over the years there have been many changes in the way English lan-
guage education is designed and delivered in different parts of the
world. In ELT, innovation can appear as a new teaching methodology,
5
pedagogical theory, methodological approach, teaching or assessment

technique, or learning or instructional tool, and when implemented can
lead to better student learning and engagement.
The MENA Context

The MENA is a vast region spanning from the Atlantic coasts of
Morocco in the west all the way through the Mediterranean ports of
Africa in the Levant into the Red Sea inlets of the Arabian Peninsula
and further into the Gulf region (Or, 2017, p. 1). The three most
populated countries in the MENA region are Egypt (91 million
inhabitants), Algeria (40 million) and Iraq (36 million). Arabic is the
official and majority language of all but three of the MENA countries
(Israel, Iran and Turkey, which are not always classified as part of the
MENA).
Language education policy in the MENA is a complex set of norms,
beliefs and practices deeply rooted in the history of the region. Despite
the appearance of uniformity, however, the MENA region is marked by
economic, religious and linguistic differences (Or, 2017, p. 1). As far
as economic differences are concerned, the oil-producing Gulf countries
like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait are among the
richest countries in the world, while other MENA countries are some
of the poorest with limited resources available for education. While the
majority of the MENA countries are Muslim, different religious, eth-
nic and linguistic minorities contribute to the complexity of the region
(Or, 2017, p. 2). From the linguistic perspective, countless Arabic dia-
lects are spoken in different parts of the region.
Despite these differences, the MENA region has taken great strides
in education. According to the World Bank Group (WBG, 2014), who
have been heavily engaged in education reform for the past decade, the
region has quadrupled the average level of schooling since 1960, halved
illiteracy rates since 1980 and achieved almost complete gender parity
for primary education.
6
C. Coombe et al.
Innovation in English Language Teaching in the

MENA
A great many innovative teaching, learning and assessment practices
have emerged over the last two decades in the MENA. The following
sub-sections describe a small sampling of the many innovations in the
Gulf region and the rest of the MENA.
The Gulf Region
The Arabian Peninsula, and especially the Gulf area, consists of coun-
tries whose economies have relied on oil production for the last
50 years. These countries are Bahrain, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
(KSA), Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the UAE. All are ex-colonies of
the British Empire, except for KSA, and English has therefore played
an important role in their educational systems. These countries have
invested a lot in education and sent many of their citizens abroad to
study at well-known universities in various English-speaking countries.
They have also invested in the domestic development of education,
especially English language education, as English is both a lingua franca
and the language of business. Many expatriate teachers from different
countries have been teaching EFL in the Gulf countries for many years,
as there are a great number of universities that are English medium only
and few of the local population go into tertiary teaching as a career.
Most tertiary-level education in the Gulf is government funded and
free for all nationals of those countries. Education is also predominantly
segregated. Classroom sizes are relatively small and range from 15 to 30
students. Classrooms at university level are highly technological envi-
ronments, with most campuses wireless, and English language teachers
are encouraged to use as much technology in the classroom as possi-
ble. Classrooms are equipped with projectors and/or smartboards and in
many tertiary-level institutions both teachers and students are provided
with laptops or iPads to use in class throughout their education. In an
attempt to further the use of technology in the classroom, universities
are moving away from traditional textbooks to a greater use of e-books,
7
with courses now fully accessed on learning management systems such

as Moodle and Blackboard, among others. The use of educational
technology is prevalent in all the educational vision statements of the
Gulf countries (Bahrain 2030, KSA Vision 2030, Kuwait Vision 2035,
Oman Vision 2040 and UAE 2020), as is the concept of being more
innovative in instruction.
Among the many innovations in ELT in recent years, the most fre-
quently cited are in the areas of technology, assessment and pedagogy.
Alshahrani and Ally’s (2017) co-edited volume on transforming edu-
cation in the Gulf region focuses on emerging learning technologies
and innovations in pedagogy for the twenty-first century, including
mobile-enhanced learning, blended learning, the flipped classroom,
the use of social media in teaching, smart classrooms and MOOCs in
education.
Assessment is another area of innovation in the region. This, we
believe, is largely due to the number of assessment specialists based
in the Gulf. Before its closure in 2017, the TESOL Arabia Testing,
Assessment and Evaluation Special Interest Group (TAE SIG) encour-
aged discussion about innovation in the area of assessment as well as
organizing the annual CTELT conference (Current Trends in English
Language Testing) for 16 years, offering Gulf-based professionals a
venue for sharing their work in the field of assessment. The TAE SIG
also published eight volumes on assessment and assessment-related top-
ics throughout its 21-year tenure (Davidson & Coombe, 2018).
Test development, implementation and benchmarking the perfor-
mance levels of the educational system at various levels is also indicative
of what has been happening on the assessment landscape in the Gulf,
particularly in the UAE. Since 2008, the UAE has participated in many
international tests to examine and benchmark the performance levels of
its education system. These tests include Programme for International
Student Assessment (PISA), Trends in International Mathematics and
Science Study (TIMSS) and Progress in International Reading Literacy
Study (PIRLS). It should be noted that as a result, the UAE received top
ranking in the Arab world in line with its National Agenda which calls
for the country to rank among the top 20 in PISA by 2021 (Raising the
Standard of Education, 2018).
8
C. Coombe et al.
Another area of innovation in the UAE over the last two dec-
ades is tailor-made test development. In the late 1990s the Common
Educational Proficiency Assessment (CEPA) was conceptualized by
members of the three government tertiary-level institutions. The CEPA
was designed as a large-scale, high-stakes English language proficiency/
placement test to be administered in the United Arab Emirates to
Emirati nationals in their final year of secondary education or grade 12.
The purpose of the CEPA was to place students in English classes at
the appropriate government institution. Administration of the CEPA
began in 2002 as a joint venture between the National Admissions and
Placement Office (NAPO) in the Ministry of Higher Education and
Scientific Research and the three federal higher education institutions
(HEIs) in the UAE, namely the Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT),
the United Arab Emirates University (UAEU) and Zayed University
(ZU) (Coombe & Davidson, 2014).
In 2017, the Ministry of Education (MoE) replaced the CEPA with
the national-level Emirates Standardized Test (EmSAT) to measure
students’ knowledge of Arabic, English, maths and science. EmSAT
includes three types of test: 
1. Baseline test: measures skills and knowledge required for grade 1.

2. Advantage test: tracks the development of students in grades 4, 6, 8
and 10 during their general education.
3. Achieve test: measures the knowledge and skills of students in grade
12 as they finish their general education and move on to higher edu-
cation. This test is vital for college admission and placement (Raising
the Standard of Education, 2018).
The MENA Region
The rise of English as a lingua franca all over the world has reached an
unprecedented level in recent decades and remains a topic on the educa-
tional agendas in most MENA countries. Kirkpatrick’s (2017) volume,
English Language Education Policy in the Middle East and North Africa,
offers a vast number of English language policy-related innovations rep-
resenting 15 of the MENA countries.
9
Other great sources of language teaching and learning innova-

tions that are taking place in the MENA can be found in the British
Council’s (2013) publication entitled Perspectives on English in the
Middle East and North Africa, the TESOL Arabia TAE SIG’s Language
Assessment in the Middle East and North Africa: Theory, Practice and
Future Trends (Coombe, Davidson, Gebril, Boraie, & Hidri, 2017),
Motteram’s (2013) Innovation in Learning Technologies for English
Language Teaching and Innovation in English Language Teaching and
Learning: The Turkish Perspective (Simpson, 2014).
From the Kirkpatrick volume (2017) we learn that the English lan-
guage is generally introduced early for students at the primary level, in
grade 1 for most MENA and GCC countries, with the exceptions of
KSA and Turkey’s state schools which introduce English in grade 4 and
grade 2 respectively. A common concern cited by the chapter authors
of the Kirkpatrick volume is the future of their native languages. Some
innovations that have been recommended to mitigate these concerns are
to adopt common language teaching policies across the region as well as
offering technical and scientific courses in English and more traditional
courses in the countries’ native languages.
A very different innovation described by Minkara (2013) is the cen-
trality of English to the lives of many Lebanese people: “not only a
means of communicating and accessing information”, but also a “tool
that people use to elevate themselves to a higher social and economic
status” (p. 93). After a very informative history of ELT in Lebanon,
Minkara provides statistics about the rise of English in Lebanon and
puts forward case studies of five successful English-educated individu-
als who were able to achieve using their linguistic capital, English. The
innovation in this chapter is his overarching view of the ways that indi-
viduals can use their English education as a springboard to acquiring
various skills that led to their ultimate success. The author very suc-
cinctly espouses a belief in the empowerment that learning English has
brought to the participants in his study and directly implies that this is
due to the shift that the English language has made in Lebanon.
A recurrent innovation theme in the MENA is similar to the most
popular one in the Gulf countries, that of technology and its use in ELT
and learning. In most of the volumes cited earlier, many chapter authors
10
C. Coombe et al.
describe innovations that concerned the use of technology in some way

or another. Key chapters in Simpson’s (2014) volume on innovations in
Turkey focus on e-learning and transitioning from pen-and-paper learn-
ing to online alternatives. In the Motteram (2013) volume, the focus of
technology is not on the types of hardware, software or apps used but
on the types of context in which technology is being used. More specif-
ically, the chapter by Slaouti, Onat-Stelma, and Motteram (2013) sit-
uates its discussion in adult language learner settings and draws on the
experiences and beliefs of three classroom practitioners who represent
some of the contexts in which adult language learning takes place. Kern
(2013) examines the role that technological innovations play in the con-
text of English for specific purposes (ESP) and Business English. What
is stressed by the author is the specialist nature of ESP and the teach-
ers’ need to create their own materials that best complement the digital
technologies they would like to integrate into their classrooms.
Assessment has been identified as another key area of innovation in
the MENA. The last publication of the TESOL Arabia TAE SIG was an
edited volume entitled Language Assessment in the Middle East and North
Africa: Theory, Practice and Future Trends (Coombe et al., 2017). Over
the course of 16 chapters, authors from 11 MENA countries tap into a
number of critical issues that span a wide range of assessment topics and
report on a number of innovations occurring across the region.
In This Volume
A glance at the Contents in this volume shows that innovations are
going on in virtually every area of ELT and learning, and in most of the
MENA region.
Chapter 2 by Traxler, Barcena and Read centres around the promise
of autonomous online language learning, undertaken in a non-formal
educational context, as a general solution for all student needs. The
authors argue that the adoption and application of online learning var-
ies from region to region, culture to culture and language to language.
This is particularly true of the Middle East and the refugee commu-
nities that reside there. The issue is arguably more sociocultural than
11
technological: a broader definition of the digital literacy needed to learn

online would need to be both culturally and contextually specific. The
chapter explores the nature of such literacy for this social group and
how it needs to be defined to potentiate their online language learning.
Chapter 3, ‘Plugging the Gap: Supporting Primary School Teachers
to Create Culturally Appropriate English Language Teaching (ELT)
Materials’, reports on an innovative approach with primary school
English language learners in the Sultanate of Oman to the lack of cul-
turally appropriate materials to support the development of shared read-
ing, an important component of effective early-years literacy instruction.
The authors, Rich, Weekes, al Jardani and al Sinani, describe the devel-
opment of a training workshop for senior English teachers, the purpose
of which was to emphasize the importance of promoting shared reading
and to lead to the production of culturally appropriate ‘big books’ (very
large format books) which were needed for shared reading instruction
but were in short supply. Twenty-six of the big books and associated les-
son plans that were developed in the workshop were subsequently made
available online. Drawing upon interview data from workshop par-
ticipants and teachers who had made use of the material, the authors
demonstrate the positive impact of the innovation both in addressing
the need for more big books and in extending interest in promoting
shared reading. The chapter ends with a reflection on the success of the
innovation as well as lessons learned throughout the process.
The fourth chapter, authored by Boraie, El Badry and Habashy,
describes the processes, experience and evaluation of a curriculum inno-
vation that was designed and implemented in the continuing educa-
tion English language programme at the American University in Cairo.
The innovation involved introducing a task-based learning and teach-
ing (TBLT) approach, eliminating textbooks and replacing them with
digital learning materials, and moving away from tests to performance
assessment tools. The evaluation study analyzed the views of instruc-
tors and learners obtained from both quantitative and qualitative data
collected after almost a year of implementing the TBLT approach. The
findings showed that while there are positive attitudes towards TBLT, it
will take time for learners to overcome their preferred language learn-
ing approach of a traditional book-driven curriculum with a focus on
12
C. Coombe et al.
grammar. The results also highlighted the successful components of the

system and strategies used to implement and sustain the innovation.
In Chapter 5, Esseili describes an innovative approach to the teaching
of freshman writing at a private university in Lebanon. Her approach is
an adaptation of Leki’s sequenced writing project where students build
expertise and develop as writers by composing different genre-based
essays on a single topic of their choice. The impetus for this approach
stems from a multifaceted problem that is not unique to this university
or to Lebanon. Many students are not engaged in the readings, they are
unmotivated to write, and many are not proficient enough to write in
their second (or third) language. To combat this problem, a number of
policies were enforced and a mixed-methods research design was used to
evaluate their efficacy. Findings revealed that such policies had negative
effects on the development of students.
The next two chapters originate from the UAE and explore aspects of
a nationwide reading initiative based on the United Nations Building
a Knowledge Society report (2003), which revealed how little reading
is done in the Arab region when compared to developed countries. In
Chapter 6, Gobert and Demirci discuss an extensive reading interven-
tion innovation in the form of a reading competition which encouraged
students at a government tertiary vocational institution to read using
the MReader programme. This innovation was designed to encour-
age Emirati students to read books of their choice at their level. The
MReader is an online cloud-based tracking programme, which is com-
pletely free for all students and educational institutions to use, created
and funded by the Extensive Reading Foundation. Post-intervention
data was collected from 83 of 179 participating students by survey and
focus groups. Six teachers were also interviewed to determine whether
the reading competition succeeded in encouraging students to read.
87% of the respondents agreed or strongly agreed that the competition
motivated them to read. A further 82% felt that vocabulary acquisition
was the skill most enhanced by extensive reading. The authors share
aspects of the competition that worked and those that did not.
The innovation outlined in Chapter 7 by Nunn, Brandt, Hassan and
Bradley took place within the College of Arts and Sciences in an engi-
neering university in Abu Dhabi and was in response to a college-wide
13
perception that students needed to improve their reading ability, in

particular their reading for science. The nature of the multiple skills
involved meant that no single group in the university had all the knowl-
edge needed to innovate successfully. This chapter provides a combi-
nation of different narratives, providing different perspectives from
different areas of college management to address the complex issue the
authors had identified. A holistic or systems-thinking approach con-
sidering different parts of the system in relation to each other from the
perspective of innovation management frame the chapter. The authors
explore and illustrate an inclusive, interdisciplinary view of a commu-
nity of practice engaged in innovation that goes beyond narrow depart-
mental specialization, concluding that innovation is not a limited
intervention by leadership alone. Instead the mutual engagement and
social learning of all involved was found to empower members of the
whole institution to contribute to improvements.
Chapter 8 reports from Israel’s HEIs on reforms to English for
Academic Purposes (EAP) in the form of the innovative CEFR-Aligned
Framework for English in Higher Education. Prior to this grassroots
initiative, developed through the TEMPUS ECOSTAR project, many
EAP programmes adopted an outdated approach that focused solely on
reading comprehension of academic texts. The impetus for this bottom-
up curriculum reform was the disconnect between this narrow focus
on reading comprehension and the need to prepare students to meet
the language, academic and professional demands of the global twen-
ty-first-century market. A comprehensive needs survey conducted
by ECOSTAR clearly indicated the need and demand for a new inte-
grated four-skills approach to EAP. Additional impetus for innovation
came from the current push towards internationalization in HEIs,
which (a) requires English-medium instruction (EMI) skills and (b)
allows for standardization and mutual recognition, nationally and inter-
nationally, to promote mobility. The innovation was met by the sud-
den emergence of a government-sponsored initiative which seriously
undermined the prospects for implementing the curriculum reform
and underscored the subjugation of educational and linguistic needs to
political ones. The proactive response of the innovators turned the tide
in the direction of curriculum reform and at the same time galvanized
14
C. Coombe et al.
the EAP professional community in more ways than one. Authors

Spector-Cohen, Amdur, Barth, Sitman and Weinberg address the inter-
play among linguistic, educational and political considerations that
accompanied the process of developing and implementing the new
framework and suggest practical recommendations for innovators based
on their experience.
Chapter 9 by Littlejohn and Mehta details the evolution of a large,
multi-section university undergraduate writing and academic skills
course in the Department of English at Sultan Qaboos University in
Oman. More specifically, the authors describe the twists and turns of
negotiation and accommodation with students, teaching staff and
administrators, and the adjustments that were made to the course
design to resolve problems and improve the running of what has now
become a relatively ambitious undertaking: the eventual production
by students of a full research paper, including all the typical stages of
question identification, proposal writing, literature survey, instrument
design and data collection, analysis and findings, through to presenta-
tion at a conference.
In Chapter 10, Craig and Bielenberg explore the development of
communicative skills through students’ participation in research expe-
riences. The authors describe a programme of study designed to pro-
mote the acquisition of language skills through a communication course
for engineering students based on the pedagogy of course-based under-
graduate research experiences. The approach adopts a GOAL proto-
col framework (gathering information, organizing a process, analyzing
a phenomenon and learning from their efforts) that offers students an
opportunity to develop communicative competence, thinking, informa-
tion literacy, teamwork and lifelong learning skills. The research process
motivates the learners as they explore topics of personal interest and
leads to demonstrable improvement in their reading, writing and speak-
ing skills as well as information literacy and lifelong learning attributes.
As ‘apprentice researchers’ students receive instruction, guidance and
support while engaging in team-based, real-world research which serves
as a platform for further development and the application of language
and research methods during engineering design courses and in their
future participation in a knowledge-based society.
15
Marandi’s chapter ‘Preparing for a Digital Future: CALL Teacher

Education in Iran’ (Chapter 11) explores the literature on why digital
technologies are increasingly becoming an inseparable part of people’s
lives all over the globe but are still not playing a more serious role in
the education system of many countries. In her review of the liter-
ature she cites many reasons for this apparent neglect: the universally
acknowledged economic strain imposed by investing in modern tech-
nologies, the ineptness of educators in using them, the inflexibility of
school syllabi and cultural conflicts, among others. However, most peo-
ple now acknowledge that whether we like it or not, digital technologies
are here to stay, and we can no longer afford to ignore their potential
in education. The author describes her decade-long efforts to introduce
computer assisted language learning (CALL) in Iran. She recounts the
steps taken, the blunders made, the lessons learned, the challenges and
opportunities she has faced, and the successes and failures that have
shaped this venture. She hopes that sharing her experiences will encour-
age people in similar circumstances and assist them in implementing
their future CALL plans.
In Chapter 12, Abednia and Crookes briefly describe the challeng-
ing innovation that is critical language pedagogy, and review one effort
to diffuse it through a small group of English language teachers in Iran
participating in a volunteer-led online teacher development course
(delivered by the authors). Insights arrived at by reflecting on the course
are presented in terms of aspects of the course itself as well as its poten-
tial to enable the innovation to be adopted by participants through net-
work development.
In the final chapter of this volume, authors Eslami, Hill-Jackson,
Kortes and Asadi describe how globalization has served as the impetus
to improve engineering students’ intercultural communication skills and
cross-cultural competence. They stress the critical need to prepare uni-
versity students for cultural issues and subtle cultural differences that
occur in twenty-first-century workplaces, organizations and commu-
nities. In this telecollaboration project, engineering students (n = 23)
enrolled in a semester-long multicultural education course at a HEI
in Qatar through an online learning management system and engaged
with American pre-service teachers (n = 35) who were simultaneously
16
C. Coombe et al.
enrolled in the same course in the USA. Learning community dyads,

which included students from both institutions, were formed. Students
were prompted to write reflective journals on four current cultural
issues and respond to each other’s reflections. Issues related to cultural
values, race, diversity, gender, pedagogy and intercultural communica-
tion were explored through the joint projects. Qualitative methodology
leveraged thematic analysis to find convergence and divergence of the
students’ voices. The authors also examined how students’ cross-cul-
tural competencies were developed as indicated in their journal entries.
The chapter concludes with lessons learned for implementing a
post-secondary telecollaborative curriculum that fosters intercultural
communication skills and cross-cultural competence among engineering
students in the Middle East.
Conclusion
It is clear not only from the chapters in this book but also from the
literature cited in this chapter that innovation in ELT and learning is
not a new topic. Innovative teaching, learning and assessment practices
are alive and well in the MENA and are happening at virtually all levels
of ELT and learning from primary school to university to adult educa-
tion sectors. The 13 chapters in this volume highlight the diversity of
the innovations and look at possible ways forward for innovation in the
field of TESOL and ELT in the MENA.
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Slaouti, D., Onat-Stelma, Z., & Motteram, G. (2013). Technology and adult
language teaching. In G. Motteram (Ed.), Innovation in learning technologies
for English language teaching (pp. 67–86). London, UK: British Council.
Society of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE). (2018).
Ottawa, CA: STLHE. Retrieved from https://www.stlhe.ca/awards/
d2l-innovation-award/innovation-in-teaching-and-learning/.
Vieluf, S., Kaplan, D., Klieme, E., & Bayer, S. (2012). Teaching practices and
pedagogical innovation: Evidence from TALIS. Paris, France: OECD.
2
Refugees from MENA Learning
Languages: Progress, Principles
and Proposals
John Traxler, Elena Barcena and Timothy Read
Introduction
Languages and the learning of languages are evolving rapidly under
the impact of near-universal mobile, personal and social digital
technologies. This evolution is haphazard and varies from region to
region, culture to culture and language to language. This is true of the
Middle East and of the refugee communities leaving the region for
safety and security in Western Europe.
J. Traxler (*) 
University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, UK
e-mail: john.traxler@wlv.ac.uk
E. Barcena · T. Read 
National Distance Education University, Madrid, Spain
e-mail: mbarcena@flog.uned.es
T. Read
e-mail: tread@lsi.uned.es
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13413-6_2
20
J. Traxler et al.
This chapter makes the case that the successful autonomous

a cquisition in a non-formal educational environment by these refugees
of necessary language skills for living and prospering in Western Europe
is currently problematic and not necessarily amenable to the solutions
proposed for other communities of learners.
Whilst digital technologies have a good record with language learn-
ing, the current pre-occupation and focus on a very specific under-
standing of Language Massive Open Online Courses (LMOOCs) is
not necessarily helpful and risks creating a monoculture or monopoly of
technological and pedagogical formats. Our analysis suggests that, fur-
thermore, digital literacy is an essential prerequisite for any digital learn-
ing, however apparently inappropriate. Digital literacy is both culturally
and contextually specific, and in the countries and organizations of the
Arabic and Muslim Middle East, from which many refugees originate,
any ideas of digital literacy are inadequate, inappropriate and impov-
erished, especially in the face of the global hegemony of Anglophone
pedagogies running on American platforms, systems and technologies
accessed through the institutions of mainstream formal learning.
Consequently, we explore the constraints and characteristics of a
regionally more appropriate digital literacy and point towards the out-
line of flexible and appropriate community LMOOCs that exploit and
combine popular free and open-source software and a set of design prin-
ciples and processes that ensure the necessary empowerment and owner-
ship for meaningful language learning.
An Area of Innovation: Digital Literacy in Online

Learning
Online learning, making use of the large number of open educational
resources, courses and related communities of practice, may appear to
be an attractive option for Middle East and North Africa (MENA)
refugees entering Europe, since their basic educational needs, such
as learning the language of the countries to which they are travelling
(German, English, Dutch, etc.) do appear to be targeted. However, any
2 Refugees from MENA Learning Languages …
21
application of online education to support learning must be appropriate

to the technological and sociocultural characteristics of those who are
taking part, as well as being pedagogically robust.
It is argued here that the most effective way to discuss these charac-
teristics is in terms of the concept of digital literacy, and how it must
be extended to the specifics of the refugees from the MENA region and
the difficulties that people from there have when undertaking learn-
ing online. Two questions arise here: what is digital literacy?; and is it
the same for everyone, independent of race and culture? Regarding the
first question, the literature contains a wealth of research that defines
the concept in one way or another. An information-centric view gives
rise to a definition in terms of the set of cognitive, sociological and
technical skills needed to interact with digital technology in an effec-
tive way in order to undertake tasks and solve problems (Gilster, 1997;
Lenham, 1995). Related concepts such as e-literacy have also been
defined (Martin, 2003, p. 18), mainly in terms of five skills: ICT aware-
ness; confidence in using generic ICT tools; evaluation of information-
handling processes and results; self-reflection on relevant skills being
developed; and adaptability and willingness for new challenges.
Eshet-Alkalai (2004) argues that digital literacy refers to a fundamen-
tal set of survival skills and strategies for the twenty-first century for
most people. Similarly, Newrly and Veugeleus (2009) note that digital
literacy is one of the main competences for current times. The impor-
tance of this concept for the modern age has also been claimed by the
European Commission (2003, p. 3) to be:
The ability to use ICT and the Internet becomes a new form of literacy –
‘digital literacy’. Digital literacy is fast becoming a prerequisite for creativ-
ity, innovation and entrepreneurship and without it citizens can neither
participate fully in society nor acquire the skills and knowledge necessary
to live in the 21st century.
Martin (2005) goes on to refine this definition for digital literacy:
Digital literacy is the awareness, attitude and ability of individuals to

appropriately use digital tools and facilities to identify, access, manage,
22
J. Traxler et al.
integrate, evaluate, analyse, synthesize digital resources, construct new

knowledge, create media expressions and communicate with others in the
context of specific life situations, in order to enable constructive social
action; and to reflect upon this process.
This definition comes from the work undertaken in the DigEuLit pro-
ject (Martin, 2005), which goes beyond purely theoretical consider-
ations and develops a model of digital literacy acquisition in terms of
the set of situations, processes and tools that allow educators to include
elements of it in the curriculum. The framework produced in the
project identifies processes underlying key components, each of which
are mapped to an online tool: a digital competence content reservoir
(the set of digital competence elements recognized by other tools); the
digital literacy provision profile (a map of appropriate digital com-
petences to student exercises); a digital competence needs analysis
(an assessment of student progress); and a digital literacy develop-
ment profile (including a learning log, an e-portfolio and a personal
development plan for each student).
A broader definition of digital literacy is argued by Buckingham
(2010) to refer to an extension of media literacy taken online, in terms
of a four-dimensional conceptual framework that contains the set of
competences that a digitally literate person must have: (1) representa-
tion, as the ability to interpret and evaluate online content, and not just
merely reflect it; (2) language, as an understanding of how it is used
online to convey a given message and what that implies about its crea-
tor; (3) production, as an understanding of who is communicating what
and why (this reflects a broader dimension of the role of advertising and
sponsorship in influencing the information being presented); and (4)
audience, as the position of the person with respect to the community
for whom given information is intended.
The second question posed above, about the nature and independ-
ence of digital literacy for people of different races and cultures will be
answered throughout this chapter. For now, it can be noted that the
authors argue that the skills and strategies that underlie such literacy are
culturally and linguistically specific and Eurocentric. Hence, refugees
and migrants from the MENA area, who are unfamiliar with the digital
23
environments of European higher education, are at a disadvantage when

trying to gain the knowledge and skills that they require to integrate
both professionally and socially (Read & Traxler, 2017).
An Impetus for Innovation: MENA Adoption

of ICT for Education
A general understanding of what level of digital literacy MENA refugees
will have can be obtained by considering how information and commu-
nication technology (henceforth, ICT) was already being used in their
own country before they left. The UNESCO UIS report on education
in five Arab states (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2013, p. 5), after
general remarks about the increasing improvement, capability and avail-
ability of ICT across the region, within the context of vastly different
levels of per-capita income, makes a valuable point:
The social movements that arose in 2011 in the Arab states have demon-
strated the potential of ICT to play a catalytic role. Arguably, the Arab
Spring ranks among the most significant informal ICT-assisted ‘learning’
phenomena in 2011, whereby thousands of youth used social media—
accessed via their mobile phones—as a space for self-identification,
self-assertion, contestation and mobilization around democracy, human
rights and civil liberties.
The phrase ‘Arab Spring’ may now seem increasingly problematic but
the point being made is about the comprehensive nature of digital pen-
etration in Arab societies, and the capacity of digital technologies to cre-
ate and sustain communities in hitherto inconceivable ways. This point
is echoed in accounts of specific uprisings, for example, the Jasmine
Revolution in Tunisia (Wagner, 2011). The Arab Spring is, however,
only one of the most recent manifestations of mobile social technologies
to mobilize [sic] popular political discontent (Aouragh & Alexander,
2011).
Another report by Sabbagh et al. (2012), surveying more than 3000
digital users in nine countries including Lebanon and Jordan, defined
24
J. Traxler et al.
an ‘Arab digital generation’ (henceforth, ADG) as people aged 15–35

who are consistent users of technology. This survey suggested that these
young Arab Internet users in 2012, numbering 10 million, would rise
to 13 million by 2014, a rise of 11% annually, compared to only 7%
for the rest of the world. Whilst the survey defines and represents the
views and preferences of the region’s digital elite, these views are none-
theless significant because they represent a growing segment of potential
employers and employment and because they present a demographic in
the ascendant. In discussing the various social and cultural attributes
and practices around ICT, the ADG report asserts that:
What is particularly striking is that although the ADG is the best edu-
cated and most ambitious generation the region has yet produced, it
rarely uses the Internet for education purposes. This is not for lack of
desire or interest from the ADG’s side. We know that youth in the region
are seeking more technologically enhanced forms of education that will
help them obtain employment and fulfil their goals. Rather, the fault lies
with the education sector, which thus far has not provided the access or
the Arabic digital content that this demographic craves.
The rest of the ADG statistics, findings and observations are broadly in
line with global expectations filtered slightly through local and regional
cultural sensibilities and practices. The survey reports widespread dissat-
isfaction from respondents on education across the region and its cur-
rent use of ICT, noting, for example:
• 29% believe the curriculum and teaching methods are poor.

• 23% believe the quality of teaching staff is below par.
• 29% believe the quality of education infrastructure (such as build-
ings, environment, classrooms and equipment) is poor.
• 40% believe that schools insufficiently prepare people for the job
market.
The survey concludes with the recommendations that legislation and

regulations are required by governments to promote the use of ICT in
education, and that such an approach requires economic investment
25
to improve the general networked infrastructure. Classrooms must be

equipped with modern digitally driven learning tools and software, and
associated high-speed network connections. Furthermore, it is recog-
nized that technology is not enough to guarantee results. Teachers need
to be trained in the fundamental pedagogical skills required to maxi-
mize its usage. These recommendations do not come from education
specialists. They are quoted here to illustrate the somewhat simplistic
expectations of, and pressures and prescriptions on policy makers in the
countries of the MENA region.
The ADG report’s remarks about the nature of teaching are com-
plicated by UNESCO statistics on teacher supply, which observe that
across Arab countries there are ongoing teacher shortages: specifically,
for example, “Palestine will continue to face a teacher shortage until
2023, primarily due to the growing school-age population” (UNESCO
UIS, 2013).
The World Summit on the Information Society 2011 metrics on
education and other related indicators1 provide useful but not wholly
straightforward and possibly quite naïve benchmarks for measuring
and monitoring, namely the need to connect all primary and secondary
schools with ICT and to adapt their curricula to meet the challenges of
the information society, taking into account national circumstances:
• Proportion of schools with a radio used for educational purposes

• Proportion of schools with a television used for educational purposes
• Learner-to-computer ratio
• Proportion of schools with Internet access, by type of access
• Proportion of ICT-qualified teachers in schools
• Proportion of teachers trained to teach subjects using ICT
• Proportion of schools with computer-assisted instruction (CAI)
• Proportion of schools with Internet-assisted instruction (IAI).
1The indicators are presented in four documents available at https://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/
events/geneva11/index.html.
26
J. Traxler et al.
These benchmarks are backward looking and not necessarily meaningful

as personal, mobile and portable devices replace and displace comput-
ers as the global ICTs par excellence, and as digital literacy and global
online resources replace dedicated instructional packages. They do,
however, underline the discrepancy between national policies and digital
literacy. Practical experience gained by the authors of MENA refugees
already in Europe show that they are, to some extent, far ahead of these
levels of ICT adoption, since most (if not all) have already adopted
mobile technology as a way to stay in contact with their families and
obtain information relevant to the circumstances in which they live, if
not as a tool for their educational needs.
Furthermore, it can be argued that mobile technology scaffolds refu-
gees with language problems in their new environments. One example
is language translation. This is rapidly improving, allowing almost real-
time conversations between speakers in their respective different lan-
guages. Whilst we fully acknowledge that language is more than merely
words going backwards and forwards, this increasingly powerful phe-
nomenon does pose a challenge for language learning. Why learn lan-
guages if machines can roughly do the job? What are the communicative
consequences of this phenomenon? While these questions are beyond
the scope of this chapter, it can be appreciated that such a technological
dependence is neither desirable nor well viewed in the majority of socie-
ties for what it subtracts from authentic interpersonal interaction.
Stepping back from the immediate pedagogic challenge for language
learning, the response from a critical digital literacy perspective should
be to equip learners to make informed judgements about the principles,
the context and the practicalities of digital translation—when to use it,
when to trust it and when to chance it.
Context: The Relevance of Digital Literacy for

Language MOOCs
The mobile deployment of open educational resources and practices
can be seen as a real alternative for MENA refugees who cannot attend
standard face-to-face language classes. As the concept of MOOC was
27
established and grew, it became apparent that it did not refer to just one
kind of course, methodologically speaking, but a whole range of them
(e.g., Clark, 2013). The most common distinction is still that between
cMOOCs and xMOOCs, where, as Yuan and Powell (2013) note, the
former are methodologically more flexible and place the emphasis on
connecting participants and collaborative learning, while the latter rep-
resent standard e-learning courses but are made open to include poten-
tially any participant. While most MOOCs are xMOOCs, because they
are easier to develop and reflect current institutional practice (run on
dedicated in-house or commercial e-learning platforms), the distrib-
uted nature of cMOOCs, split across different platforms and online
tools, offers a wider diversity of learning activities and (typically open)
resources that can motivate and support a wider range of educational
purposes. A range of knowledge-related skills are important for success-
ful learning to take place in cMOOCs. Such skills include, as noted by
Yeager, Hurley-Dasgupta, and Bliss (2013), the aggregation or curation
of existing online content and links, remixing them into new formats,
such as notes, reports, blog entries, and so on, repurposing them to
meet new objectives, and sharing or feeding them forward into relevant
peer groups. This process, by its very nature, must be selective, since
cMOOCs typically have large numbers of learning resources and the
course structure is constantly changing.
Language learning is generally accepted to require the development
of four different types of language processes: reception (listening and
reading); production (spoken and written); interaction (spoken and
written); and mediation (translating and interpreting) (Council of
Europe, 2001). In standard face-to-face language classes, with small
groups of students, an experienced teacher can structure a range of
different activities and resources to potentiate learning and the devel-
opment of these competences. This ideally integrates individual and
collaborative strategies, based upon a social-constructivist perspective,
which enables people to potentiate their communicative language skills
as individuals and social members. However, this is not the case for
closed (with restricted access) online courses, where a potentially larger
number of people, distributed geographically, combined with limited
tools and resources, can hinder interaction, learning and, inevitably,
28
J. Traxler et al.
competence development. The open nature of LMOOCs means that

not only will there be many more people participating in a given course
(than in an equivalent closed version), but typically the student pro-
file is more heterogeneous, making interaction and collaboration in
the target language harder to manage. Furthermore, since the majority
of LMOOCs do not have a teaching team to help the participants as
they go along, provide feedback on their work and answer questions
that arise, frustration can be a problem leading to poor performance or
dropout from the course.
Even with these potential problems for language learners, MOOCs
still represent an important tool. Research on LMOOCs undertaken
with an essentially European audience (Martín-Monje & Barcena,
2014) focuses on the way in which courses can be designed and devel-
oped to carefully select tools and resources that facilitate the types of
interactions that will compensate, to some extent, for inherent difficul-
ties present in MOOCs, specifically xMOOCs. As well as providing
students with open access to resources and activities designed to help
them develop second-language competences, the potential of these
courses for language learning comes from the possibilities that they
provide for interaction in the target language. Arguably, having a large
number of second-language speakers participating in discussions and
online conversations provides significant opportunities to practise and
learn. However, for this to happen, control needs to be present to help
students make the most of the experience, and they need to view their
interactions as a natural and normal part of their evolving communica-
tive process.
It is necessary at this point to consider how this generalized discus-
sion of MOOCs applies to the acquisition of language by refugees from
MENA, in the particular context of their other needs and aspirations.
This does, however, raise issues about the tensions between assimi-
lation and integration on one hand, and the preservation of language
and cultural and political identity on the other. People coming from the
MENA community, with different social norms and experiences from
those in conventional Anglophone pedagogy and related Western cul-
tural parameters, might encounter problems which require flexible
and adaptive procedures when possible and additional sociocultural
29
scaffolding. This support needs to be recognized as separate from the

sort that is needed by learners as they participate in new and increas-
ingly more complex didactic activities (Aljaafreh & Lantolf, 1994;
Chapelle, 2001). The authors argue that its nature depends upon the
state of digital literacy of the participants, as well as their former learn-
ing cultures. cMOOCs are arguably superior here for such an audience,
given their open pedagogical nature that more readily adapts to different
digital, learning and sociocultural styles.
Findings: The Importance of Digital Literacy

for Online Language Learning
In order to support MENA refugees in LMOOCs, it is necessary to
build upon what we have already learnt about their digital literacy in
general. We can use the work undertaken on the digital literacy agenda
within UK higher education as a proxy for the wider European context.
Several sources (Beetham, 2010; Belshaw, 2011) review other European
and international initiatives, programmes and endeavours that have run
parallel to the UK discourses on this topic.
Within British higher education, this agenda has over the last five
years been driven and articulated by the e-learning programme within
previously the Joint Information Services Committee (JISC).2 This has
been an ambitious and coherent campaign to engage UK higher edu-
cation, from grassroots teaching staff to university managements, in
discussion, development and publication, in order to formulate a con-
sensus about the kinds of attitudes, skills and capabilities that students
will need to have to get the full benefit of the technology and resources
available to support their learning, both initial and lifelong. Digital lit-
eracy has been defined above. However, a more pragmatic approach to
its definition might identify what we expect of its constituent capabili-
ties, as for example Beetham (2010, p. 1) suggests:
2For example: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/projects/elearningllida.aspx, http://jiscdesignstu-
dio.pbworks.com/w/page/46421608/Developing%20digital%20literacies, http://www.jisc.ac.uk/
whatwedo/programmes/elearning/developingdigitalliteracies/developingdigitalliteraciesprog.aspx.
30
J. Traxler et al.
• they are a prerequisite or foundation for other capabilities;

• they are critical to an individual’s life chances;
• they are essential to the making and sharing of culturally significant
meanings; and
• as a result, there is or should be a society-wide entitlement to these
capabilities at some level.
The programme has also documented the differing ways in which

higher education institutions have defined and supported the acquisi-
tion of these skills and capabilities within their own mission and demo-
graphics, and has sponsored projects to promote further development
and dissemination.
An analysis of the results of the programme leads to four observa-
tions that are relevant here. First, the skills and capabilities related to
the use, exploitation and potential of popular mobile devices are obvi-
ously only a subset of this larger agenda. It is, however, recognized that
they represent an increasingly significant part of a diverse and changea-
ble ecology of the various digital technologies that might support learn-
ing, but importantly a part where the loci of control and confidence has
shifted away from lecturers within the temporal and spatial bounds of
their institutions and towards their students, often outside the scope of
the institutions. This shift means that supporting an institutional and
formal digital literacy agenda will transform the roles and responsibili-
ties of teachers and lecturers, expanding them from just being authori-
tative subject experts facilitating transmissive and discursive learning to
being included in future learning processes. The capacity of these tech-
nologies inside the broader Web 2.0 ideology means that digital literacy
embraces the ends as well as the means of learning—the what as well as
the how.
Second, the larger agenda represents an attempt to formulate a
portfolio of comprehensive and generic attributes that might charac-
terize graduates leaving colleges and universities in the coming years.
The discussions within this emergent European digital literacy com-
munity have resonated with other older discussions across the higher
education sector about the nature of so-called graduate attributes or
even ‘graduate-ness’, as part of an attempt to pin down the broad but
31
defining features of the European university experience and the nature

of its added value. All of these various discussions have managed to
define quite succinctly those attributes that relate to employment and
employability, but have struggled to be quite so precise about those
other attributes that could characterize the digitally literate graduate in
varied social, civic, cultural, political and community settings.
Third, digital literacy discussions have also been informed and influ-
enced by earlier discussions about digital safety and digital rights. The
implication is that being digitally literate implies making ethically
informed choices and decisions about digital behaviour, for example,
about digital property, digital identity and digital privacy. Digital liter-
acy discussions have been further skewed or confused by the exact role
and significance of basic ICT skills. These are clearly important attrib-
utes but because of their concrete and utilitarian nature, they are easy
to define, perhaps at the expense of attributes that are more abstract,
more fluid or more contentious. Other attributes can be grouped under
the headings attributes and practices, and depend on access, creating a
hierarchy of abstraction or dependencies (Beetham & Sharpe, 2011),
such as: attributes (‘I am…’), practices (‘I do….’), skills (‘I can …’) and
access (‘I have…’).
Fourth and finally, digital literacy discussions have also, however
inappropriately, drawn on the terminology and literature of digital
natives and digital immigrants (Prensky, 2001), implying that digital
literacy may be a generational attribute. A rather more evidence-based
classification, in fact a spectrum, runs between digital visitors and digi-
tal residents (White & Le Cornu, 2011), attempting to use digital hab-
its and attitudes as a way of understanding the extent to which digital
technologies can underpin education and training. Whilst these cate-
gories might be loosely generational, they are also a function of local
infrastructure, local culture and local history. We should add that much
of this digital literacy debate has focused on the idea of digital iden-
tity (and, consequently, on digital community and digital culture).
These notions apply differently in the cultures of the Middle East, spe-
cifically in relation to Islamic and Arab ideas about proprietary and
decorum. For example, the capacity of digital technology to preserve
the Palestinian culture amongst beleaguered and dispersed physical
32
J. Traxler et al.
communities (cf. Al-Amleh, 2014; Alkailani, Azzam, & Athamneh,

2012; Hamdoun Al-Soufi, 2005; Mustafa, 2011; Traxler, 2018) or the
consensus depicting Arab culture as more hierarchic, static and conserv-
ative, more risk averse and collectivist than many Western European
societies.
Implications: Digital Literacy for Online

Language Learning
The present authors argue that a community MOOC approach to lan-
guage learning offers the most flexible, empowering and culturally sen-
sitive response to the needs of refugees from MENA based on the most
comprehensive and cautious understanding of their digital literacy,
and that furthermore this approach facilitates an evolving and increas-
ingly precise understanding of their digital literacy (Read, Sedano, &
Barcena, 2018).
Attitudes to digital literacy framed in the way we are describing,
including criticality, originality, creativity and expression, derived from
Western values of individual self-expression, clearly confront attitudes
to criticality, originality, creativity and expression that pervade MENA
culture and its institutions. A recent article in Times Higher Education
(THE, 2015) reported on other aspects of this, in the universities and in
intellectual life:
Muslims need to steer a path between two opposing dangers when it

comes to higher education and science. One is the ‘lame duck’ mental-
ity, which frames answers to questions only in terms of ‘catching up’ with
Western models of knowledge production, professionalism, quality assur-
ance, critical thinking, research, liberal arts, and so on. The opposite trap
is the ‘cosy corner’ mentality, which prefers to occupy a parochial corner
in which everything which is not explicitly ‘Islamicised’ is seen as threat-
ening or deviant.
A specifically MENA digital literacy curriculum, acting as the prerequi-

site for effective digital language learning, must recognize the concrete
33
specifics of the learner’s environment; a visiting British academic work-

ing at Birzeit observed of students (THE, 2015):
Those who failed to do their course reading were usually not apathetic,
but had had their lives profoundly disrupted by checkpoints, arrests in
the family, demonstrations dispersed by tear gas or even the violent deaths
of friends.
Other research (Buckner & Kim, 2012) identifies similar stresses and
their educational impact but sees gaming as a means of improving the
‘executive functions’ that are undermined by the environmental stress.
This implies that one element of a ‘MENA concept’ of digital liter-
acy might be the contribution of digital technology to psychological
well-being.3 Within this concept, it has been argued above that there are
many design and infrastructural decisions to be made by both authori-
ties and practitioners, such as the typology of LMOOCs and the sup-
port channels provided to reflect the participants’ cultural diversity. The
networked nature of cMOOCs, furthermore, offers an open commu-
nity where social divergence can be integrated to the benefit of all.
If the case of the Palestinians is considered as an illustrative exam-
ple, a study by Aouragh (2008) offers an insight into the increasing
role of the Internet for them in the diaspora, examining the effects of
these practices within the context of occupation and exile. Online polit-
ical activism fills an important gap for what is absent offline. Through
multi-sited fieldwork (Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan), this research demon-
strated how the Internet gave birth to a Palestine in cyberspace and has
altered the traditional tactics of activists. Online communication has
strengthened social and political agency. It clearly evoked a new type of
media activism and gave permission to narrate: an important develop-
ment considering the stereotyped portrayals in which Palestinians are
trapped as either terrorists or victims.
3There is, however, a body of literature that treats ICT as globally standardized, apolitical and cul-
turally neutral (e.g., Crompton, 2014).
34
J. Traxler et al.
In the course of developing the UNRWA ICT strategy, there were

a range of consultations and workshops, many attended by teachers
and advisers from across the five fields and intended to collaboratively
develop a strategy built on a shared understanding of basic contextual
factors. At an early stage of a two-day workshop organized by the first
author for UNRWA in Amman in December 2013, the 50 or so par-
ticipants working in groups of five addressed questions like: ‘What is
Palestinian digital culture?’, ‘What is digital identity for Palestinians?’
and ‘What is the digital world that Palestinians inhabit?’ A complex
and emotional plenary discussion followed with questions from partic-
ipants that ranged from ‘Did digital media represent an arena to con-
solidate, preserve, disseminate and promote Palestinian identities and
culture?’ to ‘Was the idea of a Palestinian digital culture and identity
merely a second-rate substitute and palliative for a physical culture and
identity (in the absence of a real Palestinian state)?’ This represents only
one dimension of the complex relationship Palestinians have with the
Internet; others have formed part of the ‘cyber intifada’ (Aouragh, 2003,
p. 43): “It cannot be overstated how important the social impact of the
Internet is when physical contact is impossible.”
In terms of a regional, Arab and Muslim culture, efforts to develop
and enhance ideas and practices around digital literacy and digital cul-
ture confront traditional or perhaps conservative views of behaviour, eti-
quette and decorum, for example, in relation to images of women and
girls, though there is a considerable breadth of attitudes visible as one
traverses from Saudi Arabia to the West Bank. If, as noted above, lan-
guage learning is more than just the interchange of words, for effective
learning to take place in LMOOCs, the authors argue that the nature of
digital literacy must be taken into consideration when structuring the
course and providing support mechanisms. Hence, MENA refugees and
other (typically) European students can interact as equals, while respect-
ing sociocultural differences. Such interaction arguably potentiates the
communicative and collaborative mechanisms present in these courses
to facilitate the development of the necessary target language compe-
tences. LMOOCs, and more specifically cLMOOCs that explicitly
target MENA refugees, follow these indications and explore the ideas
presented in this chapter, are currently being developed by the authors
35
(Read et al., 2018). These have been rolled out since mid-2018 and the
results will be published as and when they are available.
Discussion Questions
1. Imagine that you work somewhere in Europe and are designing an
LMOOC for refugees from the MENA regions. What assumptions
can you make about them, their educational and linguistic abilities
and experiences, and their digital competence and the technology
they will have available to connect to the course?
2. How would you work with the differing experiences and expectations
of learning and education amongst such a diverse group of refugees?
3. What kinds of patterns of engagement and attention do you think
that the refugees would have and how would you reflect them in the
design of your LMOOC?
4. You are tasked with supporting refugees using an existing MOOC
targeted at refugees wanting access to European higher education.
How would you support them? What are the biggest barriers to their
success and progression?
5. How in practice would you assess the digital literacy of refugees that
you were supporting? What difference would it make to the support
you give?
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3
Plugging the Gap: Supporting Primary
School Teachers to Create Culturally
Appropriate English Language
Teaching (ELT) Materials
Sarah Rich, Samantha Weekes, Maryam al Jardani
and Salima al Sinani
Introduction
The purpose of this chapter is to describe our innovation to address
an identified shortfall in the provision of resources for the teaching of
literacy in English classes for primary school children in the Sultanate
of Oman. This shortfall was the lack of culturally appropriate read-
ing materials, the content of which would reflect children’s immediate
lived local cultural realities outside the classroom. The specific focus
S. Rich (*) 
University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
e-mail: s.a.l.rich@exeter.ac.uk
S. Weekes · M. al Jardani · S. al Sinani 
Ministry of Education, Muscat, Oman
M. al Jardani
e-mail: maryam-aljardani@moe.om
S. al Sinani
e-mail: salima.alsinani@moe.om
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13413-6_3
40
S. Rich et al.
of our innovation was the development of a workshop, delivered to

senior English teachers in all 11 governorates in Oman, which aimed to
emphasize the importance of shared reading and which resulted in the
creation of ‘big books’ (i.e., large-sized versions of children’s literature
for whole-class instructional purposes) and accompanying lessons plans
to be used in shared reading instruction. Shared reading is an impor-
tant component of an early-grade reading programme. This is because
it introduces and familiarizes children with the reading process and
highlights the key features of text. It also helps children develop higher-
order comprehension skills, such as drawing upon children’s knowledge
schema, prediction and inferring meaning of text from illustrations.
Shared reading therefore provides an important scaffold for independ-
ent reading in later grades. In the shared reading lesson, the teacher
provides a whole-class interactive reading experience through the use of
big books. Typically, children sit in a semi-circle around the teacher and
explore the big book over three or four lessons (Ezell & Justice, 2005).
Given the shortage of big books and their centrality for effective
shared reading instruction, it was important that we identified ways to
distribute the books which were produced in the workshop to teachers
spread across a very large geographical area. To address this challenge,
once the big books and instructional material had been produced and
edited, they were uploaded to an online platform to ensure they were
available for download by primary English teachers across the length
and breadth of Oman. This innovative approach, conceived and imple-
mented at a national level, represented a close collaboration between the
departments of English teacher training and English curriculum in the
Ministry of Education.
As we shall see, the issue of what constitutes an appropriate model
of culture in TESOL materials has attracted a great deal of attention in
the MENA region and the prevailing view regarding the importance of
ensuring local cultural representation in instructional materials is well
documented (e.g., Adaskou, Britten, & Fahsi, 1990; Al Fahadi, 2012;
Hyde, 1994). Yet, there is little written about the concrete steps that
can be taken to generate and disseminate locally produced teaching
resources. We therefore hope that this account of how we sought to
develop literacy materials with teachers will provide some useful food
3 Plugging the Gap: Supporting Primary School Teachers …
41
for thought for educators across the MENA region who are interested
in undertaking similar initiatives to ours or in helping teachers develop
culturally appropriate materials for other areas of TESOL provision,
whether in the region or beyond.
Impetus for the Innovation

The impetus for the innovation we report on in this chapter was two-
fold. It reflected, first, a response to a shortage of suitable material for
teaching shared reading to young learners in our own working context
and, second, a desire to address concerns about the cultural appropriacy
of those materials that were available.
The shortage of material for promoting literacy with young English
language learners in our own working context can be seen as part of a
broader problem regarding the location of suitable material for teach-
ing English to young learners (TEYL) in general. The reasons for these
shortages are closely linked to the relatively recent emergence of TEYL
as a discrete area of practice within the field of TESOL (Rich, 2014).
In the past two decades, TEYL has witnessed rapid and exponential
growth as one of the responses of governments addressing the pressing
need for a workforce proficient in English, which for a variety of his-
torical and economic reasons has become a key lingua franca in an era
of increasing globalization. However, the decision to lower the age of
instruction in many contexts has taken place without sufficient atten-
tion to the time needed to prepare for this, including the provision of
suitable material (Copland, Garton, & Burns, 2014).
The shortage of appropriate materials to promote literacy with young
learners is particularly acute. This is because until recently, there has been
very limited awareness and understanding of the ways in which reading
and writing need to be promoted and developed in TEYL. This means
that in both the growing number of global TEYL course books, as well
as in those that are produced locally, as Al Majthoob (2014, p. 57)
notes, “a systematic approach to teaching reading and writing is typically
missing”.
42
S. Rich et al.
One obvious solution to the problem is for countries to set about

developing their own TEYL literacy materials and there is evidence of
growing recognition of the need to do this. In Bahrain, for example,
Al Majthoob (2014) describes efforts being made to adapt a global
textbook to include more appropriate literacy material. However, with
one or two notable exceptions (see, for example, Prastiwi, 2013, writ-
ing about Indonesia) to the best of our knowledge, the local production
of supplementary reading materials (such as big books) to complement
TEYL course books is rare. Given the growing awareness of the impor-
tance of resources for literacy development in TEYL, it is anticipated
that this situation will change over time. However, in the short term for
educators and educational policymakers alike, where finances allow, the
most common option is to purchase ready-made materials. Since ones
specifically targeted at TEYL are virtually non-existent (Claridge, 2012),
purchasing materials from English-speaking countries such as the USA
and UK targeted at developing literacy with children who speak English
as a first language is often the only realistic way to address this problem.
Nevertheless, while under current conditions the decision to employ
materials produced for first-language literacy development is under-
standable, it is also far from an ideal solution. This is because, first, as
Arnold and Rixon (2014) note, one of the challenges is that stories that
are at the right linguistic level for school-age children at the beginner
stage of learning English as a foreign language will often target pre-
school children in English-speaking countries, meaning that storylines
are often at too low a cognitive level. In contrast, those that match
children’s cognitive maturity are often too linguistically demanding for
learners.
Arnold and Rixon (2014) also point out that the cultural load of
many storylines in imported reading material means that these are both
puzzling and unfamiliar to young learners. In areas such as the MENA
region, where English is taught as a foreign language, older learners who
have a clearer understanding of the potential value of English to their
studies or work opportunities may be more tolerant of culturally ambig-
uous content, but typically young learners will not bring a clearly formed
external motivation for learning English to the classroom and will be
less able to appreciate unfamiliar cultural content. This may impact on
43
their interest and enjoyment of English and militate against the devel-
opment of positive attitudes to English learning that are seen as impor-
tant outcomes for TEYL (Rich, 2014). As Tomlinson (2015, p. 267)
argues, in order for English lessons to be meaningful to children learn-
ing English in the early stages of schooling, it is important that mate-
rials “help promote connections with the immediate world outside of
school where children live”. Our own beliefs echo these views and were
central to our decision to find a way to generate locally produced big
books better suited to the needs and experiences of young learners in the
MENA region.
Our decision was also informed by an emerging body of research
literature on the significant impact of knowledge schema on the pro-
cess of successful reading (see, for example, Liu, 2015; Shirzad, 2015;
Yousef, Karimi, & Janfeshan, 2014). Research consistently demonstrates
the marked difference in reading scores when texts present familiar cul-
tural practices and norms compared to when these present very differ-
ent cultural norms and values. While this does not necessarily mean
that reading materials which seek to introduce new knowledge and
ideas exposing learners to different cultural values and norms are with-
out value, it does suggest that the cultural load of instructional literacy
materials aiming to provide targeted practice in discrete reading skills
and strategies should generally be low. We argue that this is particularly
important for younger children.
We are also mindful of the tensions that the global spread of
English creates for national and regional identity in many parts of the
world (Tsui, 2007). In the MENA region in particular, the increas-
ing promotion of English at all stages of education is often seen as
posing a threat to Arabic and as a vehicle for the spread of very dif-
ferent cultural norms and values from those that are seen as central to
Arab identity (Badry, 2011). In the Gulf states (of which the Sultanate
of Oman is one), the large influx of expatriate workers and the use
of English as a common means of communication adds to a feeling
of “cultural fragility” (Hopkyns, 2014, p. 2) and the need to pre-
serve cultural heritage is keenly felt. With respect to primary school-
ing in particular, the use of local cultural content is seen as important
in ensuring that the acquisition of English is not achieved at the
44
S. Rich et al.
expense of children developing regional and national identities and an

appreciation of their cultural heritage (Hopkyns, 2014). Our emphasis
on generating locally produced literacy resources also bore this impor-
tant point in mind.
The Context
As highlighted above, the innovation we developed was undertaken
with primary school teachers in the Sultanate of Oman. As elsewhere
in the MENA region and beyond, the government of the Sultanate of
Oman attaches great importance to the learning of English, and English
has formed part of the basic education provision since the 1970s when
it was introduced from grade 4 of primary schooling. In line with a
reform to the basic education system, in 1998 the government lowered
the starting age of instruction from grade 4 to grade 1, making Oman
one of the first countries in the MENA region to introduce English
from the very start of schooling.
Oman is firmly committed to developing a robust primary English
literacy strategy for the early years, and in line with the emerging appre-
ciation of the importance of shared reading lessons in the early years,
in 2006 this was introduced for grades 1–2 to complement the exist-
ing phonics and whole-word-recognition approach to teaching literacy.
To support shared reading, a set of 15 big books were purchased from
the UK and together with shared reading lesson plans, these were dis-
tributed to all primary schools across the country. However, despite the
promising start to introducing shared reading, the results of a recent
fact-finding mission into literacy teaching in the early grades in pri-
mary schools in Oman has shown that the practice of shared reading
has declined.
One of the reasons for this decline is that many newly recruited
teachers were found to be in need of training in how to conduct shared
reading lessons. However, it was also found that in many schools the
original materials have been lost or damaged, with many schools hav-
ing only two or three of the original books purchased. In addition, it
45
was noted that the cultural content as well as the linguistic demands
of much of the original material that had been purchased were unsuit-
able. Recently, the Ministry of Education has placed renewed empha-
sis on shared reading which requires teachers to undertake three shared
reading lessons per unit of their course book during grades 1 and 2.
However, it has become clear that without attention to further train-
ing and the provision of sufficient amounts of shared reading material at
an appropriate linguistic and cultural level, it is difficult for teachers to
meet the target set.
The Design of the Innovation

To address the challenges outlined above, we reasoned that primary
English teachers, many of whom are also parents of young children,
would be well placed to identify and develop stories that would be cul-
turally appropriate to primary school-age children in Oman. However,
we were also aware that they would need support and guidance. As a
number of writers have observed (e.g., Harwood, 2010; Samuda, 2005),
materials development utilizes a number of skills that teachers do not
typically have unless they have received explicit relevant training, which
is rare in most pre-service training programmes, including in Oman.
We therefore decided it was important to develop these materials within
a four-day workshop which would highlight the importance of shared
reading, help teachers develop an awareness of a quality shared read-
ing process and also provide time for them to produce big books and
lesson plans. We also decided to target senior English teachers who act
as heads of the English teaching departments in their schools. We felt
that as experienced teachers they would find a workshop on the devel-
opment of big books professionally rewarding. We also felt they could
cascade information about the importance of shared reading and ways
of conducting it to new teachers in their schools as well as to others who
would benefit from refamiliarization with shared reading principles and
practices.
46
S. Rich et al.
Preparing for the Workshop
Before the workshops were delivered we developed a clear set of crite-

ria and guidelines to ensure that the stories teachers produced would
include important features of big books such as following book con-
ventions (title, cover, author, page numbers), repeating basic sentence
or question/answer patterns, providing opportunities for children to
make predictions and join in with the story, focusing on age-appropri-
ate themes that relate to children’s lives, including artwork that supports
comprehension and facilitates discussion, and ensuring that stories are
linguistically and cognitively appropriate. In order to provide this guid-
ance, the following documents were produced:
• Grade 1 and grade 2 word lists were produced based on vocabu-

lary students encounter in their coursebook and the locally adapted
phonics programme. They were also cross-referenced against the 100
most frequently used words developed from the British National
Corpus of English words (Leech, Rayson, & Wilson, 2001). There
were 300 words in the grade 1 word list and 600 in the grade 2 word
list. Criteria regarding vocabulary selection were also provided. For
grade 1 stories, teachers could use up to 40 words from the word list
and up to eight additional words not included in the word list. For
grade 2 stories, this was increased to 60 words from the wordlist with
an additional 12 words.
• Structure lists of suitable grade 1 and grade 2 grammatical structures
were also provided. These structure lists corresponded to language
students encounter in their coursebooks.
• Two sample big book stories, ‘The Dirty Dishdasha’ and ‘Stop, Look
and Listen’ were written and illustrated for the workshop to provide
models for analysis tasks and demonstration lessons.
• A checklist with criteria for assessing shared reading books was also
developed. It focused on three key areas: story features, language fea-
tures and design features. During the workshop it was used to pro-
vide a systematic method of analyzing the sample shared reading
stories. It also provided a set of criteria to guide participants during
47
the writing process and a means to evaluate their colleagues’ stories

during micro-teaching and peer feedback sessions. It was also used by
the Curriculum Department to guide the selection of stories for the
shared reading programme. A copy of the checklist can be found in
the appendix at the end of this chapter.
Organization of the Workshop
To prepare the participants to write their materials, the workshop

explored several areas including the role of shared reading in literacy
development, procedures for teaching shared reading, analysis and eval-
uation of the sample big books, and important design and illustration
considerations. On days 1 and 2, the participants used the checklist,
word and structure lists to analyse the storyline, the language and the
design features of the two sample big book stories. Each day, demon-
stration lessons using ‘The Dirty Dishdasha’ were delivered by trainers
to support participants in understanding shared reading lesson steps
and procedures. The first day also included a session on simple methods
of creating illustration such as line drawings and collage, as well as a
ten-minute challenge in which participants had to illustrate the caption
‘A boy and a camel in the desert’.
On Day 2, participants started planning and writing their stories,
which they spent most of Day 3 writing and illustrating. They worked
in groups of four and each group produced a big book story, three les-
son plans and mock-ups of additional resources such as flashcards and
worksheets. The big books were created on A3 paper and were fully
illustrated by the participants, using methods from Day 1. At the start
of Day 4, the participants undertook micro-teaching sessions to try out
their big books and gave each other feedback using the checklist crite-
ria. Following this, participants made amendments to their stories based
on their feedback. At the end of the workshops, the materials were col-
lected and sent to the Curriculum Department. A total of 60 stories
were submitted.
48
S. Rich et al.
Evaluating the Materials
Members of the Curriculum Department evaluated the stories using the

checklist criteria. Through this process, 26 stories were identified as suc-
cessfully fulfilling the criteria and were selected for the shared reading
programme. Overall, the quality of these stories and their accompany-
ing artwork exceeded expectations. This highlights teachers’ creativity
and potential as material writers. There were two main reasons that sto-
ries were not selected for the programme. Some stories did not have suf-
ficient plotlines, i.e., they tended to be a description of an event or they
focused too much on teaching a specific language point at the expense
of the story. Other stories were well written but not well illustrated, and
unfortunately the artwork was not good enough to facilitate discussion
or support comprehension.
While it was disappointing that not all the big books successfully ful-
filled the criteria, it is important to remember that for many of the par-
ticipants this was their first attempt at writing these kinds of stories and
they had a fairly short time frame in which to produce their materials.
It also points to areas for improvement in the workshop such as addi-
tional sessions about story writing or more guidance during the writing
process. Despite not being selected for the shared reading programme,
many of the materials still had value as teaching resources because the
language they practised corresponded to themes and vocabulary in the
coursebook. It was therefore decided that they would still be made avail-
able to teachers as additional teaching resources.
Editing the Materials
The Curriculum Department worked to edit and digitize the stories,

and develop the lesson plans and additional teaching resources. In
some cases, the editing process only involved correcting minor spell-
ing, punctuation or grammatical errors. In other cases, slightly larger
amendments related to the flow and cohesion of stories, or the con-
sistency of vocabulary or structures, were necessary. The flow of stories
was easily remedied by adding linking words and phrases, or additional
49
details to make plotlines more transparent. Inconsistency in vocabulary

or structures usually occurred when participants had chosen a repetitive
structure or pattern but had written it slightly differently, or opportu-
nities for repetition had been missed. During the editing stage, teachers
were contacted to liaise on any changes. However, this was time inten-
sive and the response rate was fairly low.
Next, the stories were digitized. Illustrations were scanned using
a colour photocopier (an A3 scanner could also be used). Text, which
had previously been handwritten, was added in typed format. Many of
the lesson plans written by teachers were fairly brief and did not always
include sufficient explanation (from the feedback we learnt participants
felt they did not have enough time to write their lesson plans because
they were focusing on completing their big books). Lesson plans were
therefore expanded to include more detail and edited for format consist-
ency. Word cards, picture cards and worksheets were also produced for
each big book.
Distributing the Materials
The finished stories were uploaded in PDF format to an online drive

that teachers could access via a shared link. A shared reading guide,
which included information on teaching shared reading, the new
resources and a suggested scheme of work, was also produced. In the
guide, we recommended two options for using the books in lessons.
One option was to print the books and enlarge them to A3 size on a
photocopier. The other option was to display them using a smart board
or projector. Printing the books was the preferable option as a printed
version could be used more like a real book. However, the decision to
include an alternative option was taken because we were aware that
many teachers might not be able to print the books due to the cost and
time implications. Although the digital option is not ideal, our aim
was to ‘plug the gap’ and making the books available in this way was a
means to do this until a more permanent solution became possible.
50
S. Rich et al.
Findings
In order to assess the success of the innovation and identify areas for
improvement, 14 teachers who participated in the workshops were
interviewed to gather feedback about the perceived advantages of teach-
ers creating shared reading materials, the most enjoyable parts of the
workshop, what they learnt, what student needs they considered when
designing the materials, how the workshop influenced their teach-
ing and suggestions to improve the workshop. Once the new materi-
als were available to use, we asked six teachers who did not participate
in the workshop to provide feedback on their experiences of using the
materials. The main findings are discussed below.
Participants’ Experience of the Workshop
Participants responded very positively to the workshop and reported

that they found it enjoyable and informative. They enjoyed “sharing
their ideas and having the opportunity to work creatively” and “loved
working in a team of diverse talents”. There was a strong a sense of
achievement and ownership amongst the teachers regarding the materi-
als they produced. Producing an actual ‘product’ was also seen as a posi-
tive aspect, with both teachers and trainers commenting that this helped
put learning into practice in an authentic way.
When we planned the workshop, we felt that providing clear guid-
ance in the form of word lists, structure lists and criteria would be
important to ensure that the intended pedagogic and linguistic goals
of the stories were realized. The usefulness of these documents was ech-
oed in the participants’ feedback, with one participant commenting:
“I like that the schemes were given to us – I mean everything was clear
and easy to follow.” Although the guidance was quite structured, the
feedback suggests that there was still enough “freedom to choose the
topic, learning goals, key words and the content” to allow teachers to be
creative with their stories.
Teachers creating their own shared reading materials was perceived as
advantageous by all participants. They felt that teachers are best placed
51
to ensure materials match their students’ level, interests and needs

because “teachers know better than others what their students really
need” and they are “the ones who know students’ favourite interests
and topics”. While we agree that the participants had a solid under-
standing of their students’ level, interests and needs, the need to edit
and amend the stories indicates that they were not completely successful
in translating this into their materials. However, we would argue that
this is due more to a lack of experience in materials writing than to a
lack of understanding of their students, and the need to edit the mate-
rials before wide-scale distribution was anticipated during the planning
stage.
Another significant advantage of teachers writing shared reading
materials, mentioned by almost every participant, was “the opportunity
to produce culturally appropriate materials that incorporated places,
characters and ideas from an Omani context”. This was encouraging as
it was a key aim of the innovation. Many of the big books successfully
integrated fairly universal themes with Omani contexts. For example,
a story entitled ‘My Blue Cap’ was about a boy named Ahmed who
lost his favourite blue kummar (Omani cap) which he always wore to
the mosque. In the story, it is a Friday and Ahmed’s father is calling
him to go to the mosque to pray but Ahmed refuses to go without his
cap. His father keeps telling him to hurry up, and his mother offers
him different coloured caps but Ahmed insists on finding his favour-
ite cap. The relationship between Ahmed and his parents represents a
fairly universal theme, especially in stories for young children, whereas
the lost cap and going to the mosque reflect Omani culture. This story
also closely followed the word and structure lists we provided, and was
told using repetitive sentence structures and question/answer patterns.
Consequently, we felt that the teachers who wrote it successfully under-
stood and achieved the literacy purposes of a big book, whilst at the
same time creating materials that were culturally appropriate. This was
true of all the books selected for the shared reading programme.
In addition to ensuring that materials were culturally appropriate, it
was considered beneficial to integrate a moral dimension into the sto-
ries. Participants said that they “thought about moral lessons because
this is very important for children”. Common moral themes included
52
S. Rich et al.
listening to your parents, thanking Allah, being kind and helping

others. While moral guidance may be seen as a separate issue to cultural
appropriateness, Islamic values are an integral part of Oman’s national
identity. Their inclusion in the stories might reflect the desire, discussed
earlier in the chapter, to ensure that English acquisition is not achieved
at the expense of national identity. Cultivating Islamic values is also a
key outcome of the Omani curriculum, which might be another reason
why teachers felt it was important to include them in their stories.
In relation to the learning outcomes of the workshop, participants all
reported that they had learnt a lot about writing materials. In particular,
they felt that they had acquired a greater understanding of the key fea-
tures of big books for shared reading and how to select suitable vocabu-
lary and appropriate grammatical structures. Design-related issues, such
as the importance of illustrations, page layouts and illustration-to-text
ratios, were also highlighted as areas of learning for many participants.
In addition to developing their materials writing skills, some partici-
pants also mentioned gaining a better understanding of teaching literacy
skills in areas such as “how to help students become fluent readers” and
“strategies for teaching shared reading”.
In terms of the wider impact of the workshop, participants reported
that it had a positive influence on the way they teach shared reading. In
particular, they felt they were able to teach shared reading more effec-
tively and were able to tell stories in a more interesting and engaging
way. As one participant commented, “I am more experienced, especially
in relation to achieving the learning objectives of shared reading. I know
more about the lesson steps and adapting materials to help students
understand the meaning of and main ideas in a story.” In addition, par-
ticipants said that the workshop helped them focus more on student
needs and develop a greater understanding of how to support students
in comprehending stories and participating in the reading of stories.
In one case, the workshop had completely changed a participant’s per-
ception of shared reading: “I didn’t care about shared reading because I
thought it was useless and unimportant. But in the workshop I learned
how it important it is for students.” This feedback suggests that in addi-
tion to gaining knowledge about materials writing, teachers acquired
53
a better understanding of the role of big books in supporting literacy

development.
While most of the feedback was positive, there was one area in
which participants felt the workshop could be improved, and this was
its length. Participants felt they needed more time to produce their big
books and to make amendments based on peer feedback. In hindsight,
adding an extra day to the workshop was probably necessary.
Teachers’ Experiences of Using the New Materials
The new materials were made available to teachers nationwide at the

start of the following school year. Initial feedback has been very encour-
aging, with teachers reporting that they enjoy teaching the stories and
that students have responded well to them. They also reported that the
lesson plans “made it crystal clear how to teach the stories easily and
effectively”. Cultural themes in the stories were also perceived as a posi-
tive feature. One teacher commented that “it was great to see the smiles
on students’ faces as they came across a scene in the story that reflected
their daily life”. Another teacher said that “since the stories reflect
Omani culture, my students found the lesson fun, exciting and stimu-
lating”. While the opposite could also be true, it is possible that teachers
perceive stories that reflect Omani culture as more engaging, with stu-
dents better able to comprehend and participate in them because the
cultural load is not too overwhelming.
When choosing stories to teach, teachers said they consider a range of
criteria, such as meeting their students’ needs, matching their language
level, capturing their attention, reinforcing a particular aspect of their
social values and developing the way they see the world around them.
The most important criteria given by teachers were learner needs and
language level, but social and moral values are also an important con-
sideration. Teachers did not explicitly mention literacy development;
however, this is possibly because it is implicitly understood to be the
purpose of shared reading lessons.
Unfortunately, teachers have had mixed experiences accessing the
materials. Where Internet connections are reliable, they reported that
54
S. Rich et al.
it is easy and materials can be downloaded “with just one click”. In

areas where Internet connections are less reliable, teachers have found
accessing the materials more challenging. However, now we are aware
of this problem, we can look into alternative methods for distributing
the materials such as flash drives or CDs. Teachers are generally using
projectors to show the big books in class. This is partly due to the cost
and time involved in printing the books. However, it is also probably
a result of our decision to include the option to use the books in this
way. During the planning stage of the innovation, this was seen as a
necessary compromise in our drive to ‘plug the gap’. It is a limitation of
the innovation because students are not experiencing the features of a
‘real book’, which are important for literacy development. One practical
suggestion to overcome this limitation is for clusters of nearby schools
to take responsibility for printing different books, which can then be
rotated between schools once they have been used. This solution has
already been implemented in some regions.
Finally, when teachers were asked if they would continue using the
new shared reading materials, they all replied that they would because
they felt the materials were appealing to students and effectively met
their needs, and also because they felt that “local talent should be
encouraged and supported”.
Implications
As previously mentioned, the innovation generated a substantial
resource for the practice of shared reading in TEYL in Oman. New big
books and accompanying lesson plans and materials are now available
for all teachers to use. The final big books are creative and attractive,
and contain language that is at an appropriate level for students and is
thematically related to topics in the main coursebook. They are also cul-
turally appropriate and promote important Omani values. In terms of
addressing the lack of suitable materials for shared reading, the inno-
vation can be considered a success. While it is still early days, it is also
encouraging that teachers are using the stories and finding them an
effective resource which they and children are enjoying using.
55
It is also apparent that the careful scaffolding of the materials writ-

ing through the structured support provided in the workshop has been
important to the success of the innovation. We would recommend that
anyone thinking of undertaking a similar project provides the same
kind of guidance. The planning we undertook in advance of the work-
shop and careful editing and proofing of materials was time-consum-
ing but was also critical to the success of the innovation and we would
therefore also advise that these stages are considered by anyone who is
interested in pursuing a similar approach to creating resources for use
with a wider audience. While we had access to computer programs
(such as Design and Quark) dedicated to the development of high qual-
ity materials, we do not think that it is strictly necessary to use these. In
contexts where access to these is not readily available, we would suggest
the use of PowerPoint or a similar program which has sufficient graphic
capabilities to create professional-quality digital books.
A commitment to developing a mechanism to find out how well
materials are received is also important. In our project, feedback from
teachers has highlighted how some teachers have adapted the lesson
plans and activities slightly to better meet the needs of their own stu-
dents. This sort of information demonstrates the ways in which teach-
ers have taken personal ownership of the materials but is also providing
useful information on how materials can be further improved and it
is our intention to draw upon these insights to refine the innovation
going forward. Other ways to improve similar innovations in the future
include extending the workshop by an additional day to ensure that
teachers have time to adjust their material following feedback on their
demonstrations to their colleagues. To address the distribution chal-
lenges we have identified, we propose to send additional copies of mate-
rials on CDs or flash drives to regional supervisors who can share them
with senior English teachers at a local level. This may also prove to be
a good solution to distribution challenges in other settings where the
Internet is unreliable or not a distribution option.
To conclude, we have found undertaking this project very reward-
ing and believe that it provides a good blueprint for the development
of further initiatives in Oman. We hope that detailing our innovation
will encourage other educators in the MENA region to consider this
56
S. Rich et al.
approach to addressing a shortage of culturally appropriate material.

Our initial impetus for undertaking the innovation described in this
chapter was to plug a gap in the current provision of shared reading
resources. While considerable effort was expended to ensure that the
materials produced were of high quality, we acknowledge that attempt-
ing to disseminate these electronically was not ideal. In light of this, a
decision by the Ministry of Education to secure funding to make hard
copies of big books available to teachers in subsequent school years is
very encouraging and strongly validates our innovative approach.
1. The success of the innovation described in this chapter was based on
careful planning of the support and guidance needed to ensure that
teachers could produce quality materials in Oman. What types of
support would be needed to enable teachers to write material in your
own working context? How could you identify their support needs if
you were not familiar with these?
2. The definition of culturally appropriate materials used by the authors
reflected their belief that young children needed material which
reflected local norms and values. What would be the nature of cultur-
ally appropriate materials for the teaching of English to young learn-
ers in your context?
3. While the authors judge their innovation to be a success in many
ways, they also faced some challenges. How could these challenges
be overcome in your own working context? How might you address
other challenges you might face in adopting a similar approach?
4. One of the benefits highlighted by teachers in the project was learn-
ing about shared reading culminating in the production of new
material that was in short supply. What other applications of this
combined focus on new learning and materials production with
teachers can you identify?
57
Appendix
See Table 3.1.
Table 3.1 Checklist for designing shared reading texts

Yes No
Story features
Is the topic of the story interesting for grade 1/grade 2 students?
Does the story relate to students’ lives and experiences?
Are the characters appropriate? (e.g. no more than 4 main characters,
simple characters, characters that have a purpose in the story)
Does the story connect to a theme in the English curriculum?
Does the story have a clear beginning, middle and end?
Does the story have a logical plot? (e.g. problem–solution–change)
Does the story move at a good pace?
Can students make predictions about the story?
Is the story an appropriate length? (e.g. 12–16 pages)
Is the story culturally appropriate?
Language features
Does the story contain an appropriate number of vocabulary items?
(Grade 1—up to 40 vocabulary items, grade 2—up to 60 vocabulary
items)
Does the story contain an appropriate balance of additional words
and words from the wordlist? (Grade 1—up to 8 additional words,
grade 2—up to 12 additional words)
Can the meaning of new words be understood from the context or
illustrations?
Are key vocabulary items repeated through the story?
Does the story contain only structures taken from the structure list?
Are key structures repeated through the story?
Is this language used efficiently (e.g. without unnecessary words and
details)?
Does the story contain language that can be used to practise phonics?
Design features
Is the text size large enough for a class of 30 children to read?
Is the amount of text per page appropriate?
Are illustrations interesting, colourful and engaging?
Do the illustrations support the meaning of the text?
Do the illustrations provide an opportunity to talk before, during and
after reading the text?
Is the layout of the page well designed? (e.g. is the text clear and
easy to identify)
58
S. Rich et al.
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4
Task-Based Learning and Teaching
in Egypt
Deena Boraie, Ebtihal El Badry and Maged Habashy
Introduction
English language education is mandatory from grade one for all learners
in Egypt in both public and private schools. Yet, after 12 years of stud-
ying English, the language proficiency of the majority of learners is low.
According to Education First’s 2016 English Proficiency Index (EPI),
which ranked 72 countries based on data collected from adults using
a free online English test, Egypt was ranked in the lowest category of
‘very low language proficiency’. Although this is not a statistically con-
trolled test, and there are variations in English language proficiency
D. Boraie · E. E. Badry (*) · M. Habashy 

The American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt
e-mail: ebtihal@aucegypt.edu
D. Boraie
e-mail: dboraie@aucegypt.edu
M. Habashy
e-mail: magedino@aucegypt.edu
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13413-6_4
62
D. Boraie et al.
within a country, there are interesting implications for the quality of

education in Egypt (Boraie, 2017). This is a reflection of the poor qual-
ity of English language education in the country, with weak and out-
dated curricula and teaching methods in both schools and universities.
One result is a high demand for further education English courses,
such as those offered by the American University in Cairo’s School of
Continuing Education (SCE). The SCE enrols approximately 15,000
learners a year who are keen to continue to learn English, and offers
them better opportunities in higher education and improved employ-
ment prospects in Egypt and the wider region.
Area of Innovation
This chapter describes a curriculum innovation designed and imple-
mented by the Languages Department (LD) of SCE that transformed
the teaching approach, content, learning materials and assessment tools.
SCE learners come from a traditional education system that empha-
sizes rote learning and memorization of set textbooks, and is based on
a grammar-translation approach to language learning. In contrast, the
innovative curriculum placed emphasis on the language-use needs of
Egyptian learners and on engaging students in relevant and interesting
language tasks in the classroom. The aim of the innovation was to move
away from a textbook-based curriculum with a focus on grammar to a
task-based curriculum that depended only on digital learning materials,
and where the grammar and vocabulary learning needs of learners were
dealt with as they emerged in the classroom.

The Languages Department offers a variety of English preparation
courses and this innovation focused on the general English and oral com-
munication programmes. The curriculum of the English programme
offered in SCE is based on the Common European Framework of
Reference (CEFR) of the Council of Europe (2001) and the materials
used were, prior to this innovation, commercial course textbooks selected
4 Task-Based Learning and Teaching …
63
to match most but not all of the set learning outcomes. Although the
instructors had been required to teach to the set outcomes and to use the
assigned textbooks as a reference rather than to adhere to them closely,
in practice this proved to be impossible. Learners pressured instructors
to cover the textbooks from cover to cover and thus the default was that
the textbooks became the curriculum and the selected CEFR-based out-
comes in the SCE curriculum were not the drivers of the actual curric-
ulum in practice. This focus on textbooks instead of learning outcomes
was the impetus for the innovation.
One problem with commercially published textbooks is that the class-
room tasks they contain are frequently simply activities and exercises, and
not real-world tasks at all (in the sense of being meaning- and message-
focused work). Long (2015) calls them counterfeit tasks designed to prac-
tice grammatical structures or functions focusing on forms. For example,
a real-world task such as a role play or a job interview may be included
in a textbook. However, when the task is examined closely, it is usu-
ally discovered that it simply targets a specific structure, such as practis-
ing question forms. The result is an overt or covert grammatical syllabus
and when students leave the classroom, they are not able to use English
effectively. Research has shown that learners do not necessarily learn what
is taught and that it is difficult to plan the order in which they acquire
language forms (Robinson, 2011). Several second-language acquisition
(SLA) researchers have thus challenged the premise that learners acquire L2
grammatical structures in line with a language syllabus (Ellis, 2015).
There is a global movement based on a significant body of research
that calls for a new model to transform what learners are taught and the
methods used for the teaching and learning of English (Barrot, 2014).
As Kramsch (2014) noted, the language needed by learners in the real
world after they leave the classroom may be different from what they
have learned and “language teachers are no longer sure of what they are
supposed to teach nor what real-world situations they are supposed to
prepare their students for” (p. 296). In the workplace, learners need to
possess a combination of critical thinking, creativity, and collaborative and
communicative skills in order to succeed. Language learning in the class-
room should thus be related to learners’ needs, contexts and social pur-
poses, with instructors as facilitators of learning. The new paradigm for
teaching English is based on adopting context- and interaction-specific
64
D. Boraie et al.
communicative practices where “learners would shape grammar according

to their own needs and context, without a mechanical conformity to pur-
ported norms imposed by others” (Canagarajah, 2016, p. 16).
To move both instructors and learners away from a grammar-focused
and textbook-based approach, it was decided to adopt a task-based
learning (TBL) approach and replace textbooks with digital learning
materials. The key impetus for the innovation is that TBL is an inno-
vative language teaching method that has now become a broad area
of enquiry. This is reflected in the numerous articles and edited vol-
umes published in leading TESOL and SLA journals and publications
(Ahmadian, 2016). TBL has been gaining momentum since the 1980s
and it represents “a radical departure from more conventional CLT
approaches” (East, 2014, p. 262). TBL fits very well with the current
interest in sociocultural theory (see, for example, Vygotsky, 1962), and
with the CEFR. Learners integrate new knowledge with existing knowl-
edge in a context of social interactions through reflection, negotiation,
collaboration and dialogue. The instructor observes, assesses and engages
learners while they are completing tasks, primarily by posing questions.
In task-based learning (TBL), the central focus of the lesson is the
task itself, not a grammar point or a lexical area, and the objective is not
to learn specific language features but to complete the task. The opera-
tional definition of a task provided by Ellis (2009, p. 223) was the one
adopted in this curriculum innovation:
1. The primary focus should be on ‘meaning’ (by which is meant that

learners should be mainly concerned with processing the semantic
and pragmatic meaning of utterances).
2. There should be some kind of ‘gap’ (i.e., a need to convey informa-
tion, to express an opinion or to infer meaning).
3. Learners should largely have to rely on their own resources (linguistic
and non-linguistic) in order to complete the activity.
4. There is a clearly defined outcome other than the use of language
(i.e., the language serves as the means for achieving the outcome, not
as an end in its own right).
To complete the task successfully, learners have to use appropri-

ate language and communicate their ideas. The learners can use any
65
language they need to reach their objective. Tasks are designed to pro-
mote critical thinking and problem-solving skills, and there is no preset
‘correct answer’ for a task outcome. Learners decide on their own way of
completing it, using the language they see fit.
TBL often follows three stages: the pre-task, the completion of the
task and the post-task. In the innovation we describe here, in the pre-
task, the instructor introduces the theme and assigns reading and lis-
tening materials to prepare learners for the task itself. The instructor
explains the task and what is expected. In this stage, instructors use the
flipped classroom approach, integrating technology and assigning online
readings and videos to prepare the learners beforehand and so that they
come to class ready to discuss them. In stage 2, the learners complete
the task in groups and then present their work to the rest of the class. In
this stage, the instructor provides support and monitoring while learners
focus on communication and production. Learners are not expected to
produce identical language products or outputs and errors are not dealt
with at this stage. In stage 3, the instructor and learners work on the
specific language points that came up. Learners review the language they
produced and how well they did (Bygate, 2016).
Figure 4.1 shows an example of a session taken from the syllabus of a
course at the CEFR A1 level showing the pre-task, task and post-task of
a lesson on Google Maps.
^ĞƐƐŝŽŶϴ dĂƐŬDĞŶƵ͗ ZĞĂĚŝŶŐ͗

>ĞĂƌŶĞƌƐĐŽŵĞƚŽĐůĂƐƐĂŌĞƌůŝƐƚĞŶŝŶŐĂŶĚƌĞĂĚŝŶŐ ŚƩƉƐ͗ͬͬƐƵƉƉŽƌƚ͘ŐŽŽŐůĞ͘ĐŽŵͬ
'ŽŽŐůĞDĂƉƐ ĂďŽƵƚ'ŽŽŐůĞDĂƉƐ͘ ŵĂƉƐͬĂŶƐǁĞƌͬϭϰϰϯϰϵ͍ŚůсĞŶ
/ŶƉĂŝƌƐ͗ ;ŚŽǁƚŽƵƐĞ'ŽŽŐůĞDĂƉƐͿ
hƐŝŶŐ'ŽŽŐůĞDĂƉƐ͕ĚĞĐŝĚĞŚŽǁƚŽŐŽ͗ >ŝƐƚĞŶŝŶŐ͗
'ƌŽƵƉϭ͗&ƌŽŵ&ĂůĂŬŝƵŝůĚŝŶŐƚŽƚŚĞǌŽŽ ŚƩƉ͗ͬͬůĞĂƌŶĞŶŐůŝƐŚƚĞĞŶƐ͘ďƌŝƟ
'ƌŽƵƉϮ͗&ƌŽŵEĂŵƉƵƐƚŽůͲZĞŚĂďŝƚǇ ƐŚĐŽƵŶĐŝů͘ŽƌŐͬƐŬŝůůƐͬůŝƐƚĞŶŝŶŐͲ
'ƌŽƵƉϯ͗&ƌŽŵEƚŽŝƚǇ^ƚĂƌƐ ƐŬŝůůƐͲƉƌĂĐƟĐĞͬŐŝǀŝŶŐͲ
'ƌŽƵƉϰ͗&ƌŽŵůdĂŚƌŝƌƚŽƩĂďĂ^ƋƵĂƌĞ ĚŝƌĞĐƟŽŶƐ
hƐĞ'ŽŽŐůĞDĂƉƐƚŽĮŶĚƐĞǀĞƌĂůƌŽƵƚĞƐ ;ŐŝǀŝŶŐĚŝƌĞĐƟŽŶƐͿ
tƌŝƚĞƚŚĞǀĂƌŝŽƵƐƌŽƵƚĞƐ
ĞĐŝĚĞŽŶƚŚĞƐŚŽƌƚĞƐƚƌŽƵƚĞŐŝǀŝŶŐƌĞĂƐŽŶƐǁŚǇ
ǇŽƵĐŚŽƐĞŝƚ
tƌŝƚĞĚŝƌĞĐƟŽŶƐ
WƌĞƐĞŶƚ
&ĞĞĚďĂĐŬ
ĚŝƚǇŽƵƌǁŽƌŬŽŶĂĚŽĐƵŵĞŶƚĐĂŵĞƌĂ͘
Fig. 4.1 An example of a pre-task, task, and post-task sequence on Google

Maps
66
D. Boraie et al.
The Context
This section describes the context and the overall profile of the learn-
ers and instructors with whom the curriculum innovation was imple-
mented. The implementation of the innovation is briefly described, as
well as the challenges encountered.
Background on the SCE
The SCE enables the American University in Cairo to play an active role in
Egypt’s development by providing undergraduates and graduates with the
English language skills they need for the job market. The SCE has approxi-
mately 250 part-time qualified TESOL instructors. The SCE student body
consists of 23% high school and undergraduate students and 77% gradu-
ates, which means that approximately a quarter of SCE students are already
students in other institutions and are taking continuing education courses
at the same time as their school or university studies. The average age of
SCE students is around 28 and they come from all walks of life.
Implementation of the Innovation

The LD of the SCE decided to change its curriculum approach to bet-
ter prepare learners. The six key features of the new approach were: (1)
abandoning textbooks and moving towards digital learning materials; (2)
adopting a task-based curriculum aligned with the CEFR; (3) encour-
aging student autonomy whereby students are required to depend on
themselves and prepare before coming to the classroom; (4) using tasks
that develop students’ critical thinking and problem-solving skills; (5)
using tasks which require students to work collaboratively; and (6) mov-
ing away from tests towards using performance assessments. Figure 4.2
depicts the key components of the SCE curriculum innovation.
Work on the curriculum innovation was introduced gradually, one
course at a time, until the full programme in general English and oral
communication was launched about a year and a half after the start.
67
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ƌŝƟĐĂůdŚŝŶŬŝŶŐΘWƌŽďůĞŵ
WĞƌĨŽƌŵĂŶĐĞĂƐƐĞƐƐŵĞŶƚ
^ƚƵĚĞŶƚĂƵƚŽŶŽŵǇ
ŽůůĂďŽƌĂƟŽŶ
^ŽůǀŝŶŐ
dĂƐŬͲďĂƐĞĚĂŶĚ&Z ͲďĂƐĞĚůĞĂƌŶŝŶŐ
WŝůůĂƌϭ WŝůůĂƌϮ WŝůůĂƌϯ WŝůůĂƌϰ
Fig. 4.2 The key components of the curriculum innovation
An implementation plan and development teams were established, each

consisting of four instructors who were familiar with the English lan-
guage needs of the learners in the Egyptian context. To design the TBL
syllabus for each course in the four CEFR stages (A1, A2, B1 and B2),
the following steps were followed, integrating the six key features men-
tioned above: (1) different themes for all the courses were chosen and
carefully organized to avoid redundancy; (2) for each course, under each
theme, tasks were identified, aligned to meet the set CEFR-based writ-
ten or oral language learning outcomes; (3) tasks were then designed for
learners to work on collaboratively in class, in pairs or in groups, which
included critical thinking/problem-solving skills related to real-life con-
texts; (4) each complete task was designed to include a pre-task, the task
itself and the post-task; and (5) for each task, relevant digital pre-reading
or pre-listening material was selected from available free sources to be
prepared by students beforehand. The following is an example of a task
at B1 level designed to meet particular CEFR learning outcomes.
68
D. Boraie et al.
CEFR Learning Outcomes
• scan longer texts in order to locate desired information, and gather

information from different parts of a text, or from different texts in
order to fulfil a specific task; and
• give a prepared straightforward presentation on a familiar topic
within his/her field which is clear enough to be followed without dif-
ficulty most of the time, and in which the main points are explained
with reasonable precision.
Task
• Learners come to class after listening and reading two digital arti-
cles: ‘Top tips for starting your own business’ and ‘What is an
organo-gram?’
• Learners in pairs/groups fill out the ‘organo-gram’ of their dream
company, its product and target audience.
• They then search the following online: “What is a logo?”, “What is a
slogan?” and “What is a mission statement?”
• In groups, learners create a logo, slogan and a 100–150-word mission
statement for their dream company. Each group gives a presentation
and teachers and colleagues provide feedback to each group.
Once the TBL syllabi had been designed, the SCE Testing Manager
worked with the four teams to design and document the performance
assessments and the accompanying rubrics. Appendix Table 4.4 shows
the assessment blueprint for the second course in the A2 stage.
As part of the development process, a series of four professional
development workshops were designed and instructors were required
to attend them to prepare them for the new curriculum approach.
Moreover, newly recruited instructors had to follow an induction pro-
gramme in which they observed at least four TBL classes before start-
ing to teach at SCE. LD administrators worked with the university’s IT
department to design the platform to host and manage all the digital
learning materials of the new curriculum (Moodle).
69
Learners had to be prepared for the radical change in curricula and

teaching methodology before enrolling in the programme. Part of the
regular orientation conducted before the beginning of each term was
dedicated to the new curriculum and teaching methodology, explaining
the rationale for the change and that computer literacy skills were now
required to enroll in the programme. IT orientations showed learners
how to access the digital materials.
Challenges Faced in the Implementation
It was not easy to manage this innovative change in a traditional educa-

tional setting where learners come from a system that emphasizes rote
learning and memorization, and which is highly textbook based. We
faced several challenges in the first year of implementation with both
learners and instructors. At the outset, some learners, although not the
majority, were so resistant to the idea of not having textbooks that they
decided not to register for a course or requested a refund. This phenom-
enon has almost disappeared over time and interestingly, our student
enrolment has since boomed, growing by 46% in the first year.
Learners frequently come to class with very teacher-centred and
grammar-focused expectations. Many believe that it is the teacher’s
job to correct all language errors and peer or self-correction is largely
resisted. Some insist on receiving instructor feedback as they believe
they come to learn from the instructor and not their colleagues. These
students want feedback on every error even though this may disrupt
their fluency. They are very book centred and continually ask for
printed materials and texts. Another challenge we have faced is learn-
ers’ resistance to preparing beforehand and coming to class ready to
discuss the readings and videos they were assigned to work on. Once
again, this comes from the learners’ educational background which
makes them dependent on instructors and does not encourage student
autonomy and taking responsibility for their own learning. For many
learners, teaching and learning grammar is an indispensable part of the
lesson and they believe that language learning cannot take place with-
out it.
70
D. Boraie et al.
We also had some initial problems with instructors who were una-
ble or unwilling to adapt to the new task-based approach, and after six
months, we had to ask some of them to leave because they could not
accept the change. Other instructors faced several challenges imple-
menting TBL in the first year, including managing feedback in TBL
classrooms, handling technology and creating a digital classroom com-
munity. A series of professional development workshops were offered by
the full-time university TESOL faculty to support instructors to over-
come the problems they faced. Another group of instructors had diffi-
culty adjusting the tasks to various needs of their learners. This problem
was overcome by asking instructors identified by the LD administration
to design a workshop that focused on sharing the multiple solutions
they had used withtheir own classes.
Evaluation of the Innovation
Towards the end of the first year, the researchers decided to conduct an
empirical evaluation study of the innovation in the general English pro-
gramme by collecting data from instructors and learners. The purpose
of this study was to assess the effectiveness of the key features of the new
curriculum and methodology from the point of view of instructors and
learners, as well as to identify what worked and what did not, and the
lessons learned.
Study Design and Sampling
The study used a mixed-method design, collecting both quantita-

tive and qualitative data, and was conducted in two phases. In Phase
1, which used two-stage sampling, data was collected by administering
a questionnaire to learners and instructors; in Phase 2, instructors and
learners were interviewed. The sample consisted of a proportional ran-
dom stratified sample of 16 classes (209 learners) in the LD English lan-
guage programme. A random sample of 33 instructors responded to the
questionnaire. In the second phase of the study, a different sample of
71
45 learners and 14 instructors were interviewed. The sample was repre-

sentative of the SCE English language instructor and language learner
population.
Data Collection
The researchers developed a questionnaire for instructors and learners.

The questionnaire measured their perceptions of the extent to which
the six key features (see Fig. 4.1) of the innovative curriculum approach
and methodology had enhanced students’ learning and helped them
achieve their language goals. The participants were required to respond
using a 4-point Likert scale with the following options: 4 great extent,
3 some extent, 2 slight extent and 1 no extent. There was also a fifth
option for “0 no opinion”. Two questions then sought their opinion
about the overall effectiveness and their level of satisfaction with the
innovative curriculum approach and methodology. For the effective-
ness question, the participants were required to respond using a similar
4-point Likert scale with the following options: very effective, moder-
ately effective, minimally effective and not effective at all. For the satis-
faction question, the options were: very satisfied, moderately satisfied,
minimally satisfied and not satisfied at all. Finally, three open-ended
questions asked what they thought worked well, what did not work
well and what suggestions they had, if any, for programme improve-
ment. The questionnaires were administered in English to instructors
and in Arabic to learners.
An initial analysis of the questionnaire data was conducted to iden-
tify key areas that needed further probing in interviews with both
instructors and learners. Instructors were asked what strategies they
used to motivate learners to prepare before class, how they handled stu-
dents’ problems understanding the digital pre-task materials and what
suggestions they could make for professional development workshops.
Students were asked how task-based learning, compared to traditional
grammar teaching, impacted their language proficiency, and about the
impact of integrating technology in the classroom.
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D. Boraie et al.
Data Analysis
Data were analyzed following a mixed-method approach, using both

qualitative and quantitative methodologies. For the quantitative anal-
ysis, descriptive statistics were used to provide information about the
mean, standard deviation and frequency counts of the questionnaire
items. Using qualitative analysis, emerging patterns and themes were
identified from the open-ended questions on the questionnaire and
from the interview data. The researchers also checked the reliability of
the questionnaire data and Chronbach Alpha coefficients of 0.68 and
0.7 were obtained for learners and instructors respectively.
Findings
This section describes the findings of the evaluation study conducted on
the curriculum innovation to identify what worked, what did not work
and possible areas for improvement of the programme. The findings
also helped to identify teachers’ further professional development needs
and to engage them more effectively.
Effectiveness of and Satisfaction with the Innovation
Table 4.1 shows the views of learners (N = 209) and instructors

(N = 33) on the effectiveness of the six key curriculum features in
enhancing their learning of English. All six features were rated posi-
tively by both groups, learners and instructors agreeing to a great extent
and to some extent that they were effective, with means ranging from
the 3.88 to 3.30. Learners found that collaboration (mean (M) = 3.61,
standard deviation (SD) = 0.60), performance assessment (M = 3.51,
SD = 0.63) and critical thinking and problem solving (M = 3.47,
SD = 0.63) were effective to a great extent in enhancing their learn-
ing. Preparation at home was seen as the least effective feature with a
mean of 3.30 (SD = 0.75). Instructors found that all features except
digital learning materials were effective to a great extent (M = 3.30,
73
Table 4.1 Learners’ and instructors’ views on how the new approach enhances
learning
Features Learners Instructors
N M SD N M SD
Task-based approach 209 3.36 0.60 33 3.82 0.39
Preparation at home 208 3.30 0.75 33 3.52 0.67
Digital learning 206 3.39 0.73 33 3.30 0.73
materials
Collaboration 209 3.61 0.60 32 3.88 0.34
Critical thinking and 206 3.47 0.63 33 3.64 0.60
problem solving
Performance 207 3.51 0.63 33 3.70 0.47
assessment
Table 4.2 Learners’ and instructors’ views on how the new approach helps
achieve learning goals
Features Learners Instructors
N M SD N M SD
Task-based approach 208 3.25 0.66 33 3.72 0.46
Preparation at home 206 3.26 0.79 33 3.47 0.62
Digital learning 207 3.35 0.73 33 3.24 0.71
materials
Collaboration 208 3.51 0.67 32 3.75 0.44
Critical thinking and 206 3.40 0.68 33 3.50 0.72
problem solving
Performance 207 3.50 0.65 33 3.60 0.50
assessment
SD = 0.73). Both learners and instructors perceived collaboration as the

feature that most enhanced the learning of English.
Learners’ and instructors’ views on the effectiveness of the same six
key features in helping learners achieve their language goals are illus-
trated in Table 4.2. Both learners and instructors rated the six fea-
tures positively as helping learners achieve their language goals to a
great extent or to some extent, with means ranging from 3.75 to 3.24.
Collaboration and performance assessment were rated highest by both
learners and instructors, helping learners to achieve their language goals
to a great extent. The main difference between learners and instruc-
tors was their view of the task-based approach. Instructors rated it the
74
D. Boraie et al.
second highest (M = 3.72, SD = 0.46), while learners rated it the lowest

(M = 3.25, SD = 0.66). The curriculum feature that received the lowest
rating from instructors was digital learning materials and from learners
it was preparation at home.
The findings are encouraging and indicate that the innovation was
viewed positively by learners and instructors. Learners’ responses indi-
cate positive attitudes towards collaboration as an approach towards
learning that was very different from their traditional background.
It is also interesting to note that performance assessment was another
feature that learners welcomed and viewed as beneficial although they
were used to summative assessments and tests where most of the grade
depended on the final assessment. It is also significant that critical
thinking and problem solving were seen as effective to a great extent,
in spite of the learners’ traditional learning background which did not
encourage them to acquire or develop the critical thinking skills they
need in a competitive job market or even to improve their current jobs.
The findings show that the instructors who responded have embraced
the TBL approach, giving learners the opportunity to focus on task
completion and language production. TBL gives learners the chance to
produce multiple versions of the task, freely collaborating with others.
This tolerance of variation and creativity encourages the development
of critical thinking skills away from reiterating and drilling the one cor-
rect answer. Thus, the focus has shifted away from limited activities to
tasks requiring longer production time. Instructors have come to appre-
ciate performance assessment because it helps their learners move away
from a traditional focus on the final grade to a focus on the learning
experience that extends throughout the course, helping them improve
their language proficiency. Digital learning material was seen as the fea-
ture which least helped learners achieve their language goals and the
SCE will need to conduct more professional development workshops
addressing the effectiveness of digital material.
Learners and instructors did not have the same views on TBL.
Professional development workshops for instructors have helped them
appreciate the approach; however, more needs to be done for learners.
Another difference is in their views concerning preparing at home, as
learners regarded it as the least important. Learners need to be better
75
informed on the importance of flipped classrooms which enable them

to use the language after having prepared at home.
Learners and instructors rated the overall effectiveness and their over-
all satisfaction with the new curriculum approach, where a rating of
1 was very effective or very satisfied and a rating of 2 was moderately
effective or moderately satisfied. The results showed that instructors
perceive the approach to be very effective (M = 1.33, SD = 0.48) while
learners found it to be moderately effective (M = 1.65, SD = 0.66).
In terms of satisfaction, instructors indicated they are very satisfied
(M = 1.3, SD = 0.47) and learners are moderately satisfied (M = 1.7,
SD = 0.65). Instructors were most likely to have been more enthusias-
tic because of the professional development workshops. Learners were
moderately satisfied with the effectiveness of the change and this indi-
cates that more work needs to be done with them.
What Worked Well and What Did not
Table 4.3 shows the results of the analysis of learners’ and instructors’

responses to the three open-ended questions in the questionnaire, focus-
ing on what worked well and what did not, and their suggestions for
improvement. The table shows the most frequently occurring themes.
Table 4.3 Qualitative analysis of questionnaire data

(Learners) N = 209 (Instructors) N = 33
What do you like about/ Collaboration/ Task-based learning (14)
think is working well in teamwork (55) Collaboration (team/
the current LD curricu- Digital material (32) group work) (8)
lum and approach? Flipped classroom (22) Flipped classroom (5)
Authentic material/
situation (4)
What do you not like There is no grammar Digital material (broken
about/think is not work- explanation (22) links) (11)
ing well in the current There is no course book Learners’ preparation (9)
LD curriculum and (23)
approach?
What are your sugges- Using course books (29) Revising material on
tions for improving the Teaching grammar (23) MOODLE (10)
programme? Motivating learners to
prepare (8)
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D. Boraie et al.
Learners mentioned three of the key features they thought worked

well: collaboration/team work, digital material and flipped classrooms.
Some of the learners’ responses were: “collaboration provides us with
good knowledge, experience and new ideas” and “collaboration with
other learners boosts my self-esteem”. Learners mentioned improvement
in their language proficiency as a result of the collaborative approach.
One learner wrote “our language improved through collaboration and
communication” and another stated “it improved too much [sic] as I
learned the English language in a sufficient way. The interaction with
the teacher was very good. My English became better.” Two learners’
responses on digital material were: “digital material is much better than
books which were bad” and “digital material is available online all the
time”. One of the learners’ responses on flipped classrooms was “I like
preparing at home”. This indicates that there was support for collabora-
tion among learners who believe in the benefit of scaffolding and who
are willing to learn from their peers. Although the quantitative data
showed that digital materials and preparation at home were less appeal-
ing, these emerged as factors in the curriculum that worked well. This is
positive; however, more work is needed to get learners to buy into doing
more work outside the classroom.
Instructors identified TBL, collaboration, flipped classrooms and
authentic materials as features they liked and that worked well. The
following are some of the instructors’ comments: “task-based approach
is very effective, students learn a lot from authentic presentations and
role play”; “during class discussions, students exchange ideas and opin-
ions”; “flipped classroom helps learners master and develop skills”; and
“although some students are reluctant to prepare, yet some students
admitted that if they had prepared well, they would have benefited
more”.
From the learners’ point of view, what did not work well was the
lack of books and the digital materials as well as the lack of grammar
explanations. Some learners’ comments on books are: “course books
will help learners remember what they have studied” and “need course
book along with the digital material”. Although they studied grammar
for years throughout their school and university education, they still
want grammar. Some learners’ comments are: “I want more grammar
77
explanation as this facilitates my learning”, “lack of grammar explana-

tion hinders constructing English sentences” and “teaching grammar
rules in class is important, especially explaining common mistakes”.
Books and teaching grammar are two features that learners believed
were indispensable in their learning process.
Instructors mentioned two aspects of the new curriculum approach
that did not work well: digital materials and learners’ preparation. Some
of the instructors’ comments were: “some links are broken”; “students
still have problems with the digital learning material and this hinders
their progress”; “the main challenge is having learners unprepared for
the session”; and “since the approach depends on student prior prepa-
ration, I find a lot of students coming to class unprepared which has a
negative impact on the class performance”.
Suggestions
The most frequently occurring learner suggestions were using course

books and teaching grammar, which align with the two factors they
believed did not work well in the new curriculum. They asked for
course books and suggested that “part of the session has to be allocated
to teaching verbs and sentence structure”.
Instructors suggested that the digital materials should be reviewed
and filtered regularly and ways are needed to motivate learners to pre-
pare. These suggestions were linked to the curriculum features that did
not work well.
No new additional themes or attitudes emerged from the analy-
sis of learners’ responses to the open-ended interview questions. They
reported positive attitudes towards collaboration and the integration
of technology in the classroom. They acknowledged during the inter-
views that a focus on grammar did have some negative impact on their
English language proficiency and that it did not necessarily improve
their language.
In response to the open-ended interview questions, some of
the instructors’ suggestions for motivating students to prepare before-
hand and to check for preparation were as follows: “I divide students
78
D. Boraie et al.
into groups and assign each group a portion of the material”, “if stu-
dents cannot prepare everything, each student will be responsible for a
small segment” and “I always demonstrate the benefits of preparation in
advance as this will help them participate effectively”. To check learners’
preparation teachers suggested the following: “I usually start by asking
them about what they prepared and ask them to summarize the ideas
and state their opinion” and “I ask questions about the listening and
reading before discussing them”. On handling digital learning materi-
als, instructors stated that “I ask other learners to help him/her”, “open
discussion on the class Facebook group” and “I always have my students
on a WhatsApp group and we always communicate through messages”.
Instructors proposed professional development workshops on assess-
ment and classroom management.
Implications
The traditional context of a book-driven curriculum with a focus on

grammar in language teaching is deeply rooted in learners’ views of
language learning and their preferred instructional practices. It will
take some time to overcome this prevailing perception by orienting
both learners and instructors. Evaluation of the innovation has shown
that there were positive attitudes towards the approach and over time
a change in mindset may occur. Peer influence has a strong impact on
learners and through collaborative learning change can occur.
Effective leadership is key to the success of an innovation. An impor-
tant aspect of leadership is the visibility of administrators among the
teachers and learners. Regular administrative class visits should be
conducted to ensure that instructors are on the right track and that
change occurs not only in their performance but also in their mind-
set. SCE administrators making regular visits to classes during the first
week of term can also help explain the benefits of the new approach to
new learners by opening discussions and attending to learners’ enquir-
ies. These discussions help learners adopt and adapt to new ideas about
language teaching and learning, and create consistency in the learning
environment.
79
Establishing a system and process to sustain the innovation is key. An

example in this innovation case study is the system for regular revision
of the digital material. It is essential for digital material to be subject to
continuing revision, especially with open sources, links that break and
others that need updating.
Instructors play a major role in curriculum innovation and therefore
continuous professional development is very important. Asking instruc-
tors to conduct professional development for their colleagues, in which
they demonstrated classroom strategies that effectively resolved issues,
was another strategy tried by SCE that proved effective, as was requiring
newly hired instructors to go through an induction programme and to
attend professional development events.
Another important implication of this study is that more practical
research is needed on TBL in classrooms in different contexts. Foster
(2009) cautioned against the misconceptions of how far educational
research can explain “what might or might not work in a classroom”
(p. 261) and that researchers can no longer make “sweeping claims for
how SLA works” (p. 260). Therefore, what is needed is a more bal-
anced approach to TBL research. For TBL to achieve “full professional
respect” (p. 397), research and practice need to meet. There is also a
need for more empirical research into the classroom dynamics of TBL
so that practitioners and administrators can gain a better understand-
ing of how to develop TBL programmes and deal with the challenges
involved (Bygate, 2016). Practice-focused research is required to inform
and develop the theory and implementation of TBL if it is to succeed as
an innovation.
1. The authors argue that a task-based curriculum design based on
real-life contexts and the specific grammar and vocabulary that their
students need is far more effective than using commercially availa-
ble textbooks. Do you support this view? What risks, if any, do
‘home-developed’ curricula pose?
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D. Boraie et al.
2. The authors assert that a key principle of their innovation is the

complete abandonment of textbooks in favour of digital learning
materials. Would this be feasible in your context? Do you feel that
textbooks help or hinder your teaching?
3. This chapter describes the challenge of working with students who
have very different expectations of language learning, often more ‘tra-
ditional’ than those of the teachers. What are the dangers inherent
in a situation such as this? What can teachers and administrators do
about it?
4. The curriculum innovation described in the chapter intended to ‘go
beyond’ just language learning and included aims relating to critical
thinking, problem solving, and so on. Do you think it is appropri-
ate to include these broader goals in language teaching? What are the
risks involved? What are the benefits?
5. Another challenge identified by the authors was that of using a
flipped classroom in which students are expected to prepare outside
class time and take responsibility for their own learning. From your
experience, how should teachers meet this challenge? What other
challenges does ‘flipping the classroom’ present?
Appendix
Table 4.4 Assessment blueprint of A2B course
CAN-dos TASK description Skill Content Time Assessment Scores
S W criteria
[Production] Monologue (1 minute) √ Sessions 1st part– Production 25

Can describe everyday aspects Based on cards about sight- () Session Language
of his environment, e.g. seeing or a product, learners 7 Vocabulary
people, places, a job or study are asked to give a one-min- Grammar
experience [74] ute sales pitch to the class Fluency
Can give short, basic descrip- Pronunciation
tions of events and activities Integration
[75] Understanding
and response
[Interaction] Dialogue (2–3 minutes) √ Sessions 1st part– 25
Can discuss everyday practical Based on cards, learners play () Session
issues in a simple way when roles to exchange informa- 9
addressed clearly, slowly and tion about pastimes/past
directly [39] activities (e.g. a trip, movie
Can deal with practical every- going, sightseeing, celebra-
day demands: finding out and tions, national days, wed-
passing on straightforward dings, birthdays, etc.) and to
factual information [57] elicit specific/non-personal
Can ask and answer questions information. Each learner is
about pastimes and past activ- required to ask and answer
ities [59] 5 questions
(continued)
81
Table 4.4 (continued)
CAN-dos TASK description Skill Content Time Assessment Scores
S W criteria
82
[Production] Independent (25 minutes) √ Sessions 1st part– Language 25

Can write about everyday Learners write an email (,) Session Vocabulary
aspects of his environment, of 80–100 words about 3 (range and
e.g. people, places, a job or a personal/educational control)
study experience in linked experience Grammar (range
D. Boraie et al.
sentences [87] and control)

Can write very short, basic Mechanics
descriptions of events, past (spelling, capi-
activities and personal experi- talization and
ences [88] periods)
Coherence
[Interaction] Integrated (35 minutes) √ Sessions 1st part– 25
Can write short, simple notes Reading a Facebook post (,) Session
and messages relating to on a personal problem, 11
matters in areas of immediate learners are asked to reply
need [71] providing advice. The reply
Can describe everyday aspects should be of 80–100 words
of his environment, e.g. NB the reading passage
people, places, a job or study should be of 50–100 words
experience [74]
83
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5
Innovation in Writing Instruction:
Towards Nurturing Confident, Motivated
and Academically Honest L2 Writers
Fatima Esseili
Introduction
In Lebanon, innovative English language teaching (ELT) practices,
or cultures of learning and teaching (Bacha & Bahous, 2013), vary
depending on the type of school or university (state vs. private), its
funding, geographical location, status and years of operation. The ELT
curriculums adopted in schools have undergone significant changes
throughout the years, and practices run the whole gamut, from teach-
ing soft and critical thinking skills to learner-centred classrooms, at one
end of the continuum, all the way to using new pedagogic approaches,
adopting the flipped and blended classroom model, and using new
technology such as interactive white boards, mobile learning and var-
ious digital platforms, to name a few. This chapter begins by offering
a brief description of English teaching in Lebanon, focusing particu-
larly on the teaching and learning of writing. It proceeds to explore the
F. Esseili (*) 
The University of Dayton, Dayton, OH, USA
e-mail: fesseili1@udayton.edu
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13413-6_5
86
F. Esseili
context and impetus for change in first-year writing classes in a private

university in Lebanon where a modified version of the sequenced writ-
ing project (SWP) was implemented. Drivers for change, or the chal-
lenges that inspired adaptation of the SWP, are presented through a
description of an exploratory study that examined students’ perceptions
of both existing and new practices. The chapter describes the dispar-
ity between the principles and guidelines outlined by the administra-
tion in the existing curriculum, and the reality of classroom practices.
Findings revealed that the existing curriculum is detrimental to stu-
dents’ self-confidence as writers and to their motivation to learn and
write; it did not improve students’ writing skills; and it encouraged aca-
demic dishonesty among first-year writing students. In contrast, imple-
menting the SWP as a new pedagogic approach motivated students,
boosted their self-confidence, enhanced their writing skills and signifi-
cantly decreased academic dishonesty.
A Brief Survey of ELT in Lebanon

Lebanon’s school system is divided into five cycles, each encompass-
ing three grade levels. At the end of middle and high school, Lebanese
students have to sit official examinations, the Brevet for grade 9 and the
Lebanese Baccalaureate for grade 12. During these cycles, and in line with
Lebanon’s trilingual policy, students learn two foreign languages (French
and English) in addition to Arabic. One of these foreign languages is used
as a medium of instruction for mathematics and sciences, and the other
is learned as a subject. Some schools begin teaching the second foreign
language as early as grade 4 or 5. During the academic year 2016–2017,
about 47.7% of students in Lebanese schools were educated in English
as a medium of instruction, compared to 52.3% who were French edu-
cated (CRDP, 2017, p. 18). With respect to schools’ primary language of
instruction, 46.9% offered instruction in Arabic–French (compared to
56.5% ten years earlier), 30.4% in Arabic–English, and 22.7% offered
instruction in either Arabic–French or Arabic–English (p. 50).
Until the end of the civil war (1975–1991), schools in Lebanon
mostly followed the grammar-translation and audio-lingual approaches
5 Innovation in Writing Instruction: Towards Nurturing …
87
to language teaching. In the mid-to-late 1990s, curriculum reforms

were initiated whereby “thematic, integrated, content-based” and com-
municative student-centred approaches were introduced, with the
emphasis on developing “native-like proficiency”, autonomous learn-
ers, critical thinking skills, and cultural awareness of “English-speaking
people” (ELT Curriculum, p. 2). Relying on the cooperative learning
model, the new competency-based evaluation system was believed to
represent a shift from assessing rote memorization of information to
a focus on critical thinking and higher-level skills that were rooted in
alternative assessment techniques (e.g., conferences, peer review, jour-
nals and portfolios). As far as the teaching of writing was concerned,
a process approach to writing was mandated whereby students would
write multiple drafts before they submitted a final paper. English lan-
guage teachers were supposed to guide students through the differ-
ent pre-writing, writing, revising and publishing stages. In advanced
grade levels, students composed drafts in different genres including
reports and research papers (Shaaban & Ghaith, 1997). Students were
expected to write “correctly, coherently, and fluently” (ELT curriculum,
p. 20). They were supposed to engage in authentic, meaningful writ-
ing contexts, to reflect on their own writing practices and to participate
in peer evaluation. The extent to which these curricular reforms have
been applied or have been effective and successful, however, is arguable.
Recent test results for foreign languages in grades 9 and 12 reveal that
the average score for all 9th graders was 19.6 out of 40 for the academic
year 2016–2017 (CRDP, 2017, p. 60). Looking at the average score for
12th graders, irrespective of track, reveals similar, unsatisfactory results
(Table 5.1). Students fared slightly better in their native language.
A score on a test conducted within a limited timeframe and under
pressure is not a comprehensive measure of proficiency level, but these
results do indicate that there is a problem. While 9th and 12th graders
constituted only about 10% of the entire student population for the
academic year 2016/2017, these grade levels mark the end of two cru-
cial school cycles, middle and high school. As such, one would expect
these students to fare much better on foreign languages after having
studied them as subjects and having used them to learn content-area
subjects for years. Such results might be attributed to unsuitable
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F. Esseili
Table 5.1 Success rate in official examinations in languages

Grade 9 Grade 12
Sociology Humanities General Life sciences
and sciences
economics
Arabic 33.2/60 29.3/60 51.9/90 28/50 28.9/50
language
Foreign 19.6/40 18.4/40 34/70 22/40 22.2/40
language
teaching methods, students’ lack of motivation to learn, a discrepancy

between classroom teaching and exams, or strict grading methods,
among other factors. Low proficiency also affects students at univer-
sity level, in terms of both their perceived and actual ability to suc-
ceed in languages. It is worth noting that in Lebanon, even if students
fail one or two subjects in official examinations, they can still pass
the entire school cycle and move to the next one, in contrast to other
Arab countries like Jordan where if a student fails one subject in grade
12, they have to be retested in that subject before they are allowed to
graduate.
A contributory factor in the current problem is teachers’ proficiency
level or the language(s) of instruction used, as studies have revealed.
Shaaban (2005) believed that teachers’ proficiency level was “far from
satisfactory” and that “most students who join English departments or
TEFL programs are not proficient in English, but they are nonethe-
less employed by schools as the demand exceeds the supply” (p. 108).
Ten years later, proficiency was still found to be an issue. Teachers who
were supposed to use a foreign language to teach mathematics and
sciences reported using Arabic and/or code switching with English/
French in their classes. Such practices affected their students’ ability to
understand test questions and prompts in the target language (Esseili,
2014), and consequently, their success rate in official examinations
for grades 9 and 12, which are conducted in either English or French.
Another recent study corroborated previous findings that some school
teachers used Arabic to teach mathematics and sciences when they
should have been using either English or French. The study found a
89
direct correlation between taking tests in a language spoken by students

on a regular basis and improving students’ scores and performance in
subject areas (Abdulla & Skaf, 2015, p. 21).
At the higher education level, practices differ between state and
private universities, with the latter being more progressive in their
approaches to teaching English in general and writing in particular.
Similarly to schools, however, practices differ from one private univer-
sity to another, depending on their overall mission and vision, teachers’
qualifications, funding, experience in the education sector, accredita-
tion policies, hiring practices and status. In addition, students’ back-
ground and the high school they graduated from are often factors that
affect their communication skills in foreign languages and their suc-
cess at university level. Bacha and Bahous (2013) surveyed L1 Arabic
university students’ cultures of learning and found that there were dif-
ferences in cultures of learning within the same educational system in
Lebanon, where schools tended “to emphasize memorization, teacher
centeredness, and lecture methods” (p. 117), in contrast to universities
where Western educational cultures prevailed and an emphasis on criti-
cal thinking and learner-centred classrooms was the norm. The authors
caution that “while English proficiency levels can be expected to be high
in Lebanese universities, it is nearly always an L2 or L3 for students”
due to the “traditional ways” of teaching in schools (p. 119). Such find-
ings are in direct contrast with the curricular reform supposedly imple-
mented in schools.
To complicate the issue further, for the academic year 2014/2015,
Syrian refugees constituted 6.3% of the total student population in
Lebanese schools (CRDP, 2015, p. 14). At the tertiary level, the per-
centage of Syrian students aged 18–24 who were eligible to enrol in a
university constituted about 4% of the total student population in
higher education (CRDP, 2015; El-Ghali, 2017). Syrian refugees strug-
gle as a result of differences in education systems between Lebanon and
Syria. Whereas in the Syrian higher education system, instruction is in
Arabic, in Lebanon it is in either English or French (El-Ghali, Berjaoui,
& McKnight, 2017). Thus, language becomes a major barrier to suc-
cess. Another barrier is students’ “insufficient academic qualifications
90
F. Esseili
and lack of familiarity with the academic culture and expectations, such
as critical thinking skills, level of independence and study habits com-
mon in Lebanon versus Syria” (p. 34).
In addition to the issues outlined above, other challenges will be
addressed in this chapter as they pertain to the specific context under
investigation. The next section describes the context, followed by impe-
tus for innovation.
The Context
The innovation that this chapter reports on took place at a private
English-medium university in Lebanon. The population in this univer-
sity, as is the case with the majority of universities in Lebanon, comes
from diverse learning contexts: some students are English educated,
while others are French educated, and they hail from state or private
(religious and secular), private-subsidized. While these students could
be identified as bilingual or even trilingual, a wide range of proficiency
levels exists across a continuum, as indicated in the previous section.
To improve language-learning outcomes, universities in Lebanon have
implemented systems whereby students are either placed into intensive
English programmes or immediately into freshman composition pro-
grammes (Esseili, 2016).
The Department of English in this university offers a Composition
and Rhetoric Sequence course which includes four English communi-
cation skills modules: two remedial and two required (first-year writing
composition and an advanced theme-based writing course). Students
are placed into a level based on their TOEFL, IELTS or SAT scores, or
based on their successful completion of a previous level. The first-year
writing course, which is the focus of this study, is equivalent to fresh-
man composition courses in the United States, which have become
standard in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) universities that
follow American models of education. According to the official course
description, the course “is designed as a writing workshop that empha-
sizes writing for particular purposes and particular audiences”. It stresses
the “ability to read critically and analyze texts of various types and
91
styles”, and it emphasizes the importance of “students’ ability to argue

academically and to use references to support their point of view”. In
addition, demonstrating linguistic accuracy, and quoting and citing
sources correctly are major aims of the course. All sections of this class
follow a unified syllabus with the same learning outcomes, assignments
(critical analysis, persuasive essay, narrative, and compare and contrast),
readings (with slight variations), deadlines and a final exam. Monthly
meetings with all instructors take place, as well as frequent email com-
munication. In addition, a norming session usually occurs after the final
exams are completed. The course design reflects the administration’s
desire to encourage original writing, improve students’ writing skills and
combat academic dishonesty.

Before the author was appointed to her post, and based on the recom-
mendation of the course coordinator at the time, the university agreed
to host a US-based Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) expert to
evaluate the writing programme and examine the potential of adapting
WAC theories and pedagogies to improve teaching and learning in the
curriculum. Based on informal conversations with administrators and a
number of faculty members and students, the WAC expert concluded
that the university seemed “to lack a ‘writing culture’”, that students
were “resistant to writing in general” and that “plagiarism [was] a dom-
inant theme”. At the end of her four-day visit, the WAC expert recom-
mended hiring at least one professor to attend to WAC and another to
attend to the composition curriculum, stating that “WAC programme
development could not successfully go forward without commensu-
rate attention to the composition curriculum”. For reasons beyond the
scope of this chapter the WAC initiative did not gain traction, but the
need for an expert in rhetoric and composition/second-language writ-
ing became obvious, and hence I was appointed. After a year of using
the existing curriculum, and gathering formal and informal data about
the programme, the writing courses, and the students’ and instruc-
tors’ profiles and practices, my findings confirmed the WAC expert’s
92
F. Esseili
observations, but they revealed additional, deeper problems, which are

outlined next.
The major problem seemed to be the prevalence of academic dishon-
esty. As a solution and in order to improve students’ essays, the adminis-
tration had resorted to a number of practices including having students
write their major essays during a 50- or 90-minutes class session,
assigning essay topics, and heavily penalizing students for inaccurate
in-text citations, and for errors in grammar, punctuation and spelling.
Additional problems included the lack of logical progression of assign-
ments from familiar genres (e.g., narrative) to the more complex dis-
course of persuasive essays and critical analysis. Students, for example,
had to submit their first critical analysis paper during the third week of
class, having attended only five or six sessions, one of which was spent
on introducing the syllabus and policies, and two of which were man-
datory lectures on “the power of language” and “academic integrity”.
Essentially, instructors had two sessions, or three at best, to prepare stu-
dents to write in such a difficult genre. Another factor that contributed
to academic dishonesty was the use of a final exam weighted at 25% of
the final grade, constituting a ‘deal breaker’, as the course coordinator
explained it. The rationale was that if students managed to get through
the loopholes of an instructor’s class, they would still get caught at the
end, and if they passed, they would do so with a C+ or B− at best. This
approach suggested that the curriculum was designed to catch cheats
rather than facilitating students’ learning and helping them develop as
writers and critical thinkers.
Having observed these challenges firsthand, I designed a new syllabus
with new assignments and tasks that meet the mandated learning out-
comes. Before implementing the new approach, however, it was imper-
ative to demonstrate that the problems with the existing curriculum
were prevalent in all sections and that the new intervention would
work. Thus, a study was designed to investigate students’ and teachers’
perceptions of the existing and new curriculums. The next section
presents findings related to the existing curriculum. It is followed by a
description of the new curriculum, along with major findings related to
piloting it.
93
Findings: Existing Curriculum

The study’s first goal was to investigate whether the existing curricu-
lum was doing what it was supposed to be doing, as the administra-
tion believed: encouraging original writing, improving students’ writing
skills and combating academic dishonesty. Two questionnaires were
designed through Qualtrics and administered to all sections of first-year
writing students and to all instructors. This chapter will only report on
results from students’ questionnaires. The total number of student par-
ticipants was 337, with 43.4% female and 56.6% male. Students were
asked whether they liked in-class writing or not. Table 5.2 shows the
percentage of students who liked in-class writing (49%) and those who
did not (51%) and the reasons they selected for their preference.
Other reasons for not liking in-class writing included inability to
write under pressure, inability to focus on the task at hand and be cre-
ative due to distractions and lack of inspiration, and inability to write
quickly. A follow-up question asked, ‘if given the choice, would you like
Table 5.2 In-class writing by preference

Do you like in-class writing? Why or why not?
Yes 49% It encourages original writing 45%
It decreases plagiarism and 23%
cheating
It helps them dedicate time to 23%
more important courses at home
It prepares them for the final exam 9%
No 51% It does not cater to writers’ differ- 48%
ent writing styles and preferences
It does not provide the flexibility 35%
that writers need when they draft
their essays in Microsoft Word
(e.g., cutting, pasting, looking up
words, checking correct spelling,
etc.)
It does not enable students to 11%
spend time on the process of
writing
Other 6%
94
F. Esseili
to write your essays outside class?’ Seventy-four per cent indicated they
would like to do so, compared to 26% who said they would rather not.
Such a finding reveals that when allowed to have a say in their writing
process, most students opt for writing at their own convenience rather
than in the restricted classroom environment, where they are under
time pressure. The 26% who still wanted to do in-class writing indi-
cated that they would rather not do any work for English outside class
and focus instead on their majors.
As for plagiarism, when students were asked whether they had pla-
giarized or not, only 29% admitted that they had and 71% denied ever
plagiarizing. However, when these same students were asked whether
they had ever engaged in any type of unauthorized activity during
in-class writing, they gave some unexpected answers. The left-hand col-
umn of Table 5.3 shows the type of unauthorized activities that students
were asked to identify. It shows that of the 71% who denied ever plagia-
rizing or cheating, a combined total of 56% admitted they had engaged
in an unauthorized activity during in-class writing (e.g., memorizing
essays, using cell phones, etc.), 36% chose not to answer the question
and only 8% denied ever engaging in such activities.
Findings thus suggest that the problem with in-class writing runs
deeper than originally thought. This does not mean that in-class writing
should be abandoned entirely. To be sure, when done appropriately, it is
a sound pedagogical strategy that could be used to workshop students’
essays and help them during the drafting process. But its purpose in this
particular context was to encourage original writing and combat plagia-
rism, and it was obviously not achieving that purpose.
As for reasons given for plagiarizing and/or cheating, students’
answers ranged from not knowing how to summarize, paraphrase and
quote (21%), not knowing how to cite references (14%), not being
used to relying on their own original ideas (7%) and not being confi-
dent expressing their own ideas (17%) to considering it difficult to write
original academic papers (13%). Twenty-eight per cent provided other
reasons, including being lazy, fear of failing, not being penalized for the
same unauthorized activities in school, difficulty of writing in class, lack
of confidence and lack of knowledge on assigned topics. This finding
points to a related problem, which is whether the current curriculum
95
Table 5.3 Self-reports on plagiarism and cheating

During in-class writing, have you Have you plagiarized or cheated during
ever engaged in one or more in-class writing?
of the following unauthorized Yes (29%) No (71%) Total (%)
activities?
Brought an essay that I pur- 4 1 2
chased from someone and
copied it in class without the
teacher’s knowledge (%)
Brought an essay that I wrote 26 15 18
at home and copied it in class
without the teacher’s knowl-
edge (%)
Memorized an essay that I 6 2 3
purchased from someone and
wrote it down from memory
during class (%)
Memorized an essay that I 29 28 28
prepared at home, and wrote
it down from memory during
in-class writing (%)
Included sections of a pre-pre- 9 8 8
pared essay inside reference
articles with the intention of
copying them during in-class
writing (%)
Used my cell phone to store text 8 2 4
with the intention of copying
it during in-class writing (%)
I choose not to answer (%) 18 36 29
None of the above (%) 0 8 8
Total (%) 100
is improving students’ writing skills as it purports to do. Students do

not seem to be confident when it comes to their writing skills. While
the majority reported no to slight improvement in terms of content
development, organization, writing grammatical sentences, using
proper word choice and punctuating appropriately, students found that
the class benefited them the most in terms of working with references,
such as quoting properly (69%), paraphrasing (70%), and summariz-
ing (67%). Inadequate preparation in such skills was among the reasons
students gave to justify plagiarism. Additional reasons for plagiarism
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F. Esseili
and their perceived lack of progress as writers included being French

educated, working with unauthentic materials and uninteresting top-
ics, identifying writing courses as a ‘rip-off’ (the cost of credits for the
same class differs depending on their major), believing they are average
writers, or even bad writers, having to write (and read) in class within
a limited time, and believing that there is no connection between their
majors and the writing class.
According to these findings, the existing curriculum did not seem to
be achieving its purpose. It did not encourage original writing and did
not succeed in combating plagiarism; rather it was encouraging crea-
tive ways of cheating the system. In terms of improvement and devel-
opment, students reported improvement in working with references
rather than in their overall writing skills. The next section introduces
the new syllabus and describes how it was successful in addressing these
challenges.
My primary concerns in addressing these challenges were to ensure (1)
that students are motivated to be in the class and to write; (2) that they
develop confidence and improve their writing skills; and (3) that aca-
demic dishonesty is reduced, if not eliminated. Students should be able
to enjoy writing and discussing topics that are directly relevant to them,
rather than comparing and contrasting two essays, for example, neither
of which may appeal to them, as is the case with in the curriculum at
present. Such compare/contrast assignments and readings are no doubt
important, but they might not be as important or relevant when rounds
of armed conflict are taking place as students are sitting in the class-
room. In order to engage and motivate students to write, assignments
and topics should be carefully selected and sequenced, and students
should be encouraged to grow and to think beyond a final red mark.
Writing does not have to be a source of aversion and fear.
One approach to addressing the above challenges and students’
needs is a modification of the SWP in which students learn to “develop
97
expertise and confidence in dealing with subject matter beyond writing

based on personal histories, experiences, and tastes” (Leki, 1992, p. 19).
In this project, students must select a topic that they are interested in,
have had previous experience with, and are motivated to explore and
develop during an entire semester. Leki explains: “the topics the stu-
dents ultimately choose cover a wide range of issues, reflect the stu-
dents’ individual concerns, and are rooted in their personal experiences”
(p. 21). Assignments are linked together and build upon one another
in order to enhance students’ knowledge and expertise on a given topic
and to improve their writing skills as they explore the topic in differ-
ent ways. The original sequence proposed by Leki included five writ-
ing assignments: current knowledge, summaries, survey, interviews and
reports.
For the EFL class under investigation, the number and nature of
the sequenced assignments were modified from Leki’s original model
in order to suit the needs of the local population. Students wrote four
assignments instead of five: a personal narrative, summaries, literature
review and a proposal on a single topic. In contrast to Leki’s condition
that students should have had experience with the topic, they were
allowed to choose topics that they would like to explore, particularly
ones they were grappling with. For example, some students wanted to
explore careers that their parents had chosen for them. They were in
majors that they did not like. Topics included running a family busi-
ness, dealing with depression, civil marriage, perceptions of the self,
corruption in Lebanon, war and conflict, trauma, and refugees. Thus,
one student wrote about his personal experience of wasta (nepotism),
moved to locating articles on the topic, summarized the articles, wrote
a literature review based on the summarized articles and finally pre-
sented a proposal on the problem. Another wrote about his uncle’s
marijuana farm that the government had burned “without offering an
alternative source of income for the family”, as the student explained.
In addition, he personally had been arrested for smoking marijuana on
campus.
In contrast to the existing curriculum, assignments were ordered
from the familiar (narrative) to the more difficult genres of writing
98
F. Esseili
literature reviews and proposals. Reading materials were selected from

the students’ immediate context: texts written in English by Lebanese
and Arab authors with some international pieces written on issues sim-
ilar to the ones experienced in the students’ country. For example, in
‘Leaving Beirut’, one of the texts that students read, Mai Ghassoub
explored her life before and during the Lebanese civil war, addressing
themes of conflict and violence, among others. The text spoke not only
to Lebanese students, but also to Syrian refugees in the class who were
struggling to find their place in a new environment. For each assign-
ment students read model texts written by both former students and
L1 writers. Students composed several drafts and got feedback from
multiple sources, including their peers, writing tutor and instructor.
Students did not receive a grade on their drafts, but feedback on con-
tent and organization was given. As for grammar, one or two patterns
of errors were identified and the student was asked to pay attention
to that pattern in their subsequent drafts. Before students submitted
a draft in a new genre, another type of sequencing was followed. The
assignments were broken down into a series of steps, or checkpoints,
which allowed for the instructor to work with individual students on
brainstorming, organizing and refining ideas for the draft. Students
also worked in pairs or small groups on these minor assignments (e.g.,
writing outlines, thesis statements and attention-drawing introduc-
tions; showing voice and significance while still using the third person
in a literature review, etc.) and they discussed their feedback on each
other’s papers. In contrast to the existing curriculum, in which students
were forced to write their entire paper in class, students were allowed
to write at home. In-class writing tasks were designed to help students
think through ideas. In addition, students participated in creating a
rubric for the different assignments, which they used to evaluate the
sample models and to guide their papers and peer reviews. These were
part and parcel of the writing and evaluation process. Finally, students
were asked to submit an ungraded reflection journal for every assign-
ment in which they reflected on their learning process, writing skills,
progress, feedback received, revisions made and anything else they
wished to address.
99
Findings: New Curriculum

The study’s second goal was two-fold: (1) to demonstrate to administra-
tion that the new curriculum was successful in addressing the aforemen-
tioned problems, that is, it nurtures motivated and confident students,
enhances their writing skills and decreases academic dishonesty; and (2)
to dispel the administration’s belief that the new pedagogic approach
was too difficult for instructors to implement and show that, in fact,
they preferred it to the existing curriculum. In order to address the
first goal, pre- and post-semester questionnaires were designed through
Qualtrics and administered to 68 students in four sections of the class.
As for the second goal, semi-structured interviews were conducted with
the two instructors who taught both the existing and the new curricu-
lums. The interviews were transcribed and coded for themes.
The pre- and post-semester questionnaires asked students a range of
questions, including whether they believed themselves to be good writ-
ers, whether they were motivated to write, whether they liked in-class
writing, and whether they had ever plagiarized and why. Table 5.4 pre-
sents a comparison of these responses.
Cross-tabulations revealed a strong correlation between students’
major and their attitude towards writing in the pre-semester question-
naire. Students who were English or Education majors were more likely
to have a positive attitude towards writing. Follow-up questions uncov-
ered some of the reasons behind the negative attitudes observed in stu-
dents’ responses. Earning a low grade was a major factor responsible
Table 5.4 Comparing pre- and post-semester responses

Pre-semester Post-semester
Yes (%) No (%) Yes (%) No (%)
Do you like to write? 4 96 92 8
Do you like in-class writing? 54 46 86 14
Are you motivated to write? 22 74 78 22
Do you feel confident in your 29 71 66 34
writing skills?
Do you believe you are a good 38 62 72 28
writer?
Have you ever plagiarized? 33 67 9 91
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F. Esseili
for students’ lack of confidence and motivation, and their overall aver-
sion to writing. When asked why they believed they had earned a low
grade, students attributed it to strict grading policy (e.g., students lose
1–3 points for every error depending on its type), to being French edu-
cated (English is their third language) and to restrictions associated with
in-class writing (limited time, lack of resources). Other factors included
lack of time, absence of writing assignments in their disciplines, lack
of good proofreading skills, and the mandatory and dull nature of the
courses. Examining data from the post-semester questionnaire revealed
that students’ attitudes had changed remarkably. Using the SWP
was successful in motivating students to write (78%), boosting their
self-confidence (66%), and having a favourable attitude towards writ-
ing (92%). Eighty-one per cent of students reported that choosing their
own topics made them more confident and motivated to write and to
work on their projects. They affirmed that the freedom to choose top-
ics was an important aspect of the writing process. When asked why
they chose their topics, students indicated that the topics were directly
related to their lives, to their major, or to a current issue going on in the
country that they wanted to be more knowledgeable about. Students
expressed that they had learned a great deal about themselves, their
peers and their immediate context.
As for plagiarism, Table 5.4 shows that when asked whether they
had ever plagiarized in the pre-semester questionnaire, 67% of students
denied plagiarizing, while 33% admitted to it. However, similar to stu-
dents in the existing curriculum, in a follow-up question, 84% of stu-
dents who denied plagiarizing admitted to being engaged in a type of
unauthorized activity. Some of the reasons offered by students included
“not knowing how to cite” (28%) and “not being used to rely on their
own original ideas” (27%). In the post-semester questionnaire, 91% of
students denied plagiarizing or engaging in any unauthorized activity.
Students commented that the way the class was designed did not pres-
sure them into resorting to unauthorized activities. They appreciated not
having to write their papers in one sitting, not receiving grades on their
drafts, and not being heavily penalized for grammar errors. The 9% who
admitted to plagiarizing did so in their final proposal paper, blaming it on
lack of time and having to focus on tests and reports in their disciplines.
101
Finally, students who were taught using the SWP project rated them-
selves higher on all writing skills than students in the existing curric-
ulum. For example, 65% of students believed that their ability to
synthesize information using their own voice had improved, compared
with only 15% in the existing curriculum. In addition, 57% of students
believed their content development had improved compared to 36% in
the other sections.
It seems that allowing students to choose their topics and write
at home, choosing reading materials that are relevant to them, and
sequencing the assignments and breaking them down into manageable
tasks have all enabled students to feel comfortable and confident, to
enjoy being in class, and to be motivated to write and to explore their
own ideas on topics. While the new curriculum did not eliminate pla-
giarism altogether, it did succeed in decreasing it.
Interviews with the two teachers, both of whom had taught both the
existing and the new curriculum, supported the above-mentioned find-
ings. One teacher indicated that in her experience teaching the exist-
ing curriculum, students were not engaged with the readings, compared
to the new curriculum, where they were highly motivated and engaged
“to an extent that it [was] hard to shut them up!” The second instruc-
tor agreed that the new curriculum was successful in engaging students
both in terms of classroom interaction and being motivated to write. In
terms of providing feedback, the two instructors found it challenging
to focus on content and organization development rather than marking
every single grammatical error as they were used to. At the same time,
they loved suspending assigning a grade on a draft because, as one
teacher noted, “when you assign a grade, that’s all they see, a num-
ber, and they stop paying attention to feedback. I like that separation
between the grade and feedback.” Finally, although the two instructors
admitted that the new curriculum “might be a bit challenging to imple-
ment especially for novice teachers”, they agreed that “the benefits out-
weigh the challenges and the extra time that instructors have to invest”,
which should be resolved with proper mentoring and training.
Despite these positive findings, the new curriculum was not adopted
or adapted on a wider scale. The first obstacle was a lack of institu-
tional support. Change that is not driven by internal beliefs might be
102
F. Esseili
perceived as personally and professionally threatening to an administra-

tor. Another obstacle was the difficulty of promoting this curriculum
to other faculty members, partly because the majority were part-timers
on contracts, and changing the status quo might not have been in
their best interest, which is understandable. The lack of motivation to
change could also be attributed to the additional workload that might
ensue from using a new pedagogic approach. Writing essays in class
saves preparation time and effort, and may make it easier to focus on
grammatical accuracy and in-text citations. Finally, the high turnover of
full-time faculty members in the department made it difficult to gain
support. Within two years, four international faculty members resigned,
two of whom were trained in rhetoric and composition.
Implications and Conclusion
Contrary to the assumptions of some local writing instructors, academic
dishonesty, specifically plagiarism and/or using essay mills or banks in
freshman composition, is not a Lebanese, MENA or international stu-
dent problem (cf. Dante, 2010; Howard & Robillard, 2008; Wheeler,
2009). It is a worldwide phenomenon that is often rooted in the type
of instruction and curriculum used in a given programme, the overall
culture of an education system, the mismatch between students’ views
on dishonesty and those of the administration, and the business-driven
societal expectations that are making individuals race against time and
financial obligations, among other factors. In this chapter, I focused on
the type of instruction and curriculum found in the Lebanese context.
Students in the existing writing course identified a number of chal-
lenges that hindered their progress as writers and that encouraged them
to plagiarize, including being French educated, having to write in class
and not knowing how to cite, among other factors. To address these
issues, insights from research on world Englishes and the teaching of
writing should inform writing courses. Administrators and instructors
should keep in mind their students’ needs and goals. Grammatical accu-
racy is important, but it should not take precedence over communicative
effectiveness. In addition, writing program administrators (WPAs) and
103
instructors should keep in mind that it is not easy to write well-docu-

mented essays using different genres and that “to produce such advanced
writing is a complex and long-term process, requiring a period of prac-
tice and apprenticeship not of semesters but years” (Pennington, 2010, p.
148). Another factor to keep in mind is the importance of allowing stu-
dents to choose their own topics and its role in motivating them to write.
While keeping in mind that a variety of educational experiences
and learning cultures exists within individual countries, the challenges
identified in this chapter do not seem to be specific to this particular
university or to Lebanon. A number of studies conducted in various
universities across the MENA region (e.g., in Palestine, Jordan, Saudi
Arabia and Morocco, to name a few) found that many EFL teachers still
follow a product approach to writing or have a narrow understanding
of writing as a process, and that learners in writing courses are unable
to compose accurate sentences and develop content (cf. Bani Younes
& Albalawi, 2015; Ezza, 2010; Nofal, 2011). In addition, similar chal-
lenges were outlined in international branch campuses in the Gulf,
where in one study it was found that some students tended to memorize
texts, lacked background knowledge, struggled with specific genres (e.g.,
critical analysis and literature review), and needed more time to read
and write (Miller & Pessoa, 2017). In another study, Rudd and Telafici
(2017) investigated the problem of adopting American-centric text-
books to teach first-year writing and concluded that only when teach-
ers abandon their tendency to rely solely on imported texts will they be
able to localize and contextualize their practice, and hence better serve
the student population.
Understanding students’ background (e.g., the school systems they
graduated from, the extent to which they read in their native and target
languages, their beliefs about learning and writing), as well as teachers’
beliefs on teaching and learning, are essential for any sound curricu-
lar reform in writing classes. To elaborate, EFL students who have not
been exposed to analyzing arguments in high schools and to citing
sources will find it extremely difficult to write a critical-analysis essay
at university level without adequate preparation. Their perceived failure
to complete the task within one or two class periods can be seen as a
form of negligence on the part of the instructor or WPA who failed to
104
F. Esseili
understand their students’ needs and prepare them adequately to write

following genre conventions. Students need extra time to process read-
ings in a foreign language and more time to write and analyze argu-
ments. Using imported texts that have nothing to do with students’
immediate concerns and their context does not help and is an addi-
tional barrier to development (Esseili, 2014).
The majority of teachers in this specific context believed that students
often used being French educated as an excuse to justify their failure
to write. However, it is important to understand the difficulty of nav-
igating and switching between the languages that these students have
learned. Being natives of a country where diglossia exists, as is the case
across MENA, these students acquire an unwritten colloquial language
as a mother tongue, learn Modern Standard Arabic in schools, which
they use to read and write, learn mathematics and sciences using either
English or French, which are used for instruction across Lebanon, and
then are expected to complete a number of tasks in that foreign lan-
guage, including using academic language, writing timed essays on unin-
teresting or unfamiliar topics, and adhering to the conventions of a genre
they are inexperienced with. When they fail to meet our expectations
and standards, the results may be penalties for them rather than a criti-
cal reassessment by us of the curriculum and pedagogy that led to these
outcomes. Instructors, administrators and institutions need to have the
courage to examine their own practices and the impact these have.
In order to serve students better and lead them to success, institu-
tions could consider several steps: they could expend efforts in better
understanding the context and their students’ needs, trust their instruc-
tors, and give them freedom to make the necessary curricular changes.
This responsibility does not fall solely on institutions; drivers of change,
whether leaders or individual teachers, should keep communication
channels with administrators and other faculty open. They should
involve them in every step of the process, and make everyone an active,
agentive participant in the process. Perhaps one of the failings evident
from this project was an inability to garner support and bring people
on board. Although the ideas may have been good (and the student and
teacher feedback seems to support this interpretation), the process of
implementing change was ultimately unsuccessful and more effort may
105
have had to be expended on building trust and creating a collaborative

journey of development.
Finally, ongoing professional development in specific areas of exper-
tise, such as teaching EFL writing, should be encouraged, and in some
instances mandated by programme administrators and course coor-
dinators. Using action research would be one way of keeping instruc-
tors involved in improving and developing the teaching and learning
processes. Data and research coming out of this region would in turn
inform international teacher education courses and help them prepare
their teachers to be more effective and to be more cognizant of the
needs of local contexts.
1. What are the key issues identified in this chapter related to teaching
freshman composition? What challenges do these present for the stu-
dents, the instructors, the WPA and the institutions that host them?
2. Analyze your own institution’s curriculum for teaching freshman
composition. What are some of the issues you are able to identify?
How might they be addressed?
3. Some suggestions for supporting academic honesty have been pro-
vided in this chapter. What are some of the other possible ways sup-
port might be focused on students and faculty to promote academic
honesty?
4. A major reason why the alternative approach described in this chapter
did not gain traction is the difficulty of convincing the administration
that change is needed even when evidence-based research is available.
Reflect on the WPA’s leadership role within their programmes. How
should they have responded to the current situation? Why?
5. This chapter touches upon the fact that composition classes may be
primarily taught by lecturers or adjuncts who are often overworked
and underpaid and who, in the interests of keeping their jobs, may
not want to disturb the status quo. How might this situation affect
their instruction and their ability to innovate? What is the role of the
WPA in supporting this specific population?
106
F. Esseili
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6
Innovation in Reading in the United
Arab Emirates
Melanie Gobert and Helene Demirci
Introduction
The United Nations Arab Human Development Report, ‘Building a
Knowledge Society’ (UNDP, 2003) first alerted Arab societies to the
frightening state of literacy, publishing and reading in the region when
compared to other countries. According to the report, the average Arab
reads less than one book a year while the average European reads 35,
an average Arab 6 minutes a year, and an average European 200 hours
per year, although some dispute the interpretation and accuracy of the
report. For example, the report counted literature but excluded other
forms of reading such as the Internet and magazines. The report also
addressed the number of books produced and translated. The entire
M. Gobert (*) · H. Demirci 
Higher Colleges of Technology, Abu Dhabi, UAE
e-mail: mgobert@hct.ac.ae
H. Demirci
e-mail: hdemirci@hct.ac.ae

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13413-6_6
110
M. Gobert and H. Demirci
Arab world (population 422 million) translates one-fifth of the books

translated by Greece (population 11 million). These statistics will vary
from country to country and there has been an improvement in the past
few years, the report already being over 10 years old. However, a recent
survey by the government in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) of 12,000
Emirati parents, students and teachers found that 73% of parents do
not read to their children, and only 7% of the population visits pub-
lic libraries (versus 500% in Canada). Only 50% of students in schools
and universities read routinely, while individuals read only 1.5 books a
year. A further 78% of adults do not read regularly. There are 20 books
on average per household compared to 203 in UK households, and only
four books are read each year by Emirati students (compared to 40 in
Korea) (Altaher, 2016). This has caused the government to pass a law
on reading to “promote reading as a lifestyle choice and as a means to a
brighter future” (Altaher, 2016). This chapter will discuss innovation in
reading instruction that used the MReader tracking programme to cre-
ate a competition to encourage students to read books of their choice at
their level at the largest tertiary education provider in the country. The
MReader is an online cloud-based tracking programme which is com-
pletely free for all students and educational institutions to use, created
and funded by the Extensive Reading Foundation. The chapter will dis-
cuss what worked and what did not regarding the competition, such as
teacher resistance and student cheating. The students read both physical
books and online books while participating in the competition.
The UAE officially declared 2016 “The Year of Reading” (UAE
Declares, 2015), citing eradicating illiteracy as one of the Millenium
Development Goals. When making the announcement, Sheikh
Mohammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, warned of
the “reading crisis in the Arab world” and the urgent need to rectify it
(ibid.). Sheikh Mohammad was referring to the ‘Building a Knowledge
Society’ report, which concluded that Arab children spend on average
6 minutes a year reading in comparison to 12,000 minutes per year
6 Innovation in Reading in the United Arab Emirates
111
(200 hours) for children in the West. The report also stated that an
Arab individual on average reads a quarter of a page a year compared
to the 11 books read by an American and seven books by a British per-
son. This lack of reading and the Gulf Arab student is not new to ESL
instructors, who, as Cobb (2007) reports, witnessed the lack of reading
and the inadequacy of ESL reading teaching methodology back in the
1980s. This lack of reading severely impacts the knowledge capacity of
Emirati society when compared with Western societies.
Motivating reluctant readers can be quite challenging in today’s
world where reading competes with many technological distractions.
Male students can be even more affected than female students when it
comes to motivation and reading, especially due to the availability and
widespread use of computer video games. To address this, Demirci and
Gobert (2015) developed a competition called the Reading Challenge
to increase their students’ reading in English as a second language by
the extensive reading of graded readers, or ‘language learner literature’
as it is known in the world of ESL publishing. The Reading Challenge
is a competition run throughout the semester whereby students read
extensively outside class and their reading is tracked by MReader, a
tracking platform available at www.mreader.org. MReader contains
quizzes for over 7000 graded readers written for English language learn-
ers from almost all ESL publishers. Major publishers of graded readers
support the website financially by donating to the Extensive Reading
Foundation. It also contains a substantial collection of youth and chil-
dren’s literature written for native speakers. The cloud-based tracking
platform MReader currently has over 80,000 users worldwide and is
completely free to use.
In our competition, students read books from the library, do a
quiz, and if they pass the quiz, they get points which equal the num-
ber of words read in the book. There are 30 questions per book in the
MReader programme, but the student only answers ten randomized
questions per quiz. The questions are basically written to determine
if the student has read the book or not. The student may look at the
book while they take the quiz, and the quizzes have a time limit, so
the student does not have enough time to read the book while taking
the quiz, but must complete it before attempting a quiz. If the student
112
fails a quiz, they cannot retake the quiz unless the teacher resets it.
At the end of the semester, medals are given to the top reader in each
class, a trophy to the first-place class in each level, and a trophy to the
top three readers overall.
A weekly leader board is instrumental in keeping the students moti-
vated during the competition. Our weekly leader board showed the
number of words read by each class per week at each level and the top
three student readers from each class with the number of words each
student had read. The leader board was made using PowerPoint and
displayed on the plasma screens in the library. It was also sent to the
teachers to share with their class on the projector and post in the class-
room virtual learning environment. Teachers could also project or
download the class reading statistics from MReader, which showed how
many words each student in the class had read. This was an ideal way
to encourage both teachers and students to engage in the competition
as, until the class had read any words, ‘TBA’ was used to show that
no words had been read by the class on the library-issued PowerPoint
leader board and 0 number of words read would also appear for the stu-
dent in the class leader board downloaded or projected from MReader.
The Context
Extensive reading is defined as reading self-selected books for pleas-
ure (Bamford & Day, 2003). It is contrasted with intensive read-
ing, the reading of short texts with accompanying questions, typical
of ESL teaching reading methodology. There has been a great deal of
research on the benefits of extensive reading in both first and second
languages (Renandya, 2007). These benefits include spelling acquisition
(Cho & Kim, 2004; Gobert, 2014; Krashen, 2004; Pellicer-Sanchez
& Schmitt, 2010; Pigada & Schmitt, 2006), an increase in reading
proficiency (Al-Homoud & Schmitt, 2009; Chen, Chen, Chen, &
Wey, 2013; Cho & Kim, 2004; Gobert, 2014; Hafiz & Tudor, 1989;
Kargar, 2012; Nakanishi, 2014; Yamashita, 2008), vocabulary acqui-
sition (Al-Homoud & Schmitt, 2009; Cho & Kim, 2004; Gobert,
2014; Kweon, 2008; Rashidi & Piran, 2011) and an increase in overall
113
language proficiency (Gobert, 2014; Iwahori, 2008; Lee, 2007; Mason

& Krashen, 1995; Nakanishi, 2014), as well as writing proficiency
(Cho & Kim, 2004; Hafiz & Tudor, 1989; Mason & Krashen, 1995).
In fact, Mustafa (2012) has argued that the reason first-year university
Emirati students are poor writers is that they do not read extensively.
He argues that extensive reading moves collocations, grammatical pat-
terns and structures, and spelling patterns into long-term memory in
addition to giving students some background knowledge about the
world to draw upon when writing. Bamford and Day (2003) claim that,
“Students who read more will not only become better and more confi-
dent readers, but they will also improve their reading, writing, listen-
ing and speaking abilities and their vocabularies will get richer” (p. 1).
Nakanishi’s (2014, pp. 30–31) meta-analysis of extensive reading
research found that extensive reading may be one of the most effective
instructional strategies to promote reading proficiency with a medi-
um-size effect on group contrasts (d = 0.46) and pre-posts contrasts
(d = 0.71).
Students who read extensively score higher on standardized exams
such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)
(Ahmed, 2010), Trends in Math and Science Study (TIMMS)
(Martin, Mullis, & Foy, 2008), and Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SAT).
For TIMMS and PISA, the tests are taken in the student’s first lan-
guage, in this case Arabic for Emirati students. Further proof of
Emirati students’ poor reading ability in ESL can be found in
the results of the International English Language Testing System
(IELTS). Table 6.1 shows the performance of candidates from the
UAE compared with L1 Arabic candidates in the reading section
of the Academic Module of the IELTS exam (IELTS Annual Review
2006–2015).
The problem is that Emirati students do not read extensively in
Arabic or English (Gobert, 2011; Jazzar, 1991), despite many initia-
tives to increase the amount of reading in schools such as the launch of
the Sheikh Zayed Book Award (equivalent to the Man Booker Prize for
Arabic writing and established in 2007), annual international book fairs
in three cities and reading weeks in public schools. There are various
reasons for this lack of widespread success for these initiatives although
114
Table 6.1 Mean reading bands for the IELTS Academic Module for L1 Arabic test takers, UAE test takers, and rest of the
worlda
2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
L1 Arabic 5.52 5.31 5.09 4.96 n.a. 5.00 4.90 5.00 5.00 5.00
Academic
Module
UAE Academic 5.10 4.96 4.80 4.69 4.80 4.80 4.60 4.70 4.60 4.70
Module
Rest of the 6.19 6.17 6.30
world
aData only available for rest of the world from 2012 to 2014
115
they are making some inroads. In the UAE, “just 22 per cent of people
described themselves as regular readers”, according to the Arab Thought
Foundation’s Fikr (al-Yacoub, 2012).
UAE students’ home literacy backgrounds are a major source of this
lack of reading. In 1991, 15 years after the founding of the university,
Jazzar did an ethnographic study at United Arab Emirates University,
the first and largest national university founded in the country, on the
impact of home literacy practices on college reading performance in
Arabic and English. He counted the number of books in the homes of
three students who performed well on tests of English and Arabic and
three students who performed poorly on the same tests. He found that
the poorest-performing student had only eight English books in his
home (college text books) and 45 Arabic books while the highest-per-
forming student had 40 books in English and 68 books in Arabic.
Overall, the strongly performing students had 302 books compared to
the weaker students’ total of 191 books and spent 91 hours per week
reading compared to 49. Gobert (2011) also found that 41% of 102
female Emirati students surveyed reported that they did not read at all
outside college, either in Arabic or English. These statistics are similar
to those found in a comparison between high and low socio-economic
groups in the USA (Krashen, 2004). However, Jazzar (1991) found
that the weaker students in his study had the most luxurious homes,
more cars and more servants; and the stronger students had bigger
home libraries, with more literature in Arabic and English, and spent
more time reading. Two of the participants in Jazzar’s (1991) study were
female and the remaining four were male. The lowest-scoring student
was male. One of the students in the study with the most books in his
home was actually Palestinian, not Emirati, and read because his father
encouraged him to. Palestinian refugees living in the UAE have been
allowed to attend UAE University with special sanctions granted by the
UAE government.
Further and more recent evidence of a lack of books in the homes of
UAE students comes from the TIMMS report (Sankar, 2009), which
found that Dubai pupils had fewer books on average than students
across the globe and that the majority of students had fewer than 25
books in the home (ibid.). The TIMMS report has long documented a
116
correlation between the number of books in the home and student test
performance (ibid.). PISA, another international assessment used for
benchmarking students, tested 5620 15-year-old Dubai students from
134 public and private schools and found that Dubai ranked 41st out
of 63 countries that participated in the test (ahead of Qatar and Jordan)
(Ahmed, 2010). According to Schleicher, the head of the PISA study,
“one third of the students in Dubai did not reach the baseline level two
in reading literacy, which is considered the minimum level required for
success in a ‘knowledge-based economy’” (as cited in Ahmed, 2010).
Another reason why students may lack a reading habit in Arabic
society is the phenomenon of Arabic diglossia. In fact, Arabic can be
considered “triglossic” because there are at least three versions of Arabic
that students use. The first is their spoken vernacular Arabic (SVA)
according to Maamouri (1998) and Saiegh-Haddad (2004). This can
vary even between neighbouring Emirates such as Ras Al Khaimah and
Abu Dhabi, but there are three main varieties: Levantine Arabic (Israel,
Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon), Maghreb Arabic (North Africa), and
Khaleeji (Gulf ) Arabic. In the UAE and Oman, some students speak
another language altogether, Jebali, which is not an Arabic-based lan-
guage. There are many different colloquial dialects of spoken Arabic and
written Arabic has two main varieties: Modern Standard Arabic and
Classical Arabic.
The second version of Arabic that our students learn to read and
write at school is Modern Standard Arabic, MSA, also called fusha
Arabic. It is the standard, formal written Arabic dating from when
Classical Arabic was modernized at the turn of the last century. Because
the dialects are so disparate, Arabs from different geographical loca-
tions sometimes use this version of Arabic to communicate. It is similar
to the idea of, for example, nuns from Romania and Peru using Latin
to communicate. However, Gulf students may not have learned fusha
Arabic to the same degree as their counterparts in other Arab countries,
such as Syria and Lebanon, where there is a long tradition of education
with a higher value placed upon it. Wilfred Thesiger (1959), an intrepid
explorer of the Empty Quarter, the large desert between Saudi Arabia
and the UAE, writes of a 1400-km ride to meet him that one of his
travelling companions, bin Kabina, made by camel, to have a letter that
117
Thesiger sent to him read. Not only could bin Kabina not read, but he
had to ride 900 km to find someone who could read the letter to him.
In addition, according to Maamouri (1998), literacy in the Arab world
may not be as high as in other parts of the world because fusha (Modern
Standard Arabic) is challenging to master, often taken as a subject
throughout college, and akin to learning a second language. The third
version of Arabic, referred to as Classical Arabic, is the language of the
Quran, which has a high social value, but is very different lexically, pho-
netically, and grammatically when compared to the spoken vernacular
dialects and fusha Arabic (Abu Rabia & Taha, 2006; Maamouri, 1998;
Saiegh-Haddad, 2004).
Coming from a triglossic linguistic background puts an added bur-
den on UAE students when they learn to read in their own language,
and this undoubtedly has an impact on reading for pleasure in Arabic.
Mustafa (2012) and Kandil (2001) have both documented that reading
for pleasure is not encouraged in Arabic. When students read Arabic lit-
erature in school, they read slowly and carefully because the teacher is
going to ask them tricky, detailed questions hoping to catch them out
(Kandil, 2001). Reading in Arabic has negative connotations associated
with grades and punishment for Arabic speakers (ibid.).
Developing the habit of reading in students can be a challenge for
any teacher, but when faced with students from societies where there
is a lack of a reading culture or reading habit because of the prized oral
tradition (Shannon, 2003), it can be even more challenging. The oral
tradition of the society means that parents, grandparents and teachers
tell stories to pass on the cultural norms and expectations to children,
rather than reading books. Think of the childhood books native English
speakers read and have read to them to pass on English-speaking socie-
ties’ cultural norms and values: Pinocchio and The Boy who Cried Wolf,
for not lying; The Three Little Pigs and The Ant and the Grasshopper, for
idealizing hard work and the perils of idleness.
Krashen (2004) claims that the most powerful way to encourage
reading is to provide students with access to more books that they are
interested in reading. Lack of access to books even affects the reading
proficiency of minority communities, who are often members of low
socio-economic groups, in the United States. According to Krashen
118
(2004), research shows that students who perform better at reading

on standardized tests have more books in their school libraries, bigger
libraries in their schools, and more bookshops in their neighbourhoods.
Krashen (2004) goes on to argue that it is the constant exposure to
the written word that enables students to master English spelling. Most
children who master the weekly spelling tests in grade school already
know how to spell 70–80% of the words on the test because they come
from a literacy-rich environment with lots of books in the home and
the practice of being regularly read to by their parents, while children
coming from lower socio-economic groups with less access to liter-
ature in the home know how to spell only 20–30% of the words on
the test. Both groups improve their spelling by only 1–2 words in the
weekly intensive study of the list of words leading up to the test (ibid.).
Birch (2002) also writes that English has a complicated and extensive
orthographic sound-to-letter and letter-to-sound system, which includes
too many patterns to learn by rules, but which the human brain has a
great capacity for figuring out, as long as it has sufficient exposure.
Findings
To determine if the competition motivated the students, an electronic
survey was collected at the end of the semester with statements about
the reading competition using a Likert scale (see Table 6.2). Eighty-
three student responses were collected from 179 participants in the pro-
gramme. Fifty-six per cent of the respondents were aged between 17
and 20. Most of the respondents were Common European Framework
(CEFR) A2+-level students.
The survey questions were given in both Arabic and English and
open-ended questions were translated into English for analysis. After
the survey was conducted, focus group interviews were held with six
participating classes to validate it. The researchers’ own classes did not
participate in the focus group interviews. In addition, interviews were
held with six of the participating teachers. The survey showed that 81%
of the students agreed or strongly agreed that they were motivated to
Table 6.2 Summary of the results of the Reading Challenge questionnaire
Strongly Disagree Agree Strongly agree Total
disagree responses
1. The Reading Challenge encouraged me 3.8% (3) 8.9% (7) 43% (34) 44.3% (35) 79
to read more
2. I read books only when I was with my 11.7% (9) 37.7% (29) 36.4% (28) 14.3%(11) 77
teacher
3. I read books on my own at home or 11.5% (9) 23.1% (18) 32.1% (25) 33.3% (26) 78
outside college
4. I love reading 3.8% (3) 12.7% (10) 54.4% (43) 29.1% (23) 79
5. Reading books helps me to improve 1.3% (1) 5.1% (4) 30.8% (24) 62.8% (49) 78
my English language
6. I will continue to read books on my 3.8% (3) 24.4% (19) 52.6% (41) 19.2% (15) 78
own
7. I took quizzes on books I didn’t read 24.4% (19) 33.3% (26) 23.1% (18) 19.2% (15) 78
8. I like reading more now than I did 6.6% (5) 10.5% (8) 56.6% (43) 26.3% (20) 76
before
9. I read the whole book before doing 5.2% (4) 18.2% (14) 46.8% (36) 29.9% (23) 77
the quizzes
10. A ll students should participate in the 5.1% (4) 15.4% (12) 41.0% (32) 38.5% (30) 78
Reading Challenge
11. Winning the Reading Challenge moti- 10.1% (8) 8.9% (7) 50.6% (40) 30.4% (24) 79
vated me to read
119
120
read by winning the competition. 87.3% agreed or strongly agreed that

the Reading Challenge encouraged them to read more.
Male students in the UAE appear to be motivated by competition,
but in countries such as Japan (de Burgh-Hirabe & Feryok, 2013;
Kitao, Yamamoto, Kitao, & Shimatani, 1990; Robb & Kano, 2013)
and Taiwan (Sheu, 2003) competition may not reap the same ben-
efits. Female students the world over are thought to be more intrinsi-
cally motivated to read than male students and therefore it is believed
that male students should be encouraged to read, much as female stu-
dents have been encouraged to engage in science subjects (Wigfield,
Gladstone, & Turci, 2016). Alsheikh & Elhoweris (2011) suggest that
some teaching practices suited to motivating female UAE high-school
students to read may decrease motivation in male high-school students.
However, in the UAE the Reading Challenge was adopted by Zayed
University’s Academic Bridge Program with equal or even more success
(Swan, 2016): “The competition part is fun, I like it….It makes you
want to read more when there is competition between the girls. It adds
a new element” (Shurafa as quoted in Swan, 2016). Another female stu-
dent said, “Some of the girls are getting quite competitive to see who
can read the most….It’s like a game” (Al Mansoori as quoted in Swan,
2016). In the UAE, according to Hurreiz (2002), competition has been
used quite effectively by the government to retain interest in cultural
heritage activities such as camel racing, dhow racing, traditional danc-
ing (Al Youla) and Nabati poetry (Million’s Poet: Kuwaiti student wins
Dh5m poetry prize, 2016). Both male and female students appear to
be equally motivated to read by competition in the UAE. In response
to the Arab Building a Knowledge Society Report (UNDP, 2003), the
government has recently instigated a competition for reading in Arabic
across the Arab region called the Arab Reading Challenge for school
students with over US$100,000 (550,000 AED) in prize money for the
top reader and US$1 million for the top reading school (Achkhanian,
2017). In both the survey and the focus groups, the number one answer
for what encouraged the students to read more was “the competition”.
The students also recognized that reading improves their English
during the competition. An overwhelming majority of male partici-
pants in the survey (93.6%) agreed that reading helped improve their
121
Table 6.3 What skill did the Reading Challenge help to improve?

Skill Total Per cent (%)
Vocabulary 65 82.3
Spelling 56 70.9
Comprehension 51 64.6
Reading speed 49 62.0
Grammar 47 59.5
Writing 44 55.7
English (see Table 6.2). Female students at Zayed University also recog-

nized this: “I’ve improved my vocabulary and speaking and I can really
see how reading will help me to improve my English” (Al Mansoori
in Swan, 2016); and “It’s improving my English and I really enjoy it”
(Shurafa in Swan, 2016). We asked our male students in the survey
what skill in English they thought had been improved by the Reading
Challenge and their responses are given in Table 6.3.
It is interesting to note here that in second place was spelling, which
seems to validate Krashen’s (2004) argument that we learn to spell in
English by reading. Arabic is a phonetically written language and stu-
dents can spell words they do not know the meaning of by sounding
out the letters (Abu Rabia & Taha, 2006). This strategy does not work
in English due to the complex relationship between orthography and
phonology which includes double letters, silent letters and multiple
letters making the same sound, for example /I/ (ee, ie, ei, ea, y, etc.)
or letters, such as ‘e’, that make a number of different sounds (Birch,
2002). If someone is asked to spell a word in English, they bring the
image of the word to mind and call out the letters. This is not neces-
sary in Arabic, which works perfectly consistently spelling-wise with
any word, a spelling strategy that only gets learners so far in English, for
example in spelling a simple three-letter word like b-e-d.
When asked during the focus group interviews, ‘What skill
in English do you think improved the most during the Reading
Challenge?’, several students recounted that their speaking had
improved and when asked to elaborate on this they recounted being
asked questions or directions by English speakers and said they
were able to call to mind responses from their reading. The students
122
recounted similar strategies for their writing. They said that their writ-
ing had improved because they recalled how something they wanted to
express had been written in what they had read. All this seems to vali-
date what is known in respect of L1 English speakers who are readers.
L1 English students who read a lot for pleasure typically perform bet-
ter on standardized tests such as the SAT for reading comprehension,
vocabulary and writing (Krashen, 2004). Research from Japan, the
birthplace of the MReader tracking platform/website, and a renewed
interest in Extensive Reading in EFL, seems to indicate that the thresh-
old level for extensive reading having an impact on English level is
300,000 words (Yamanaka, 2013). At 300,000 words, students seem to
hit the B1 level of the CEFR (ibid.). Nation (2013) also believes it is
possible for students to acquire the academic vocabulary needed to suc-
ceed at university solely by extensive reading, but it will entail a lot of
reading if there is no direct study of vocabulary.
Quantitative data analysis showed that, depending on their level, stu-
dents who read extensively gained one CEPA (Common Educational
Placement Assessment) point per 20,000 words read (Gobert, Demirci,
& Barney, 2015) compared to students who did not read extensively.
Yet, the biggest challenge to the reading competition was teacher resist-
ance. Many teachers were reluctant to join the competition and even
though it was perceived by the authors as voluntary, several teachers
recounted that they had been asked by their direct supervisor if they
wanted to participate and did not feel they could refuse. All teachers
were asked to do was take their students to the library, first for an ori-
entation session which explained how the competition worked, and
then for one period a week during the first few weeks of the competi-
tion. The authors surmise that it was this ‘letting go’ or lack of being
in control that affected some teachers negatively. However, some teach-
ers readily engaged in the competition, particularly those who came
from an educational rather than an ESL background. This is perhaps
because intensive reading is the accepted methodology for teaching
reading in EFL or ESL, with its assumption that all students have to
do when they read in L2 is transfer their good reading habits from L1
(Alderson, 1984; Grabe, 2002). Teachers who come from an educa-
tional background may realize the benefits of extensive reading even for
123
L1 English-speaking students. The most resistant teachers were those at

the highest level who were preparing students for the IELTS standard-
ized exam. They felt that extensive reading would take too much time
away from exam preparation. However, it was discovered in subsequent
semesters that many students who had done the Reading Challenge in
previous levels continued to read on their own when they reached the
IELTS preparation level.
We also asked teachers and students what the teachers did to encour-
age them to read. The number one reply from the students was that the
teachers glossed words simply when asked. This reminded the author of
early teaching experiences when students asked the meaning of a word
in a reading activity and were told to look it up in their dictionary. This
would be very unkind in an L1 early reading scenario. Imagine if a child
asks a parent the meaning of a word in a story and was told to look
in their dictionary rather than the parent glossing the word. The stu-
dents also said that teachers encouraged them to read by asking what
they were reading, if they liked the story, or what they got on the quiz.
Students also praised the teachers who gave them time to read and
took them to the library. But the motivational aspects of the competi-
tion were evident too, when teachers told the students about the prizes,
showed the leader board (the second-highest answer), encouraged them
to be first and told them that five books read was better than none.
Teachers also said they took pictures of students reading and posted
them on the student website or showed them in class.
Most students also recounted that at first they read to win, but after
a month (10 respondents) or 2–3 weeks (3 respondents), they noticed
that their English was improving. They went on to explain that they
could see this because the results on their tests and exams were improv-
ing, the test became easier and they could answer the questions. When
asked what they liked about the Reading Challenge, almost all stu-
dents said that it improved their English, but the second most popu-
lar answer was the competition. When asked what they would change
about the Reading Challenge if they could, most students said to make
the prizes more valuable and give them more time to read, take them to
the library twice a week for two hours or every day for one class (classes
were held 5 hours a day for 5 days).
124
Implications
Robb (2014) suggests that there are two ways to successfully imple-
ment an extensive reading programme in the ESL classroom. One is for
teachers to start their own grassroots movement, for other teachers to
observe and start doing it too, and then more and more teachers will
catch on and start doing it. This is the ideal way, but in reality it is sel-
dom achieved. The other way is for a decision to be made at the top
that extensive reading will be implemented, and for all teachers to start
doing it and remain firm until it is adopted by all teachers. The teachers
and learners begin to see the benefits and it successfully becomes part
of the curriculum. This is what happened at Kyoto Sangyo University,
Japan (Robb & Kano, 2013). For an extensive reading programme to be
successful, it really should be part of the student’s grade in the course.
Ten per cent is a good recommendation.
The MReader website was originally developed in Japan by the
Extensive Reading Foundation in response to the fact that despite stu-
dents having to obtain a certain TOEIC score as part of the gradu-
ation requirements, few students had enough contact hours of taught
English to obtain that amount of proficiency (Robb & Kano, 2013).
It was invented not for students studying in intensive English or
Academic Bridge programmes, but for students studying their content
courses in Japanese, and only having a few hours of English courses,
such as Technical Report Writing, per week per semester. Thus, exten-
sive reading was conceived of as a way to significantly increase the
exposure of the student population to English (Robb, 2014; Robb &
Kano, 2013).
As can be noted from Table 6.2, 42.3% of the survey respond-
ents admitted that they had taken quizzes on books they had not read
and this was also evident at a women’s college that introduced exten-
sive reading. One of the students had taken 76 quizzes, but had only
passed about 50% of them for a total of 194,064 words read (Gobert &
Bailey, 2014). The presenter recounted that the student was very com-
petitive and really wanted to win the competition, so hosting an exten-
sive reading competition can have the negative drawback of cheating,
125
even though the MReader quality assurance team works hard to prevent
cheating, rewriting and reviewing the quizzes available on MReader
(Jennings, 2015). We actually discovered students taking quizzes on a
football book at our college that was out of print and not available in
the college library. So we had to develop a few rules to lessen the effects
of cheating (not reading the book, but taking quizzes to get points): (1)
quizzes must be taken in class in front of the teacher; (2) books must
be available in the college library; (3) students must have the book next
to them when they take a quiz; and (4) no books/quizzes allowed on
popular movies, celebrities or sports figures. Teachers usually allow stu-
dents to read graded readers or take quizzes during the first 15 minutes
of class.
We asked teachers how they encouraged the students to read, and
these were some of their replies:
I got a student so motivated by showing him that he was in 5th place and
could move to 3rd if he read 3,000 more words. He finished 2nd in the
end.
Listened to them read aloud occasionally one on one.
Circulated in the library while they were reading, asking about their
book, if they liked it and answering questions about vocab.
Leader board, took picture of top reader for the week.
Gave them a lot of theory in the beginning about why reading is good for
them.
Modelling reading – took my own book to read.
Took pictures of them reading when they were really into it.
We also asked teachers if the students read because they wanted to win
or because they discovered that reading was helping them. The teachers
recounted:
At first my students didn’t realize it was a competition until the library

sent the photos of the prizes in the last two weeks. Before that, they were
motivated by a sort of male rivalry.
126
Mixture of both, first the competition, then the engagement about

half-way through.
Both, teacher wanted to win.
No one discovered a love of reading, some commented it was helping
them.
Teachers said what they liked best about the Reading Challenge was
getting the students to read and understand the true sense of a library.
It also integrated the students in the intensive English programme
across different classes and levels and created a sense of togetherness.
When asked what they would change, most teachers said they would
show more recognition of weaker/slower students by setting targets and
reward students for exceeding the teacher-set goals. The teachers also
commented that the leader board got students into the competition but
also got them cheating. However, all teachers agreed that “At the end of
the day we achieved our aim – the students read!” Setting up an exten-
sive reading competition using the MReader cloud-based tracking plat-
form can be successful in getting UAE students to read.
1. One of the biggest barriers to implementing the Reading Challenge
was teacher resistance. What do you think are the best ways to over-
come teacher resistance?
2. A leader board was used to motivate students. What are some of
the advantages/disadvantages of using a leader board to motivate
students?
3. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the intensive reading
methodology prescribed in ESL/EFL pedagogy?
4. Students felt that their vocabulary was the most affected by extensive
reading. Do you think extensive reading alone sufficient for vocabu-
lary acquisition? Why or why not?
5. What can administrators do to encourage the adoption of a new or
different strategy for teaching and learning?
127
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7
Reading for Science: Anatomy as a
Metaphor for a Holistic College-Wide
Innovation
Roger Nunn, Caroline Brandt, Asli Hassan
and Curtis Bradley
The Area of Innovation and Its Impetus

The innovation we outline took place within the College of Arts and
Sciences (CAS) in an engineering university in Abu Dhabi, a city and
emirate of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It was in response to a
perceived college-wide need to improve our students’ reading ability,
R. Nunn (*) 
American University of Sharjah, Sharjah, UAE
C. Brandt 
College of Arts and Sciences (Sas al Nakhl Campus), Khalifa University
of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi, UAE
e-mail: caroline.brandt@ku.ac.ae
A. Hassan · C. Bradley 
Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi, UAE
e-mail: asli.hassan@ku.ac.ae
C. Bradley
e-mail: curtis.bradley@ku.ac.ae
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13413-6_7
134
R. Nunn et al.
in particular reading for science. Science specialists are not typically spe-
cialists in teaching and learning reading, and language specialists are not
easily aware of the particular reading issues that students may have in
science and mathematics classes. Neither do these groups typically work
together in teams. It therefore soon became apparent that no one group
in the university had all the knowledge needed to innovate successfully
in an area that involved knowledge of the interlocking complexities of
reading, science and project management.
The original impetus for the innovation came from the former Dean
of the college who was a mechanical engineer. Reading skills were
apparently being fully covered in pre-freshman language classes lead-
ing to the IELTS exam and in two credit-bearing freshman courses that
focused on academic literacy. However, it was clear to the Dean that
there was a gap in students’ knowledge when close reading was needed
to solve mathematics, physics or indeed mechanical engineering word
problems that depend on knowledge of mathematics and physics.
Other issues that needed investigation and action included the diffi-
culty students appeared to have using the reading passages in chemistry
textbooks and in referencing texts appropriately in a pre-freshman com-
bined science preparation course. It therefore soon became clear that a
large-scale, multidisciplinary response would be needed.
At the same time, there had been a national campaign in the UAE to
encourage reading and promote a regular reading habit among students.
Employees in the UAE are encouraged to spend one hour per day read-
ing and special designated areas for reading can now be found in public
places such as the international airport. It was therefore clear that the
impetus for a Reading for Science campaign was both a perceived need
on the ground and also had strong support at the highest national and
institutional levels.
The backgrounds of the authors of this paper further reflect the
need to provide different perspectives on the scope of the campaign.
The chair of the college’s curriculum improvement committee (called
the Continuous Improvement Committee) is also a specialist in phys-
ics. He therefore recognized both the subject-specific needs and the
broader college needs across subject areas. The head of the Centre for
Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT), who is a specialist in
7 Reading for Science: Anatomy as a Metaphor …
135
applied linguistics, had the role of supporting faculty training efforts

across the curriculum. The need to provide close reading skills across
the curriculum was therefore very relevant to her role. The Acting Dean
and the (former) Associate Dean of the college were communication/
language specialists who also needed to have an overview of the whole
curriculum. All the authors agreed that an innovation was needed that
was interdisciplinary in nature and had fully integrated active leadership
from all relevant entities in the institution as well as broad support from
as many faculty as possible.
This chapter considers the importance of a holistic approach from
the perspective of innovation management. In particular, it outlines an
approach that considers all the parts of the system in relation to each
other. Dodgson, Hughes, Foster, and Metcalf (2011, p. 1145), working
at a national level, underline the need “to emphasize the importance of
systemic connectivity, evolving institutions and organizational capabili-
ties”. We believe that this applies equally to educational institutions and
to colleges within institutions. In our view, for example, this approach
is compatible with views of curriculum innovation that are more specif-
ically focused on particular areas that have relevance across the curricu-
lum such as ELT (see for example White, 1992). This holistic overview
is particularly necessary when the innovation is intended to have a col-
lege-wide impact and arguably concerns all faculty regardless of their
specialization.
To better understand the holistic dynamics of an innovation seen
as a radical intervention within a system, we will use the metaphor of
anatomy from the field of holistic medicine (Waller, 2008). Waller’s
approach to anatomy emphasizes the interconnectedness of differ-
ent parts of the body. An atomistic approach runs the risk of appear-
ing to cure one problem, while unknowingly creating or exacerbating
another in another part of the system. One such issue that arose in our
innovation was a perception by one or two mathematics faculty that
‘over-emphasizing’ reading (as they saw it) in their classes took valua-
ble time away from developing mathematics literacy. Readings from sys-
tems thinking and holistic thinking provide further theoretical support
for a holistic perspective, not as theory for its own sake, but as the best
way to understand holistic realities. The aim of using this metaphor is to
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R. Nunn et al.
provoke more effective action during an innovation within and across a

complex organization and, for this chapter, to outline what we believe
was quite a novel approach to innovation that may be transferable to
other contexts.
The Anatomy of a Holistic Educational System:

A Case Study
Changes, even small changes, in one part of the anatomy of a complex
system can have a ripple effect on all other parts. This discussion focuses
on educational management, but systems and holistic thinking can use-
fully be applied to many other areas of enquiry. Neumann (2004, p. 1),
for example, underlines the importance of the relationship between
components in any complex system.
Holistic approaches are those that consider systems in their entirety rather
than just focusing on specific properties or specific components. In each
case, enormous culture shifts are required in education, training, business,
government, and economic models.
The system as a whole is assumed to operate in support of a superor-

dinate general vision and mission statement. In our case, this was as
follows:
Vision
A College which produces fully equipped freshmen students with the
technical, intellectual, soft and social skills in and out of class to succeed
in the Engineering Programs and which encourages scholarly research….
Mission
The Arts and Sciences College will always support the [university’s]
vision by providing optimum support to the students through innova-
tive curriculum, high quality teaching and extra-curricular activities.
The college will strive to link research activities with the Engineering
programs.…
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The vision and mission can be considered from two angles. First, there
is a mission to support the College of Engineering. Second, the college
has a semi-independent focus on developing technical, intellectual, soft
and social skills that prepare students not only for engineering studies
but also for academic literacy in higher education in general, and fosters
a view of preparing students as whole people for lifelong learning.
Feedback both horizontally within the college and vertically from
the engineering disciplines identified inadequate reading ability in sup-
port of study in major specializations as an important issue to address.
In the summer and fall semesters of 2016 several other activities were
initiated to start the campaign rolling. One important feature of the
campaign is that most activities were interdisciplinary. At the time of
writing, interdisciplinary research teams are engaged in projects that
involve science faculty working with communication faculty. Materials
writing teams are developing innovative approaches to reading for use
in classes. Each team has members from at least four CAS departments.
CELT is sponsoring both seminar sessions and research groups. The
university’s pre-degree preparatory programme is also fully involved.
The CAS Curriculum Improvement Committee is a co-sponsor of the
campaign, working closely with the Dean’s office. From January 2017
every CAS syllabus was required to feature some new or recent innova-
tion to improve student ability in reading for science. This component
was required to be a graded component.
Implications and Lessons Learned: A Dean’s

Narrative
Innovation can prompt resistance on the part of those required to
adapt to it or implement it, and in the case described in this chapter,
the resistance that had first to be overcome was my own. My predeces-
sor as Dean of CAS, a mechanical engineer seconded to the position,
took up his appointment with first-hand experience of students who
had completed two years of general education subjects that included
required courses in communication skills. Despite this preparation, my
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predecessor described his students’ inability to read for detail and his
belief that they lacked the necessary capability. This, he said, resonated
with the experience of his colleagues throughout the university.
At the time, I held the position of chair of the Communication
Department, and consequently it was natural that our new Dean
should ask me to address the problem he had identified. However, a
number of factors made this difficult. First, we differed fundamentally
in our understanding of the problem. The Dean believed that his stu-
dents lacked the capability to read closely. From a personal perspec-
tive, knowing my students’ work and abilities from my 10 years as a
Communication instructor at the university, I believed that most did
not lack the capability. I saw instead two parts to the problem: one
related to students’ will to read closely (or lack of it) and the other,
its counterpart, related to instructors’ requirement for students to read
closely and regularly (or lack thereof ). From the wider perspective of the
department, I also resisted the suggestion that our work in preparing
the university’s students for their further studies was failing with respect
to developing the expected and necessary reading habits and skills.
In addition, in relation to the context of the college, I was chair of
one of six departments; the other five chairs were my peers and my
background of Applied Linguistics and rank of Associate Professor
gave me no clear mandate enabling me to attempt to influence their
instructors’ pedagogical practices in areas such as physics, mathemat-
ics or chemistry teaching, for example, about which I felt I knew lit-
tle. This perceived lack of empowerment extended to university level,
as the CAS existed to fulfil the university’s general education require-
ments, and, as such, was non-degree awarding. Consequently, the
College of Engineering, which graduates students from both undergrad-
uate and graduate programmes, was generally seen as having a higher
academic status within the institution. Given my rank and role within
this broader context, it was difficult to anticipate success in any attempt
made by an Associate Professor and chair of a department in a CAS,
with the general education mission described above, to initiate a pro-
cess that would, ideally, influence the pedagogical practices of engi-
neers and scientists across the institution and therefore of varying ranks,
139
backgrounds and specialisms. It was also the case that a number of fac-
ulty in other disciplines had voiced their scepticism and disinclination
when it was suggested in passing that they might encourage their stu-
dents to read, justifying their position by explaining that this was not
part of their job (it was the job of Communication faculty) and that
students ought to arrive in their courses better prepared (so there would
be no need for any intentional ongoing development of their reading
skills). The complexities of the problem therefore (given the necessary
involvement of, and interactions between, the various parts of the sys-
tem) and solutions envisaged, which in all conceptions appeared likely
to “require an enormous culture shift” (Neumann, 2004, p. 1), pre-
sented themselves to me as insurmountable deterrents.
It has been suggested (Paloş & Gunaru, 2017, p. 4) that resistance to
change is a multidimensional construct, explained by four dimensions:
…. routine seeking (the person’s preference for those stable and predicta-
ble tasks, activities and environments); cognitive rigidity (their inflexibil-
ity in thinking and difficulties in accepting alternative ideas, solutions and
perspectives); short-term focus (the focusing on the deficiencies and the
discomfort brought on by change and not on the long-term benefits that
it implies); and emotional reaction (their feeling of stress, anxiety and
lack of enthusiasm when change is imposed).
The dimensions of short-term focus and emotional reaction were pre-

dominant in my case: the difficulties of addressing the problem domi-
nated, along with some stress and anxiety, whereas I would have been
better served by concentrating on the long-term benefits of a solution
for the institute’s students and identifying the resources we needed to
tackle the problem. Despite many engaging discussions on the subject
with the Dean, who was pressing for a solution, in the face of what I
perceived to be many significant and insurmountable barriers, I did
nothing other than share the problem with the members of my depart-
ment. Consequently, without the necessary direction, the department’s
response was initially weak.
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Recommendation 1:
At the outset arrive at a shared and articulated understanding of the
problem. Do this by involving various stakeholders, particularly those with
similar experiences who have not found a solution, and create a forum
enabling them to identify commonalities (Wenger, 1998a) and share
the reasons for any resistance they experience, or witness, to addressing
the problem. This contributes to identifying the existing culture and cli-
mate (Maciejewski et al., 2017), and can enable the long-term benefits of
addressing the problem to become the motivation for further collabora-
tion across the organization.
During the above period, however, a new appointment in the college

was made, that of Associate Dean. The person appointed to this role,
one of the authors of this paper, was an experienced professor in the
Communication department, well known and highly regarded through-
out the institute and internationally. The Dean raised the problem with
his new Associate, and I was invited to participate. The formation of
this small team, led by the Associate Dean, was a turning point in the
life of the college and represented the beginning of a move towards
implementation of a college-wide initiative to address the problem.
Recommendation 2:
Assign a number of people to work on the problem who have suitable
seniority, respect and experience in relation to the problem and the con-
text (Bland et al., 2000, pp. 575–594; Blouin et al., 2009).
The establishment of this team represented the first phase of educa-

tional innovation management as conceptualized by Fullan (2001),
variously labelled initiation, mobilization or adoption. To proceed, we
responded to the complex, dynamic and interdependent context by
adopting various holistic and concurrent processes. An extensive review
of the literature on curricular innovation (Bland et al., 2000), identi-
fied effective leadership and building a cooperative environment with
141
willing participants (Bland et al., 2000, pp. 575–594) who work con-
currently in different areas of the institution as essential for facilitating
innovation.
Recommendation 3:
Build a shared vision and a cooperative environment by communicating
widely and actively involving willing members across the institution (Bland
et al., 2000; Kanter, Stein, & Jick, 1992) who work concurrently on differ-
ent aspects of the problem. Enable “exploring connectedness, defining
joint enterprise and negotiating community” (Wenger, 1998a).
The first task undertaken by the team therefore was to try to involve and
co-opt others. A message of encouragement to all in the college was sent
out by the Dean, reflecting his support for faculty development, and a
number of faculty across the disciplines within the college immediately
expressed their interest and willingness to participate. A key function
of this initial message was to establish the identity of the innovation as
the Reading for Science campaign and communicate its work widely
in the college with a view to informing, attracting interest and shaping
attitudes.
Recommendation 4:
Develop and communicate a positive identity for any innovation at the
start, and ask participants to see themselves as ‘ambassadors’ whose
mission includes communicating the innovation and its implementation
to their colleagues, particularly those with more negatives attitudes
towards it.
The Dean strongly encouraged his team of department chairs to com-

municate the potential benefits of the campaign to their faculty and
students. This encouragement, and the interest and involvement which
the Dean himself demonstrated frequently throughout the project,
were critical to the campaign’s success, as the example he set through
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his involvement and determination motivated many to participate or at

least keep themselves informed of the campaign activities. This support
at the level of Dean effectively represented “political sponsorship”, one
of the “ten commandments for executing change” (Kanter et al., 1992).
Recommendation 5:
Those leading innovation should stay closely involved for its duration.
“Political sponsorship” (Kanter et al., 1992) can be an effective way to
encourage reluctant members of the wider community to take an interest
or become involved.
The team initiated several concurrent college-wide activities, most of

them interdisciplinary. Interdisciplinary teams were formed to develop
innovative approaches and materials for use across the curriculum and
carry out research into reading across the disciplines. The institute’s
CELT provided workshops on related topics. Department chairs were
asked to incorporate into their syllabi a new or recent graded innova-
tion to improve student ability in reading, and the college’s Continuous
Improvement Committee extended their work to include a mecha-
nism for evaluating the innovation (Bland et al., 2000, pp. 575–594).
Communication faculty were asked to team teach with engineers on an
integrated preparatory course which addressed mathematics, physics
and chemistry. This was a highly successful initiative that not only pro-
vided students with academic literacy support in their mathematics and
science classes, but also brought together instructors in different areas of
the curriculum, furthering the understanding that each had of the work
of their colleague. All of the above represented professional develop-
ment for those in the college. All were successful in terms of generating
interest in and awareness of the issues, by involving Communication
faculty in science and mathematics classrooms, and bringing science
and mathematics faculty closer to an understanding of the development
of students’ reading skills as an ongoing project for which all instructors
have some responsibility by, for example, assigning reading tasks in their
classrooms and evaluating students’ responses.
143
Recommendation 6:
Emphasize the professional development opportunities that arise in an
innovation and develop enabling structures, including those that rec-
ognize faculty efforts and involvement (Bland et al., 2000; Kanter et al.,
1992). Create opportunities for “engaging in joint activities, creating arti-
facts, adapting to changing circumstances, renewing interest, commit-
ment, and relationships” (Wenger, 1998a).
A Professional Development Director’s Narrative

Recommendation 6 above was more easily put into effect because of a
structure that was already in place. The university’s CELT is committed
to developing and supporting professional development activities that
strengthen educational practices on campus. To this end, the Centre
produces a busy schedule of activities that are of interest to faculty and
regularly supports initiatives aimed at impacting the curriculum across
all disciplines, such as the Reading for Science campaign.
As a campus-wide unit, CELT focuses on enhancing undergraduate
science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education.
Our mission is to promote the professional enhancement of faculty and
staff by providing formal and informal forums for exchange of experi-
ence and expertise in order to enhance STEM instruction. The Centre
organizes seminars and workshops, hosts international distinguished
engineering educators, facilitates a number of teaching inquiry groups
and provides curriculum enhancement mini-grant funding annually.
During the 2016/2017 academic year, the overall theme of CELT
was Teaching Innovation. The aim of this series of coordinated events
was to enhance group and departmental efforts with regard to assess-
ing outcomes, identifying areas of strength as well as those needing fur-
ther improvement, supporting the implementation of recommendations
and establishing means for evaluating the success of these implementa-
tions. Through the time spent with faculty and administrators, CELT
was able to formulate and support several projects concurrently. Each
teaching innovation project was directed, at least in part, to curricular
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and programmatic enhancement across all of the university. Thus the

Reading for Science project was an excellent fit with the Centre’s goals.
We became aware, during workshop discussions, that incentives
would be important to encourage broad faculty participation in CELT
programmes especially in the area of scholarship of teaching and
learning. Faculty members carry many professional and institutional
responsibilities and were more likely to commit their time and effort
to projects they saw as valued. To make time to participate in CELT
programmes their participation needed to be recognized. Also, we
attempted to accept and provide recognition and logistical support for
bottom–up initiatives that arose out of faculty interests and concerns.
Reading for Science was one of those bottom–up concepts, but one that
fortuitously coincided with a top–down request from the Dean’s office.
Numerous times during the workshops, and in individual meetings,
the value of fostering cross-disciplinary dialogue was brought up. Since
faculty often remain in a so-called ‘silo’, tending to interact only with
those in their own or similar disciplines, CELT provided a valuable ser-
vice to PI by providing more opportunities for faculty to interact across
the disciplines. This interaction was facilitated by sponsoring relevant
workshops that would draw participants from different disciplines, pair-
ing faculty from different disciplines to collaborate, or providing mini-
grant opportunities to interdisciplinary faculty teams.
One example of the far-reaching impact of a CELT project is illus-
trative. One of the Centre’s mini-grants was given to a team that devel-
oped an interdisciplinary course for freshman students who scored low
in the science and mathematics placement exam. Based on the favorable
data collected during the pilot project, ‘CAMP’, a semester-long course
combining chemistry, mathematics and physics, was developed for all
entering students who did not meet the science and mathematics entry
requirements. Quite early on, close reading was also identified as an
issue in this interdisciplinary course. Beyond this one example, many
other large and small positive changes and innovations can be traced to
teaching and learning projects supported by the Centre.
Reaching out and bringing together faculty in the sciences, human-
ities and engineering disciplines is one of the enduring goals of the
Centre. Also, with its ongoing support and encouragement of various
145
interdisciplinary research teams, such as those engaged in the Reading

for Science campaign, the Centre will continue to make valuable contri-
butions to teaching and learning on campus and beyond. With its focus
on implementing collaborative experiences among faculty, CELT strives
to become a hub of intellectual exchange with regard to teaching and
learning, sparking interest in and sharing of innovative practices. In this
way, college-wide campaigns such as our Reading for Science campaign
have institutional support in situ, ready to give faculty and staff an extra
boost.
A Curriculum Committee Chair’s Narrative: What

Worked and What Did Not?
The success or failure of efforts towards academic institutional trans-
formation depend significantly on the nature of the innovations intro-
duced and the context in which they are found. A holistic or systems
view of the change process is helpful to identify the range of factors that
might support or hinder the sought-after impacts. Too often, these fac-
tors are outside the scope or influence of the transformation effort, and
these result in diminished or short-lived institutional impacts. Taking
the anatomical analogy, in the worst cases, ignorance or neglect of these
factors can even result in active resistance by the system (the body or the
institution) to the innovations or change efforts.
At our university, one mechanism for supporting this process has
been a college service committee called the CAS Committee for
Continuous Improvement (CCI). This group has the mandate to sup-
port the college, departments and faculty in an ongoing process of
self-study regarding their academic activities. The committee acts to
facilitate a cycle of course-, departmental-, and programme-level data
collection, analysis and reflection, followed by documented planning
and implementation of curricular and pedagogical improvement.
The centrepieces of our collective effort are course portfolios com-
prised of course files with samples of student work and student feed-
back, and course evaluations from faculty that include detailed
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R. Nunn et al.
comparisons of student academic performance against intended learn-

ing outcomes and, most importantly, specific suggestions for course
improvement. These suggestions support the development of depart-
mental and course action plans for the subsequent semester and beyond.
Additionally, the CCI collects other data from surveys, including sur-
veys of freshman and sophomore students (regarding their views about
learning and their educational experiences), engineering faculty (regard-
ing their perceptions of student readiness for junior- and senior-level
coursework). Collecting together these various sources and types of data
and course-level plans provides the opportunity for a system-wide or
holistic view of the college’s academic health.
Thus, the CCI played a key role in setting the stage for the college’s
Reading for Science campaign. Over the years, a consistent trend in
course portfolios showed that many students struggled with their fresh-
man-level mathematics, physics and chemistry courses. Faculty who
taught these courses were, of course, aware of this issue and the port-
folios show ample evidence of efforts to provide increased learning
support mechanisms, improved (or fine-tuned) curriculum, and increas-
ing use of student-centred pedagogies. Still, the problem persisted. In
recent years, portfolios of mathematics, physics and chemistry instruc-
tors often pointed to a lack of student preparation, and in particular to
student difficulties with reading and understanding their college-level
science textbooks. This seemed to contradict the ample evidence of sat-
isfactory performance and learning outcome achievement that students
demonstrated in many other courses in the college, particularly in their
two required communication courses.
Our CCI process provided the college’s Dean and department chairs
with a body of evidence that there was, in fact, a significant, persistent
college-level problem. The Dean’s experience, supported by experiences
of other faculty, also highlighted an apparent student difficulty with
visualization of what they read—a crucial skill in mathematics, science
and engineering. This insight led to the Dean’s commitment and his
mobilization of the college to increase and focus efforts towards study-
ing the problem and, as soon as possible, to take corrective actions. As
described earlier, the resulting ‘study the problem’ efforts ranged from
CELT-sponsored research proposals (for example, to explore student
147
difficulty with visualization in physics problems), to efforts by depart-

ments and individual course instructors to understand better what was
really going on. We were therefore promoting what Corbo, Reinholz,
Dancy, Deetz, and Finkelstein (2016, p. 11) refer to as “synergies across
levels”.
In response to the decision by the Dean for a Reading for Science
campaign, the CCI led an effort to provide and share more evidence
regarding basic student reading abilities. The committee worked
with faculty in several college departments to begin routine Lexile
Measurement of student reading ability. Simply stated, separate Lexile
Measures can be produced to (1) estimate the relative reading difficulty
of a text; and (2) estimate the relative reading ability of an individual
reader. Comparisons of reader and text Lexile Measures can be used to
estimate a probable percentage of a text that a given, or typical, reader
might understand. The first round of measurements started in the sum-
mer of 2016 and they have continued every semester since. The results
showed a dramatic difference between the typical college text difficulty
or reading level and our typical student’s reading ability. The simple and
dramatic quantitative results from these measurements provided further
support for the need for the college’s campaign. In fact, they were used
in a workshop organized by the Dean and given to all college faculty, at
the start of the fall 2016 semester, serving as a kick-off for the Reading
for Science campaign. During the workshop, faculty views about stu-
dent reading were interactively polled before they received an explana-
tion of the Lexile Measure, our initial set of students’ results, and likely
implications. They then participated in two activities intended to sen-
sitize them to the challenge our students often encountered. The first
activity gave faculty the experience of trying to make sense of a text
with a large fraction of the key words obscured (to mimic our students’
experience of reading college-level texts). The second activity challenged
the visualization skills of faculty by asking them to follow an unfamil-
iar paper-folding procedure, given only textual instructions and no dia-
grams or visual aids (ultimately to discover that they had folded a party
hat). Feedback from faculty indicated that they felt the workshop was
effective in making clear the importance of, and the college’s need for,
their participation in the Reading for Science campaign.
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R. Nunn et al.
As mentioned earlier, in Fall 2016, the campaign inaugurated several

groups of faculty members that worked together to explore possible curric-
ular responses to assist and improve our students’ reading comprehension
when dealing with mathematics and science texts and other coursework.
For example, one group organized around the theme ‘annotation as a read-
ing skill’. In its first semester, this group reviewed literature concerned
with the teaching of annotation and evidence of its impact on improved
reading comprehension. Based on this, the group formulated a summary
of best practices and shared it with the university community. In spring
2017, this same group further explored literature on reading strategies and
worked on strategies for encouraging the teaching of annotation in dif-
ferent college courses. Consequently, in the latter half of the Spring term,
one of the group’s members (one of the authors of this chapter) intro-
duced annotation lessons and assignments into his introductory physics
course sections (with a total of 21 students participating). Subsequent sur-
veys found that only 5% (1 in 21) of students agreed with the statement:
‘annotation did not help me to understand what I was reading’; 57% (12
of 21) of students agreed with the statement ‘annotation helped me to
understand what I was reading’; only 29% (6 of 21) of students agreed
with the statement ‘I made an effort but am not sure if annotation helped
my reading’; and 10% (2 of 21) selected ‘I did not really make an effort
so I am not sure about annotation’. These results served to encourage the
participating faculty member and several other faculty in his department,
resulting in the incorporation of the specific teaching of reading strategies
in their physics courses in subsequent semesters.
Conclusion
Although the innovation is far from complete (for example, while its
implementation extended throughout the CAS, at the time of writ-
ing it had yet not reached the College of Engineering) and has not as
yet been fully evaluated, we see its success to date as a result of hav-
ing approached the problem from the perspective of Wenger’s concept
of “community of practice” (1998a, 1998b). This concept represents a
holistic perspective with a number of characteristics that were evident in
the above context. The following are of particular relevance:
149
• It operates in a shared domain which helps to define its identity.

• Membership implies commitment.
• Collective competence is valued.
• Members share information, collaborate, support each other, and
build relationships and partnerships enabling them to learn from
each other; this is a process of collective learning which may be
described as a “social learning system” (Wenger, 2010).
• Its members are practitioners whose work develops shared resources,
experiences and practices.
• It takes time, facilitation and sustained effort and interaction to
develop (Wenger, 1998a, 1998b).
Our effort also proposes a very broad, interdisciplinary view of a com-

munity of practice that goes beyond narrow departmental special-
izations, and is reflected in the six recommendations proposed above.
Educational innovation necessarily takes place within complex and
dynamic systems that contain an in-built capability to design and
implement innovation. From this standpoint, implementation of
innovation is better seen not in terms of an occasional need for surgi-
cal intervention by leadership alone. While leadership must provide
direction, shared vision and communication, we view innovation from
a more holistic anatomy perspective. There is a need for joint enter-
prise with mutual engagement, empowerment and a shared repertoire
of resources, that is, a ‘social learning system’ offering transformative
potential to maintain and improve the health of the institution as a
whole for the mutual benefit of all its members.
1. Why do the authors suggest that a ‘holistic’ approach to innovation is
needed?
2. Why did the Dean initially resist the innovation when she was Head
of Department?
3. How important was the role of the Committee for Continuous
Improvement?
150
R. Nunn et al.
4. Why was visualization identified as an important aspect of reading in

this context?
5. Do you consider the metaphor of ‘anatomy’ relevant to an interdisci-
plinary innovation?
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8
Towards English for Academic Purposes
Curriculum Reform: Linguistic, Educational
or Political Considerations?
Elana Spector-Cohen, Lisa Amdur, Ingrid Barth,
Rosalie Sitman and Linda Weinberg
Higher education is becoming increasingly international and intercul-
tural, and a common language of communication is a precondition to
make these possible. The current trend towards internationalization
E. Spector-Cohen (*) · L. Amdur · I. Barth · R. Sitman 

Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
e-mail: espector@tauex.tau.ac.il
L. Amdur
e-mail: lisa-a@013.net
I. Barth
e-mail: ingridb@tauex.tau.ac.il
R. Sitman
e-mail: rsitman@tauex.tau.ac.il
L. Weinberg 
Braude College of Engineering, Karmiel, Israel
e-mail: linda@braude.ac.il
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13413-6_8
154
E. Spector-Cohen et al.
facilitates mutual recognition of language programmes nationally and

internationally and thus requires standardization of foreign language
programmes. It also requires English-medium instruction (EMI) skills
(Dearden, 2014) and intercultural competence. Thus, the teaching of
English in higher education institutions (HEIs) in Israel is undergo-
ing a fundamental change to meet the needs of internationalization
in a globalized economy. It is clear that change is essential for ensuring
enhanced competence in English and other foreign languages, as well as
the ability to interact with other cultures, these being important assets in
local and international labour markets. Thus, while traditionally Israeli
students may have been considered well served by being taught reading
comprehension skills only in order to cope with academic course mate-
rials in English, students in the twenty-first century need a much more
extensive set of tools and competences for coping with the requirements
of current internationalization drives at their institutions and with the
demands of globalized job markets. The innovation presented in this
chapter addresses a more contemporary approach to English instruc-
tion in higher education, driven by an up-to-date conception of what
it means to know a language, how language is acquired, state-of-the-
art methodologies, and by alignment with international standards that
ensure a ‘common language’ with regard to proficiency and mutual recog-
nition of foreign language programmes.
According to Spolsky (2004), “language policy exists in the wider
social, political, economic, cultural, religious and ideological context
that makes up human society” (p. 218). Furthermore, as in any reform
initiative in language education, multiple forces affecting the success of
the reform come into play. The forces that drive language policy within
educational institutions will rarely be solely linguistic or educational,
but rather reflect the policy and ideological position of the national
government (Spolsky, 2007). Shohamy (2006) expands this notion and
points out how these ideologies lead to both overt and covert mecha-
nisms that result in both official and de facto language policy. This
chapter will discuss an innovation designed to reform English teach-
ing in higher education and describe the forces and mechanisms that
emerged in the process.
8 Towards English for Academic Purposes Curriculum …
155

All HEIs in Israel require candidates to achieve a certain level of English
proficiency, which is termed ‘exemption level’. Traditionally, English
for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses in higher education were geared
solely towards reading comprehension of academic texts, as even though
the language of instruction and tasks is Hebrew, the majority of course
readings are in English, the lingua franca of academia. Thus, the pri-
mary goal of these EAP courses was to provide students with the skills
and strategies necessary to cope with their content course bibliographies
(Spector-Cohen, Kirschner, & Wexler, 2001).
Although the study of English as a Foreign Language (EFL)1 is com-
pulsory for all students in the Israeli education system from fourth
grade2 through high school, there was and remains a gap between the
level of English required by the high school matriculation exams and
the requirements of higher education, which involve coping with
assigned texts in content courses that are linguistically and conceptu-
ally complex, and presuppose content knowledge in the field. This gap
is further aggravated by the characteristics of the Israeli higher educa-
tion system, in which candidates choose their major on applying to a
given institution and immediately enter specialized tracks. Also, a large
percentage of the undergraduate student population is generally older
than their counterparts in other countries because of mandatory mil-
itary service and the fact that, following their army service, Israelis
often take time off to travel abroad “to forge a sense of personal mean-
ing and authenticity that subsequently paves the way to reintegration
into long-term life goals” (Scharf & Mayseless, 2010, p. 83). As a
result, many Israeli students tend to be very focused and task oriented,
expecting academic programmes to be highly relevant to their future
careers. However, the relatively late entrance into higher education
1For the purposes of this chapter we have differentiated between English in higher education and
in schools by referring to EAP and EFL, respectively.
2However, many schools across the country begin English instruction of some kind before the
fourth grade.
156
may contribute to English language attrition. In most institutions

candidates’ English language proficiency level is assessed through the
Psychometric Entrance Test, a national test developed by the National
Institute for Testing and Evaluation (NITE) that determines whether
candidates have reached a score that exempts them from additional
English studies or a score that determines the level of proficiency at
which they begin English studies, which are usually provided by the
universities and colleges.3
Presently there are 62 institutions of higher learning in Israel,4 of
which eight are universities and the others are colleges and teachers’ col-
leges. Traditionally, universities required students to successfully reach
the exemption level within their first year of studies, whereas colleges
required exemption level to be reached by the end of the second year
of study or even later. With regard to the EAP programmes within each
individual institution, these were basically autonomous, mainly due to
the fact that there was no national curriculum or framework for deter-
mining goals and standards. Thus it is clear that mutual recognition
of English programmes across institutions has been problematic, with
most universities refusing to recognize the English courses of students
transferring from a majority of colleges until the adoption of mutually
determined and agreed upon standards.
Contemporary developments in approaches to foreign language
teaching (e.g., communicative methodologies, content- and task-based
instruction, learning-oriented assessment), alongside globalization
and the push for internationalization in Israeli HEIs previously men-
tioned, emphasize the need for updating EAP programmes to meet
twenty-first-century demands. These trends are especially noteworthy
when considering the need to promote mobility, particularly follow-
ing the introduction of exchange programmes such as ERASMUS+
in Israel. Furthermore, an increasing number of institutions are open-
ing EMI study-abroad programmes, as well as full undergraduate and
3These English courses (except for the highest exemption-level course) are not included in the
tuition and incur an additional cost for students.

4According to the Council for Higher Education in Israel’s (CHE) website, there are 62 HEIs in
Israel, eight of which are universities.

157
graduate degree programmes in English to attract international stu-

dents. Finally, HEIs are increasingly requiring local students to take at
least one EMI course during their academic studies.
The need for change, specifically regarding the standardization of
EAP programmes in Israel, was first addressed by an exploratory com-
mittee appointed by the Council for Higher Education in Israel (CHE),
the state institution responsible for higher education. While this com-
mittee drafted an official document setting minimum acceptance stand-
ards in English5 for entry to higher education (1 December 2011), it
did not stipulate what should be taught and how.
In light of all the above, and recognizing the critical need for change
in EAP programmes throughout the country, key leaders in the field
from various Israeli HEIs, including the authors of this chapter, sub-
mitted a TEMPUS project proposal for curriculum reform that was
accepted in 2013. This grassroots initiative, called the ECOSTAR6 pro-
ject, provided the backbone of the innovation described in this chap-
ter: the CEFR-Aligned Framework for English in Higher Education in
Israel, henceforth referred to as the Framework, and the accompanying
online professional development programme (PDP).
The Context of the Innovation

In this section we will present the goals of the ECOSTAR project, fol-
lowed by a description of the development of the Framework and the
accompanying PDP.
The Goals of the ECOSTAR Project
The goals of the ECOSTAR project were to reform EAP programmes at

HEIs in Israel by addressing the outdated approaches to EAP as well as
5According
to cut-off scores on the Psychometric Entrance Test.
6ECOSTAR: English as the Cornerstone of Sustainable Technology and Research, Project No.
543683-TEMPUS-1 2013-1-IL-TEMPUS-JPCR (2013–2017).
158
the lack of shared standards among the various institutions. The major
goal of the project was to align EAP programmes in HEIs with the
Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR),
since developments from the Bologna Process in Europe had not yet fil-
tered through sufficiently to the Israeli context. It was hoped that, in
addition to promoting standardization, the alignment with the CEFR
would facilitate physical and virtual mobility and international collabo-
ration, and enable Israeli students and graduates to function effectively
in the global economy.
Beyond the reform and modernization of EAP programmes, the
wider objectives of ECOSTAR included: narrowing socioeconomic
gaps through more relevant EAP programmes to better prepare students
from all sectors of society to compete equally in labour markets; promo-
tion of collaboration between universities and academic colleges to har-
monize EAP programmes; integration of reading, writing, speaking and
listening skills; development of multimedia online EAP learning pro-
grammes; professionalization of the EAP field in Israel; implementation
of bottom-up change in EAP teaching and assessment in HEIs in Israel;
enhancement of academic ties between Israel and Europe; international-
ization of EAP programmes; provision of training and support to EAP
and EMI teachers and students; and the development of a best-practice
model with generic support materials for future EMI courses.
The Development of the Innovation
The centrepiece of the innovation was the Framework. This Framework

adopts an integrative four-skills approach and promotes consistency
in expectations for students and teachers, while allowing for academic
freedom and creativity in the teaching process. It maps out the profi-
ciency levels as defined by the CHE and encompasses A1 through to
B2 levels (as defined in the CEFR), the latter being determined as the
exit level of English required in HEIs. Further, the Framework supports
mutual recognition across institutions and internationally. The devel-
opment of the Framework followed an iterative process and was car-
ried out over a period of three years. It was informed by an in-depth
159
examination of the CEFR; a comprehensive needs analysis; collabora-

tion with European partners; and a focus-group study among local EAP
teachers.
The main purpose of the needs analysis survey was to inform the
development of the Framework by learning about the English language
needs of higher education graduates as perceived by three main groups
of stakeholders: students, content lecturers and EAP teachers. These
three groups were included as it was believed that each might view a
graduate’s language requirements differently. Information was col-
lected during the 2014/15 school year through a questionnaire. Items
on the questionnaire were developed based on an extensive familiarity
with and knowledge of the local context following an in-depth study
of the CEFR. Respondents were asked to rank the relative importance
of can-do statements for graduates of higher education. The question-
naires were completed online and participation was anonymous and
voluntary. The questionnaire for students was offered in Hebrew, Arabic
and English; for content lecturers in Hebrew; and for EAP teachers in
English. The final number of respondents was as follows: 2394 students,
175 content lecturers and 89 EAP instructors.7
Findings from this needs survey indicated that students appreci-
ate the importance of studying all four language skills, and the major-
ity believe that EAP courses should not only include the educational
domain but also the professional one. These findings were in line with
results from a previous survey conducted among Israeli students and
graduates through a previous TEMPUS project (Symon & Broido,
2014). Results show that EAP professionals and content lecturers also
support a move to a four-skills approach, with content lecturers particu-
larly emphasizing the importance of writing.
The preliminary first draft of the Framework, based on the in-depth
study of the CEFR and the findings of the needs survey, was then
shared with the ECOSTAR European partners, who were asked to
provide written comments. These were further discussed at one of the
ECOSTAR consortium meetings. The resulting feedback contributed
7Results of the needs analysis will appear in a separate manuscript in greater detail.
160
to the refinement of the Framework and a second draft version. A

focus group of EAP teachers in Israel was then asked to examine each
can-do statement, again in relation to suitability for the local context,
and their feedback was followed up with discussions for clarification.
This resulted in the current version of the Framework. In localiz-
ing and adapting the CEFR to the Israeli context, some of the actions
taken at the different stages included the adaptation of existing can-do
statements, the creation of new ones, and addressing the discrepancy
between levels of proficiency that are defined by current cut-off scores
on the Psychometric Entrance Test and the proficiency levels defined
by the CEFR. One way of reconciling this discrepancy was to define
can-do statements from different CEFR levels for a given Israeli profi-
ciency level: for example, incorporating a B1 in reading with an A2 in
writing for a given level.
The Framework, in its current form, was launched at an ECOSTAR
symposium at Tel Aviv University on 5 January 2017. It was formally
presented to a representative of the CHE and hard copies were distrib-
uted to all those attending the symposium, including EAP department
heads and EAP instructors from many universities, colleges and teach-
ers’ colleges, as well as teachers and policymakers from the Ministry of
Education. The professional development program (PDP) was also pre-
sented and participants were encouraged to register for it.
As it was clear from the outset that the introduction of the
Framework would involve critical and significant changes in the field of
EAP at national, institutional and individual levels, the need for teacher
professional development was obvious. Besides the need to provide EAP
instructors with the opportunity to learn about the Framework and the
types of changes its adoption involves, three main principles guided
the development of the PDP: sustainability, transferability and scal-
ability (STS). Sustainability refers to the capability of continuing into
the future; thus, through professional development, EAP departments
will be better able to implement the Framework. Transferability (also
known as replicability) refers to application in different contexts; thus
the design of the PDP was a modular one, allowing for local adaptation
in the different HEIs. Scalability refers to a more widespread impact
that could be better achieved through the provision of professional
161
development in EAP departments across the country. Taken together,

the principles of STS, as applied to the PDP, could and should ensure
that the Framework continues into the future, is applied across insti-
tutions of higher education, and impacts EAP on a national scale, even
though it is “difficult to predict the scalability, sustainability and trans-
ferability of an innovation at its start-up phase” (Mioduser, Nachmias,
Forkosh-Baruch, & Tubin, 2004, p. 80).
The main goals of the PDP were to provide EAP professionals in
Israel with an understanding of the theoretical underpinnings of the
CEFR, to promote extensive familiarity with the Framework and
to support teachers in aligning their teaching and assessment to the
Framework. The development of the PDP involved three major stages.
The first stage was to identify the target audience. EAP teachers in
higher education are an extremely heterogeneous group in terms of
age, teaching experience, professional training and general education.
They also teach in a wide variety of contexts—from teachers’ colleges
through general and technical colleges to universities—and differ in
terms of their familiarity with the CEFR. Therefore, it was decided to
adopt a cascading or ‘train-the-trainer’ model, whereby the PDP would
first be directed towards EAP department heads and leading teachers. It
was important to include the department heads as these would provide
the support needed to implement the Framework in their institutions.
The leading teachers would take it upon themselves, after participating
in the national PDP, to adapt the PDP to their individual context and
train their teaching staff.
The second stage was to map out the content that would be most rele-
vant for the dissemination and implementation of the Framework within
the given time constraints. As many of the skills to be taught were new
to EAP teachers, it was important to provide background on instruc-
tional approaches, sample activities and assessment relevant to this wider
perception of the nature of language. Finally the mode of delivery had
to be chosen. As the programme was a national one, with participants
residing in distant locations, it was decided that it should be online and
asynchronous. Also, as the intention was for leading teachers to adapt
the content to their local context, the platform chosen was Moodle, as it
is used for course delivery in most, if not all, HEIs in Israel.
162
The final stage was to pilot the PDP. The pilot was carried out among
the teaching staff of three of ECOSTAR’s Israeli member institutions.
All teachers on staff were required to take part in the pilot. As the teach-
ers worked through the programme, data were collected through inter-
views and informal conversations, the teachers’ contributions to and
comments on the online activities, and online feedback questionnaires
posted on the PDP Moodle site. A number of changes were made based
on this pilot, including clarifying the guide to navigating the site, sharp-
ening the overview and instructions in each unit, and the subdivision of
content into shorter, more manageable units.
The final version of the PDP comprises three modules, and each
module consists of four units. The first module is devoted to learning
about the approach to teaching English on which the CEFR is based,
initial acquaintance with the CEFR and a study of the Framework. The
second module is devoted to an in-depth study of the individual can-do
statements and various learning objects that were developed within
the context of ECOSTAR. This module includes tasks such as design-
ing a local syllabus, benchmarking activities and integrating technol-
ogy into language teaching. The third module is devoted to assessment
and includes topics such as learning-oriented assessment, performance
tasks and rubrics, and the provision of meaningful feedback. The
units in each of the three modules include: fora for discussion; activi-
ties which mainly serve to create materials for use when implementing
the Framework in various courses; sample materials for instruction and
assessment; and additional resources, including videos and professional
literature.
As previously mentioned, the main aim of the PDP was to provide
teachers with the knowledge, skills and resources needed to become
acquainted with and implement the Framework, ensuring that instruc-
tors have the knowledge, abilities and strategies to go beyond reading
comprehension and integrate all four language skills in their classroom.
The PDP actually provides additional, more generalized outcomes for
participants, such as a better understanding of curriculum and materi-
als design, in-depth knowledge of instructional planning, integration
of technology, and testing and assessment. The PDP also contributes
to the promotion of EAP as a recognized profession on campus, to the
163
enhancement of the professionalism of teachers, and to the creation of a

common language both at national and global levels.
Findings
As the title of this chapter indicates, when formulating and implementing
curriculum reform three types of consideration come into play: linguistic,
educational and political. We have learned that our achievements and
obstacles were—and still are—reflections of how successfully we dealt
with these considerations and with critical success factors that we now
know have to be in place in order for bottom-up movements to succeed.
As we will show in this section, these factors necessarily involve the ability
to sustain systematic engagement with relevant official decision-making
bodies, such as the CHE, who devise and/or implement top-down gov-
ernment programmes, by establishing a regular channel of communica-
tion and sharing information on the innovation’s progress from day one.
The need for bottom-up movements to evolve into their own political
force aimed at engaging official policymakers in the change process is per-
haps one of our central findings. In addition to describing what worked
in the context of the innovation, we will also comment on what has failed
to work so far and why, in terms of its creation, dissemination and imple-
mentation. Lastly, we will discuss actions that were taken, and are being
taken, to address problematic issues.
What Worked
Linguistic, educational and political factors were taken into account in

the conceptualization, creation and development of the innovation. The
creation of the Framework was informed by multiple sources, render-
ing it more comprehensive, relevant for the local context and valid. The
alignment with the CEFR ensured wide recognition among key stake-
holders from both the academic and the administrative echelons. Most
importantly, the Framework was localized to suit the particularities of
higher education in Israel, bearing in mind the historical background of
164
a focus solely on reading comprehension. Securing European funding

for the development and implementation of the Framework and accom-
panying PDP not only conferred international prestige and national
recognition, but propitiated collaboration with European partners who
contributed valuable insight and input regarding their own experiences
of implementing changes aligned with the CEFR in the EFL/EAP cur-
ricula in their respective countries.
Of equal importance was the inclusion of the National Union of
Israeli Students (NUIS) as active partners in the ECOSTAR project,
and thus in the development and dissemination of the Framework.
Their inclusion gave students the opportunity to convey their perceived
needs and voice concerns that were very helpful at different stages of
the process. At the same time, the developers were able to explain to the
student representatives the rationale, aims and considerations informing
the creation of the Framework in a continuous and fruitful dialogue.
In hindsight, this alliance with the NUIS proved crucial in addressing
external political factors that arose during the course of the project, and
that will be presented later in this section.
Linguistic, educational and political factors were further addressed
through the dissemination of the Framework, and many of the chan-
nels used were very successful. During the development process, atten-
tion was paid both to reaching out to wider audiences and to providing
information and progress reports. Regular posts on the ECOSTAR web-
site and newsletters distributed to the CHE kept central decision mak-
ers abreast of developments in our grassroots innovation at every stage.
Notices were published on the NUIS website and appeared on social
media. Four annual symposia on different aspects of the CEFR were
held, in which Israeli and international experts in the fields of language
and education participated, and to which invitations were sent to key
policymakers from the CHE and the Ministry of Education, as well as
to leading researchers and teachers in the field of foreign language teach-
ing. Synopses of these symposia were published in print and online. In
addition, several national and international workshops, seminars and
conferences were organized, which included relevant lectures by key
researchers and leaders in the field. One of the more outstanding out-
comes of these dissemination activities is that the EFL curriculum for
165
Israeli schools is today in the process of being aligned with the CEFR,
as are English proficiency standards for pre-service English teachers in
teachers’ colleges and EFL teaching certification programmes. Moreover,
curricula in additional foreign languages taught in Israel are also aligning
with the CEFR, both in schools and in higher education.
The main vehicle for the dissemination and implementation of the
Framework and adoption of a comprehensive four-skills approach in
EAP has been its accompanying PDP. At the time of writing this chap-
ter, the PDP had just been completed by teacher trainers and these,
in turn, were beginning to adapt the PDP to suit their particular con-
text and train instructors at their own institutions. As more and more
teacher trainers graduate from the PDP and proceed to train their
staff, we will no doubt experience increased STS, as these teachers in
turn adapt the course contents to their individual teaching contexts.
By promoting the alignment of the English programmes in other HEIs
in Israel with the Framework, it would certainly appear that the inclu-
sion of professional training in the innovation is impacting curriculum
reform by changing the approach to EAP as well as instructional and
assessment methods, and, in so doing, is bringing about the de facto
standardization of EAP in Israel.
The advantages of increasing implementation of the Framework for
student and teacher physical and virtual mobility are clear; now that we
have an internationally recognized ‘common language’ and, more impor-
tantly, common standards for evaluating English proficiency, embarking
on exchange programmes and collaboration projects across institutions
in Israel and abroad has and will become much easier. Furthermore, we
are witnessing significant changes in institutional language policies, such
as recognition of test scores in TOEFL, IELTS and Cambridge exams
(which have score comparisons with the CEFR levels) as proof of can-
didates’ English proficiency, in addition to scores on the Psychometric
Entrance Test, and recognition of CEFR proficiency levels of students
who have studied in accredited HEIs abroad. Fruits of the collaboration
between EAP professionals and key academic and administrative stake-
holders, these developments facilitate admission processes, promote
internationalization and, perhaps most importantly, serve to highlight
the fact that bottom-up initiatives can influence top-down policies.
166
What Did Not Work
There are a number of aspects of the innovation that did not succeed
as well as we had hoped. Before introduction of the Framework, there
had been no significant changes in EAP programmes in Israel for dec-
ades. Thus, notwithstanding the provision of professional development,
inevitably there is resistance to the new approach and novel concepts
set out in the Framework. Such profound change appears to be a some-
what daunting prospect for many experienced EAP teachers, who may
be reluctant to leave the comfort zones of familiar methodologies and
practices and to convince their respective administrations of the need to
do so. What is therefore most challenging is how to motivate teachers
to participate in the PDP to gain the knowledge and skills they need
for implementing change. One problem that we are grappling with is
the limited number of institutions participating in the PDP, despite the
steps that were taken to encourage enrolment. We suggest that possi-
ble reasons for the lacklustre response include (a) the fact that the PDP
requires at least 20 hours of study and that the timing of the first cycle,
at the end of the 2016/17 spring semester, spilled over into the summer
vacation; and (b) we have not yet succeeded in getting institutional or
governmental policymakers to incentivize participation. Since profes-
sional development is an essential condition for change (Fullan, 1993;
Guskey, 2002), we are confident that as more teacher trainers train
teachers, and as more teachers and institutions enjoy the benefits of tan-
gible initiatives such as the CHE’s incentives for improving the quality
of teaching, this problem will be solved.
Much more significantly, it soon became apparent that, from the
outset, we had underestimated the substantial role that the politics of
policy change and reform play in the origins, formulation and imple-
mentation of public policies (Cerna, 2013). As EAP professionals, in
our zeal to bring about what we perceived as the desired curriculum
reform, we had focused more on the linguistic and educational aspects
that required attention, neglecting to engage more actively with the
political entities and decision makers ultimately responsible for effect-
ing nationwide policy changes. We only began to grapple with these
167
political forces when we were well into the development and imple-
mentation of the innovation, once these forces manifested themselves
as a palpable obstacle that seemed to be antithetical to the essence and
goals of our project and the direction in which EAP should be going.
Although the initial plan for the needs survey had included interview-
ing pivotal policymakers in higher education, this did not materialize
due to constraints of time and manpower. This initial omission perhaps
accounts for the subsequent truculence and recalcitrance that met the
innovators’ repeated attempts at communication with government offi-
cials. Perhaps the lack of receptiveness on the part of some was a result
of unsuccessful attempts to convey the extent of change deemed nec-
essary by the promoters of the innovation; or, possibly, it was due to
the fact that they were simultaneously dealing with conflicting politi-
cal forces. Eventually, the breakdown in communication, exacerbated
by the sudden emergence of an alternative government-sponsored ini-
tiative, which will be described below, galvanized the representatives of
the EAP professionals into seeking legal advice and, abandoning their
traditionally somewhat reactive stance to top-down directives in favour
of active campaigning, they ultimately morphed into a political force
themselves. It was only then that concrete and palpable changes began
to take place.
The conflicting forces culminated in the creation of an obstacle that
could not have been foreseen at the outset of the project: a top-down
government-sponsored initiative that stemmed primarily from ideolog-
ical beliefs about English in higher education, and seemed to be guided
more by political than by educational and linguistic considerations. This
initiative consisted of online self-access courses, or MOOCs,8 for the
independent study of EAP at all levels of proficiency except the (high-
est) exemption level, as an alternative to the courses offered at the insti-
tutions of higher education. These online courses were based on the
traditional narrow and now obsolete view of EAP that focused exclu-
sively on reading comprehension and were therefore limited in scope.
8MOOC: Massive Open Online Course. The question of suitability of MOOCs for interactive
foreign language teaching/learning is beyond the scope of this chapter.
168
Particularly lamentable was the fact that a wider base of experts was not
sought before developing these courses, nor was a comprehensive needs
analysis conducted. The courses were offered free of charge to students,
as their union, a political force in itself, had been lobbying for years to
reduce or abolish tuition fees for EAP courses in HEIs. Simultaneously
with the development of the Framework, this initiative was announced
and subsequently implemented during the 2016/17 academic year.
These online courses threatened to undermine the successful implemen-
tation of the ECOSTAR innovation on a national level, and EAP pro-
fessionals across the country were, understandably, extremely concerned
about their implications.
Addressing What Did Not Work
A direct and surprisingly positive outcome of the government-sponsored

initiative was that, led by key ECOSTAR members and leading EAP
professionals from colleges and universities, the English teaching
community in HEIs throughout the country joined forces to create a
new coalition. This was particularly significant as serious collaboration
between the three sectors—universities, colleges and teachers’ colleges—
had previously been rare. This coalition led to the establishment of the
Higher Education in Israel Network of English Teachers (H-INET),
a non-profit professional association representing EAP teachers in all
HEIs. By force of circumstances, H-INET became a political entity
in its own right and a proactive player in the interactions with official
policymakers and academic and administrative authorities. The estab-
lishment of H-INET had two main aims: (a) to contribute to profes-
sionalization in the field; and (b) to create a professional body—itself
a new political force to be reckoned with—to promote the status of
EAP in Israel and to represent EAP on all levels, including consultation
with policymakers. A large part of the work of H-INET is the contin-
ued promotion of the Framework on a number of fronts: among EAP
teachers throughout the country and key management in their respec-
tive institutions; among critical bodies of policymakers in HEIs (e.g.,
the Committee of Rectors of Israeli Universities) and members of the
169
CHE; and with pivotal policymakers and professionals from the Israeli
Ministry of Education.
Ironically, it was soon understood that the government-sponsored
initiative could actually serve as a springboard and rallying force to
encourage reticent EAP professionals to adopt the Framework. Once
the government initiative was made public, emergency meetings were
called to discuss strategy. These meetings were opportunities to encour-
age teachers to join H-INET, to disseminate the Framework and to
show that aligning with international standards was the only viable
alternative to the outdated ‘reading comprehension only’ approach. A
H-INET website, mailing list and Facebook group were established as
channels of communication for sharing lobbying news and develop-
ments, as well as requests for information and assistance, and issues of
general interest to the profession. Members of ECOSTAR and H-INET
were actively involved in the annual CEFR symposia and conferences
at which dissemination of the Framework and the PDP took place.
H-INET members were encouraged to meet with the administrations
of their respective institutions to lobby against the online courses and
at the same time canvass for the adoption of internationally aligned
standards.
H-INET also became the political vehicle for promoting the
Framework to key policymakers in higher education, including the
CHE. Implementation of the Framework was presented as the desired
alternative to the government initiative. Legal advice was obtained from
a lawyer sympathetic to the cause, who agreed to represent H-INET at
a minimal cost, covered by H-INET membership fees. Not surprisingly,
communication improved when requests for information about the
government initiative were submitted to the CHE by the H-INET law-
yer under the freedom of information legislation. In addition, a com-
prehensive policy paper was sent, in which the need to align with the
CEFR and the negative consequences of the government-sponsored ini-
tiative were discussed in detail. Letters were repeatedly sent to pivotal
administrative bodies. Members of H-INET were interviewed in the
media and despite the fact that the issue was of limited interest to the
general public, they succeeded in getting a number of articles published
in print and online newspapers. More importantly, the representatives
170
of the NUIS who, as participants in ECOSTAR, were well acquainted

with the aims and considerations behind the innovation, played a key
role in defusing tensions and acted as mediators between H-INET and
their colleagues in the NUIS, conveying to them the potential benefits
to be derived from the adoption of the Framework and publishing relia-
ble updates about the innovation on the NUIS website.
These intensive and persistent lobbying efforts may have contributed
to a very promising development. For the first time, the CHE con-
ducted a comprehensive, nationwide quality assessment (QA) of EAP
programmes in HEIs, as well as of the government-sponsored initia-
tive.9 All QAs by the CHE such as this one involve setting up a panel
of experts in the field undergoing QA, comprising local specialists as
well as experts from abroad. It is to be assumed that these international
experts are familiar with international standards; thus, it is difficult to
imagine that recommendations for EAP in Israel will not include align-
ing to them (a) at a time when the CHE has launched a five-year plan
to promote internationalization of HEIs; and (b) in light of the fact that
the Israeli Ministry of Education is now in the process of aligning the
English curriculum for schools to the CEFR.10 In addition, and perhaps
most importantly, the QA has led to the opening of a much improved
channel of communication with the CHE, in the form of face-to-face
meetings, meaningful discussions and their increased participation in
symposia and conferences.
We are now at a critical juncture where our bottom-up innovation
must receive top-down support in order to ensure sustainability, trans-
ferability and scalability. At the time of writing this chapter, each HEI
will soon be meeting with the QA committee to review their report.
The final QA evaluations and recommendations are expected to be pub-
lished during the 2018/19 academic year and to appear on the CHE’s
website, thus ensuring transparency. The authors of this chapter are
cautiously optimistic that, despite the rocky start of the innovation,
9All the EAP departments submitted their required reports in the summer of 2017; CHE evalua-
tions and recommendations are expected to be completed in the 2018/19 academic year.
10Some of the authors of this chapter are currently involved in the process, and have been nomi-
nated to head and serve on a number of Ministry of Education subcommittees.

171
political as well as linguistic and educational forces are coming together

to promote its successful implementation: namely, the adoption of the
CEFR-Aligned Framework for English in Higher Education in Israel.
Implications
Most of the implications of this innovation in language education speak
for themselves. At the national level, spurred by research pointing to
the need for institutional and government policy for EAP in Israel, we
had originally set out to address national priorities of curriculum reform
through the development of a framework aligned with international
standards for the teaching of English in Israel’s higher education sys-
tem. In this respect, the innovation’s impact is impressive and includes
improved EAP studies, a ‘common language’ across institutions, assist-
ing the Ministry of Education to align the national English curriculum
for schools with the CEFR, ensuring, among other things, a smoother
transition from school to higher education, ongoing professional train-
ing on a national level and a representative association for EAP pro-
fessionals across all three sectors—universities, colleges and teachers’
colleges.
In response to the question posed in the title of this chapter, our
experience has shown that when designing and implementing lan-
guage curriculum reform, all three factors—linguistic, educational and
political—should be addressed simultaneously, from the moment of
conception and throughout the development, dissemination and imple-
mentation stages of the innovation. In our case, when considering the
linguistic aspects of the planned reform, we asked ourselves a series of
central questions: what it means to know, learn and teach a language;
the extent to which the four language skills should be integrated; the
appropriateness of an action-oriented approach; and the addressing of
the range of linguistic demands of a global economy. When consider-
ing the educational aspects of curriculum reform, we focused on: a re-
evaluation of pedagogical approaches, practices and methodologies,
especially those that are most appropriate to the Framework; the need for
the professional development of teachers; the benefits of participating in
172
international educational projects and learning from the experience of

others; and the implications of professional networking and the knowl-
edge and expertise to be gained from organizing symposia and confer-
ences. Finally, when considering the political aspects of reform, we made
sure to partner with colleagues from all the different sectors involved in
EAP teaching in Israel; we invited representatives of the NUIS to actively
participate in every stage (development, implementation, dissemina-
tion); we opened channels of communication with key stakeholders at
our respective institutions and in the CHE; we worked closely with all
our EU partners; we joined forces with the directors of foreign language
institutes to organize the CEFR symposia; and we invited language
inspectors and officials from the Ministry of Education to participate.
Clearly, our greatest shortcoming was that we did not take all the
political forces into account, possibly driven by a mistaken belief that it
would be more effective to involve national policymakers and other key
stakeholders at a later stage, after we had tangible ‘deliverables’ to present.
Unfortunately, omitting to engage directly with top government deci-
sion makers and national policy designers, from the very moment that
we conceived the innovation, contributed to the fractured and fractious
communication with, and among, key actors responsible for the formu-
lation and implementation of far-reaching policies and reforms, not to
mention the surprising emergence of a controversial government-spon-
sored initiative. Fortunately, as a result of the open communication
channels we had maintained with influential institutional and politi-
cal stakeholders throughout the developmental process, compounded
by our relentless campaigning and lobbying that ultimately led to our
own transformation into a political force to be reckoned with, some of
these actors became more receptive to the innovation and even medi-
ated with the conflicting ideological and political forces, prompting
actions that have led to the cautious optimism we mentioned earlier.
There is no denying that instituting these reforms has been an
uphill struggle, yet valuable lessons have been learned along the way.
We are confident that these lessons could be of value to other educa-
tional innovators seeking to promote bottom-up reforms in a variety of
fields and contexts, both in Israel and in other countries. Here are some
suggestions.
173
Practical Recommendations for Innovators
• First, upon embarking on such an innovation, it is critical to mobi-

lize institutional and financial support at the outset and, if possible,
to partner with colleagues who have already undergone a similar pro-
cess in order to benefit from their insights and experience.
• As soon as the wheels are set in motion, vigorously and vociferously
announce the start of the innovation through as many channels as
possible; inform as many relevant or potentially interested parties
and audiences; encourage their active involvement and forge new
partnerships—promoting more active participation encourages a
sense of ownership for all parties.
• Establish and maintain direct communication with policymakers at
all levels from the start and keep them continuously updated on pro-
gress and related activities. Do not be discouraged if a response is not
forthcoming initially; be proactive, insistent and creative.
• Intensive, persistent and ongoing dissemination and lobbying should
be an intrinsic component of the innovation process from the out-
set through, for example, symposia, conferences and workshops,
announcements and articles in print and online news media and
social media. Create a website that hosts your project and make sure
it is updated on a regular basis. Consider live streaming your events;
this will afford key policymakers and other stakeholders and inter-
ested parties the opportunity to follow the event from afar when una-
ble to attend.
• Before embarking on the developmental phases, make sure that
extensive needs analyses are performed involving key stakehold-
ers, both from the educational/content domains and among policy-
makers from the broad spectrum of ideological and political forces
that often, unexpectedly, come into play. Irrespective of budget,
manpower and time constraints, interpellate these political forces
through the initial needs analyses as well as through periodic meet-
ings, if possible. This is important not just for the valuable informa-
tion gleaned, but also for the opportunities to make useful contacts
and to establish new, hopefully open and productive channels of
communication.
174
• Ensure that you provide a full PDP that has undergone comprehen-
sive piloting and revision, and that is sustainable, such as the ‘train-
the-trainer’ model.
• Become a political force to be reckoned with. If you lack a central profes-
sional body or association that can lobby for, support and promote your
project, create one. You will then have the opportunity to convince other
professionals to endorse your innovation as they join the organization.
• Seize even the most unlikely opportunities to promote your project, even
when all hope seems to be lost; these could, in fact, act as a rallying force
in persuading others to come on board and promote your innovation.
• Finally, be proactive, improvise when needed and do not wait to act
only in response to others’ initiatives or directives. Do not be afraid
to take the reins and become a political force in your own right. You
have a bigger stake in your innovation than any other stakeholder,
policymaker or political force involved.
The incongruence between current needs and most existing EAP pro-
grammes in Israel prompted leading professionals from various HEIs
to propose a CEFR-aligned initiative for curriculum reform, within
the framework of the TEMPUS ECOSTAR project. It soon became
apparent that, if this bottom-up initiative was to succeed, the innova-
tors needed to actively engage with an array of key top-down actors and
political forces and, in so doing, become a political force themselves.
This experience has clearly confirmed that (a) educational change is
a dynamic process and it may be initiated from a variety of different
and combined sources at critical junctures; and (b) given the complex
dynamics of policy change, a deep understanding of the conditions and
factors behind these interactive processes is required, in tandem with
combined bottom-up and top-down approaches, in order for successful
policy change and implementation to take place (Cerna, 2013).
Epilogue
Since the completion of this chapter, the International Quality
Assessment Committee commissioned by the CHE to evaluate all EAP
departments in universities and colleges in Israel has completed its work
175
and submitted its report. The report includes its recommendations for
changes in EAP in higher education. One of the most important rec-
ommendations is to align with the CEFR. The committee also suggests
abolishing the free online courses. At present, the authors of this chap-
ter are cooperating closely with the CHE on the implementation of the
committee’s recommendations. Although it is probable that not all the
recommendations will be implemented (for legal, political and/or budg-
etary reasons), the CHE has acknowledged that English in higher edu-
cation in Israel will be aligning with the CEFR and thus the innovation
described in this chapter will be at the forefront of this transition.
1. Think of an innovation in the field of language learning and teaching
that you would like to develop and promote.
a. What forces (e.g., political, educational, cultural) should you
address?
b. What steps would you take to prepare the field for adopting the
innovation?
c. How would you reconcile conflicting top-down considerations
and bottom-up interests?
d. Which CPD model (e.g., train the trainer, collaborative learn-
ing, ‘walking the talk’) best supports implementation of your
innovation?
e. What measures would you adopt to disseminate your innova-
tion and ensure its sustainability?
f. What might you do to leverage your innovation’s success?
2. To what extent should the development and implementation of an
innovation be accompanied by formative and/or summative evaluation?
3. Cascade or train-the-trainer CPD models are often a key factor in
supporting change. What political, educational and cultural elements
would you need to address to prevent the cascade from becoming just
a trickle?
4. Describe an innovation that was/was not successful. What forces pro-
moted and/or hindered adoption of the innovation?
176
References
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different theoretical approaches. OECD. Retrieved from https://www.oecd.
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Dearden, J. (2014). EMI: A growing global phenomenon. Retrieved from
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Fullan, M. G. (1993). Change forces: Probing the depths of educational reform.
Bristol, PA: Falmer Press.
Guskey, T. R. (2002). Professional development and teacher change. Teachers
and Teaching, 8(3), 381–391.
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9
The Evolution of a Research Paper Course
Andrew Littlejohn and Sandhya R. Mehta
This chapter is about learning how to write research papers, but that
is not the main focus here. Rather, it is about the learning that occurs
through trying to innovate—not only learning to understand the nature
of innovation itself, but also learning about how others may react to an
innovation, whether they are students, other teaching staff or adminis-
trative bodies.
The chapter details the evolution of a large, multi-section university
undergraduate writing and academic skills course in the Department
of English at Sultan Qaboos University, Oman. This is a sixth-semester
A. Littlejohn (*) 
Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah Institute of Education, Universiti Brunei
Darussalam, Darussalam, Brunei
e-mail: andrew@andrewlittlejohn.net
S. R. Mehta 
Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat, Oman
e-mail: rao@squ.edu.om
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13413-6_9
178
A. Littlejohn and S. R. Mehta
course in an eight-semester degree plan taken by English and Education

majors students. Although student numbers vary semester to semester,
the course averages around ten sections with 15 or more students in
each section, with several thousand students now having completed the
course. Covering a 16-year development period, the chapter describes
the twists and turns of negotiation and accommodation with students,
teaching staff and administration, and the manner in which adjust-
ments were made to the course design to resolve problems and improve
the running of what has now become a relatively ambitious undertak-
ing in this particular context: the eventual production of a full research
paper, including all the typical stages of question identification, pro-
posal writing, literature survey, instrument design and data collection,
analysis and findings, through to presentation at a conference. While
this may seem a rather commonplace demand in many undergraduate
programmes, in the context described here it represents a significant
undertaking, given the educational limitations and background of many
of the students. For most of the students involved, the research paper
is by far and away the most difficult challenge they encounter in their
undergraduate studies, and significant skills in supervising and guiding
students are required on the part of teaching faculty.

Like many innovations in education, the course described here actu-
ally began life as something of a rebellion against the established
course offerings, perhaps driven more by an emotional reaction than
by rational planning. On entering the Department of English from
the Language Centre, English students were originally taken through
a series of four language courses entitled Language Development I–IV
(LDI–LDIV). Although the precise nature of the student experience
varied section to section, Fig. 9.1 represents the typical programme of
study they met, as set out in the official brief course descriptions.
As is commonly the case in many MENA universities, the depart-
ment consisted of a substantial number of long-term staff who had
been working there for ten or more years, and a smaller, but significant
9 The Evolution of a Research Paper Course
179
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dŚŝƐ ĐŽƵƌƐĞ ĚĞǀĞůŽƉƐ ƚŚĞ ƐŬŝůůƐ ŶĞĞĚĞĚ ƚŽ ǁƌŝƚĞ Ă ƌĞƐĞĂƌĐŚ ƉĂƉĞƌ͗ ĞǆƚĞŶƐŝǀĞ ƌĞĂĚŝŶŐ͕
ĞǀĂůƵĂƟŶŐ ƐŽƵƌĐĞƐ͕ ŶŽƚĞͲƚĂŬŝŶŐ͕ ƉĂƌĂƉŚƌĂƐŝŶŐ ĂŶĚ ƐƵŵŵĂƌŝǌŝŶŐ͕ ƋƵŽƟŶŐ ĂŶĚ ĐŝƟŶŐ
ƌĞĨĞƌĞŶĐĞƐ͕ĐŽŵƉŽƐŝŶŐĂďŝďůŝŽŐƌĂƉŚǇ͕ŽƵƚůŝŶŝŶŐĂŶĚĚƌĂŌŝŶŐ͘
Fig. 9.1 Brief descriptions of the four language development courses
number of relative newcomers, who would stay for one, perhaps two,
three-year contracts before moving on. For the long-term members, the
suite of language development courses was ‘the way things needed to
be’, given the rather low level of the majority of students. For some of
the newcomers, however, the course structure represented a dated con-
ception of the development of language and writing skills, and they
reacted strongly against what they saw as an over-emphasis on for-
mal grammar and an insistence on tight structures for guided writing
through the entire suite of four courses, most significantly in the last
course in the suite. It was, they argued, as if the students were endlessly
rehearsing for some linguistic and conceptual event which never actu-
ally materialized, and for which they would therefore never have to
take personal responsibility. Risk, they argued, was essentially absent
in the course offering. In contrast, the long-term members argued
that risk was precisely what they needed to avoid, and that there was
plenty of evidence that the students needed more, not less, instruction
in accuracy and that they needed clear guidance on how texts should
180
be written. Only then would they be ready to write independently—

when they had learned what the long-term members termed ‘the basics’.
Without this, and without strict control of assignments, students would
simply plagiarize, they argued. This note in a syllabus document for
LDIV gives an indication of the sensitivity of the issue:
Plagiarism … is a serious offence which can lead to failure in this course.

In some countries you are expelled from a university if you plagiarize. It
has been a recurring problem in this course and will not be tolerated. We
can detect it as easily as we can tell the difference between an apple and
an orange…You have been warned!
The Context and the Processes of Innovation

The account which follows sets out how a group of departmental
members departed from the established course description for LDIV,
and the manner in which the course subsequently evolved over many
years. For ease of presentation, the account has been divided up into
four main stages, although, of course, things happened in a much more
fluid manner. In retrospect, many of the hiccups encountered along the
way could have been anticipated, and the blunders in implementation
now seem to be of an elementary nature. Innovation, however, is essen-
tially about stumbling forward, dealing with outcomes as they happen,
irrespective of planning, and being prepared to correct resulting errors
when recognized.
Stage 1: A Rebellion
Frustrated by the seeming immutability of the language development

course offerings, some new staff members initially set about trying to
persuade other members that things could be different. They argued
that the students needed an opportunity to actually use their language
skills to produce something original, focusing on a process rather than
an end product. Long-term staff members, however, insisted that the
181
courses were designed to equip students with accurate language skills

and that freer writing and creativity was a luxury that could not be
afforded, given the limited time available. With such hard lines drawn
between the two sets of opinions (realists v. idealists, pragmatists v.
optimists, traditionalists v modernists—depending on one’s position),
and with such varying visions of what the students needed, it quickly
became clear that any agreement on restructuring the programme
would be a distant dream. It was thus perhaps inevitable that some
new members took things into their own hands and, taking aim at the
final course in the suite, produced a revised course description which
reversed the learning–implementation sequence. Driven by a task-based
view of learning, the revised course structure required the students
to develop their writing abilities not through practice but by actually
engaging in research and producing not one, but two research papers
within the same course duration.
Language Development IV (revised)

This is an advanced research methods and writing development course.
You will learn to identify and focus a research topic, plan your research
and reading, organise your data and analyse your findings. You will
develop the ability to write extensively in English and follow academic
conventions in writing by writing two research papers, one based on a
library review and the other on data you collect. The focus of the course
is on research and writing development, but the content is very open.
This is for you to decide as you identify research topics that interest you
personally.
The immediate effect of this was that, within the same course, some
sections were running with the original course description while others
ran with the revised description. As the semester got underway, tensions
and complaints from students and teaching faculty alike soon began to
emerge, and by the following semester numerous problems were evi-
dent. Students in ‘revised’ sections found that their workload was far
greater than that of their peers in the conventional sections. In addition,
they now had to interact with teaching faculty in a completely differ-
ent way—not as students being taught, but as developing researchers
182
seeking guidance and advice. Other students in the ‘conventional’ sec-

tions felt aggrieved that they were not given the same degree of ‘free-
dom’ as their peers in the ‘revised’ sections and that their peers were
doing much more ‘interesting’ work. At the same time, faculty members
in the ‘revised’ sections, some of whom were not entirely convinced by
the new course design but who had agreed to take part in the change,
began to point to mounting issues: some students would disappear for
weeks on end and not seek out their tutor, work which students sub-
mitted often showed clear signs of cut and paste from sources, and other
work sometimes suddenly appeared without any previous discussion
with the tutor concerned, prompting concerns about its authorship.
To cap it all, the tutors in the ‘revised’ sections began to be seen in the
department, not entirely jokingly, as having ‘an easy time’, not actually
needing to teach at all.
Matters came to a head when a faculty member (who had been
largely responsible for the original course design) wrote a stinging let-
ter to the Head of Department (HoD), demanding that the instiga-
tors of the revised course design be made to toe the line and adhere to
the existing course descriptions. With some administrative deftness,
the HoD then called a meeting, and in recognizing the argument that
experimentation was in principle valuable, asked all parties to set up a
development committee to look at the entire suite of four courses. The
committee had a few heated and extremely tense meetings, agreed to do
more research but never met again, effectively postponing forever a res-
olution of their differences. In the meantime, the faculty member who
had made the complaint left the university for another position.
Stage 2: Bringing Order to Chaos
Although a crisis with management had been averted, there still

remained substantial, ongoing problems to resolve with the revised
course design. It was, for one thing, unclear just how much learning was
really happening. Some students undoubtedly made great use of their
183
new-found freedom from the strictures of being ‘taught’ and thrived

on the opportunities it gave them to be independent and ask their own
questions. Yet, with other students, there was substantial evidence that
they were not adapting at all well to the responsibilities of devising a
research project. Many research ideas that students came up with were
simply restatements of tired essay titles that they had been given in ear-
lier stages in the university or quasi-religious topics:
The dowry system Corporal punishment

Polygamy The meaning of dreams
Traditional v. modern medicine in Oman The seven deadly sins
Other topics sometimes bordered on the bizarre, perhaps misled by

the notion that ‘problematic’ meant ‘problem’:
Burning car tyres Medical errors

The (dis)advantages of selling babies Foreign housemaids
The effects of Chernobyl Western values and Omani culture
There was also a problem that the requirement to produce two

research papers, one based on a review of literature and one based on
data collection, meant that, for many students, problems with topic
choice effectively doubled. Without prior experience in what ‘research’
is, many students also opted for cut-and-paste approaches to a litera-
ture review (with a varying commitment to citation) and ill-conceived
designs for data collection which mainly resulted in so-called ‘analysis’
sections which simply restated in words the dubious quantitative data
gained. It was difficult to see, for example, how a badly-worded survey
of Omani students’ views on the effects of the Chernobyl disaster, or a
privacy-violating survey about medical errors could be argued to have
any real validity.
The realization that had to be faced, therefore, was that the students
did indeed need more guidance than the new course description offered.
Rather than returning to the controlled content and practice model
184
evident in the original course design, however, the problems in the

revised course were seen in terms of a need to provide more detail about
the process that students should go through. This led to two major
revisions to the way the ‘revised’ sections ran. First, the course would
now open with two weeks devoted to exploring the question ‘What is
research?’ Students were given sample research questions (not topics),
some of which were potentially researchable and some of which prob-
ably were not, and asked to discuss and decide whether they felt each
question met set criteria in order to raise their understanding of what
research is and what is researchable:
Criteria for a research question

• It is based on a question that must be potentially answerable.
• It has ‘a literature’—that is, there must be relevant academic sources.
• It is possible to ‘localize’ the question, by collecting data here in
Oman.
• It does not require specialist technical knowledge.
• It is not about religion, politics or your personal beliefs.
• It is original, or at least original in respect of new data.
A second major change was that students would now be required to

work on one research paper, not two, with a maximum length of 8000
words and a single consistent research question of their own choosing.
For this, students were asked to come up with three potential questions
which they were to test against a flow chart, as shown in Fig. 9.2. This
flow chart progressively eliminated questions that had little potential to
work, or topics which had been covered many times before.
Once students had selected three possible questions, they were then
required to write a letter to their section tutor, outlining their research
ideas. For this, they were given a letter outline, from which they were
free to depart if they wished.
185
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ϳ /ƐǇŽƵƌZYĂŶĚƚŚĞƉƌŽďĂďůĞ zĞƐ͘ 'ŽŽĚ͊ŽŶƚŝŶƵĞƚŽ EŽ͘ ŚŽŽƐĞĂŶŽƚŚĞƌZY͊
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ƌĞůĂƚĞĚƚŽƚŚĞƚŽƉŝĐ͍ YƵĞƐƚŝŽŶϭϬ͘
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ĨŝŶĚŝŶŐĂŶĂŶƐǁĞƌƚŽƚŚĞZY͍ ĂƉŽƐƐŝďůĞZY͘zŽƵŶĞĞĚ /ĨǇŽƵĂƌĞŶ͛ƚŝŶƚĞƌĞƐƚĞĚŝŶ
ĂƚŽƚĂůŽĨϯƉŽƐƐŝďůĞ ǇŽƵƌZY͕ϭϱǁĞĞŬƐŝƐĂůŽŶŐ
ƋƵĞƐƚŝŽŶƐ͘ ƚŝŵĞ͊
Fig. 9.2 Flowchart for the refinement of a research question

186
Dear Dr ———
I have read the various documents that you sent me about the course,
and have checked the criteria for suitable research questions. I have three
possible questions which I would like to discuss with you.
My first possible research question is [state your question]. This
question focuses on [explain a lot more what the question is about].
I think this is a problematic, complex question because I think that we
can answer it from a number of different points of view. For example,
[explain the different ways you can analyse the question]. I have looked
for sources and so far I have found articles/papers/books which discuss
[explain what]. As for data for this question, I think I could collect it by
[explain how you would collect data and what you would be looking for].
I am particularly interested in this question because [explain your per-
sonal interest].
Alternatively, a second question I have is [state the question and repeat
the outline from above].
A third possible question is [state the question and repeat the outline
from above].
I look forward to starting work on one of these questions as soon as
possible!
Thank you and best wishes
[your name].
Tutorial meetings were then set up, so that each student could discuss
their letter and potential research questions with their section tutor,
aiming to eliminate two of the questions, and giving them a focus for
initial literature searches. This then led to the students producing a sec-
ond letter, which finalized their choice of question and which was dis-
cussed in a second tutorial meeting.
Dear Dr ———
I have been doing some searching for my research project, and have
made some progress.
My preferred research question is…. To clarify, this question con-
cerns [lots of detail please!] I am particularly interested in this question
because [explain why]
From my searches, I have found that the following aspects or themes
are relevant:
187
- [list and clarify several further points. These points should be detailed
enough to require a lot of space in the final paper]
I have also identified some sources. For example, [name the sources].
This explains/describes/reports on [explain the content of the source].
Another example is [name the source]. This [provide detail about the con-
tent/ideas/concepts in the sources]
I also now have a clearer idea of the data I can collect. For example,
I could…. [describe HOW you can collect data and from WHOM or
WHAT and WHAT you will be looking for and HOW you will analyze it]
With thanks
Signed
Your name
The net result of these improvements was that students began the
course with a much more solid idea of what they were supposed to be
doing and with a clearer picture of the literature they needed to search
for and the data they needed to collect. More importantly, it focused
on their interests by providing a platform for them to investigate an
area relevant to them and their world. The following is a sample of the
types of questions that now emerged, and that fulfilled the specified
criteria:
Why do some students drop out of high school in Oman?

How do male and female students at SQU differ in their perception of
each other?
How much realism is there in Omani literature in English?
How do perceptions of female beauty differ from region to region in
Oman?
How much do students use school libraries in Oman?
When and why do Omani men cry?
How does the West see the Middle East, and how does the Middle East
see the West, as represented in their newspapers?
How do SQU students experience the research paper course?
Two further developments established more structure to the first stages

of the course: a requirement to submit a 1000-word proposal and a
188
1000-word annotated bibliography by a specified date after research

question finalization. For the proposal, students were given a document
which guided their writing. This helped them structure their ideas, and
set up the framework for their final paper.
1. What is the general nature of your topic? How does it link to other
subject areas?
2. Why are you personally interested in this topic?
3. What is the precise nature of your research question?
4. Explain further: what you will be looking at? What do you expect to
find? How is your question problematic? How will you localize your
question?
5. What data will you collect and how?
6. Draft outline: provide an outline of your paper, as bullet-pointed
text, section by section. Indicate actual content of subsections, as far
as you are able at this point.
(a) Introduction
(b) Background and literature review
(c) Data and data collection
(d) Findings
(e) Conclusion.
7. What is your schedule? Give precise dates for each stage of your
research.
8. References: list all sources you mention in the proposal.
Stage 3: From Control to Support
During these early years, ‘traditional’ sections, using the official course
description, ran parallel with ‘revised’ sections. This showed an accept-
ance of differing tutor priorities having been established, even though
everyone probably had reservations about what other faculty members
were doing. This was not an ideal situation, particularly as students had
no choice in which course description they ended up with, meaning
there were recurring complaints about fairness in workload. Significant
189
problems with the ‘revised’ sections continued, however, even though

the definition of the research question was now more firmly deter-
mined. There were still the perennial suspicions of widespread plagia-
rism and students who disappeared for weeks on end, only to suddenly
appear at the end of the semester with a complete research paper. There
was also considerable variation in how much support students were
given, with suggestions that in some cases the final paper was more the
work of the tutor than of the student. Any deadlines or any leniency
on delivery dates set up by tutors immediately generated complaints
of unfairness from students, mainly along the lines of ‘It’s not fair.
Students in section x don’t need to/are able to…’. A wide disparity in
grades across sections also emerged, with some tutors insisting on their
traditional academic freedom to run and grade their section as they felt
most appropriate. These inconsistencies meant that pressure to return to
the former course description began to gain ground, with the familiar
argument that the students ‘weren’t ready for freedom yet’.
Rather fortuitously, however, a major decision at university level
changed the prospects of the revised course design. A new require-
ment appeared that all undergraduate students should produce a grad-
uation project of some kind, which was mainly intended to improve
and demonstrate the marketability of their skills. Clearly, the original
course could not provide this, and the stage was set for a reimagining
of the revised course. LDIV was done away with completely, and a new
course, built on the foundations of the work of the ‘rebels’ and entitled
Research Project, took its place. The focus had now shifted firmly away
from teaching students new content towards requiring them to engage
in their own learning and produce tangible outcomes against a specified
timeline.
As the new Research Project course got underway, however, new
problems arose—this time from the student body. As the course entered
week 4, the course coordinator was presented with a petition, signed by
almost every student, protesting against the tight timelines and arguing
that this made it impossible for them to produce high-quality work.
Given the generally acquiescent nature of the student body, this came as
a complete surprise and presented a significant challenge to the manner
in which the course development had until then been undertaken.
190
The petition proved valuable in a number of ways. First, it helped

bring to the surface issues which could seriously have derailed the
course later on. Second, and more importantly, it demonstrated the
students’ commitment to the goals of the course and their eagerness to
benefit from the research process, and the fact that flexibility needed to
be built in. From this perspective, the acknowledged presence of sub-
stantial plagiarism (evidenced by data from Turnitin.com) began to be
seen not as an attempt by some students to cheat the system but more
as evidence that they were probably overwhelmed by the demands of
the course and were plagiarizing as a coping strategy. Attention thus
moved towards providing more hands-on structure to the design of the
course, so that the obvious and ongoing problems could be mitigated
while still placing responsibility directly in the hands of the students
and maintaining the much cherished academic freedom of the tutors
concerned.
As a result of the shift in perspective and the new-found ‘officially
authorized’ confidence in the course, a number of further enhancements
were made immediately. These included the following:
• a bi-weekly general plan for what would happen in class (looking at

examples of a literature review, reviewing different methods of data
collection, reviewing examples of data analysis, reviewing examples of
data discussion)
• the development of source materials for the above, which tutors
could (if they wished) use
• fixed dates for all sections for the delivery of the proposal and the
final complete paper, but flexible ‘guide dates’ for all other elements
(the annotated bibliography, introduction and literature review chap-
ters, and data collection instrument)
• a requirement that all main stages of the students’ work needed to be
seen in draft form before submission
• a requirement for students to meet their tutors regularly to review
their drafts
• central submission on the due date for all students’ completed papers
• descriptors for each grade band, covering both the language quality
and content of the research paper
191
• ‘advisory’ cross-marking meetings to review a random sample of final

papers, with the tutor concerned making the final decision about the
grade.
These changes, and others, marked a significant improvement in the

quality of the course outcomes. The incidence of plagiarism dropped
dramatically, and with a few exceptions, the course became largely
plagiarism free. The quality of the students’ work also improved sig-
nificantly, with some excellent papers now being produced. Students
also clearly developed a greater sense of ownership of their work, with
a ‘selfie at the submission box’ becoming a familiar sight. To recognize
these achievements, an annual Student Research Conference Day was
inaugurated, for which students competitively submitted abstracts to
be included in the programme of parallel presentations of their research
work. This major event raised the status of the course substantially as
it became a fixture in the department’s academic calendar. A journal,
Exposition, was published by the department, showcasing some of the
best work of these students, an outcome which they could use to sup-
port their employment applications. Student satisfaction with the
course (as evidenced in the semester evaluation reports) also became
consistently positive overall, always averaging over 3.5 on a four-point
scale. Written comments (submitted in addition to a Likert-scale ques-
tionnaire) showed that many students appeared to value their experi-
ence of the course. Responses to the question ‘What did you like best in
this course?’ included the following:
• It makes you think. The first time I have been asked to do it here!
• This course is the toughest course that I have studied ever and until
now I am surviving. I am proud of what I have achieved.
• It reaches parts of the brain that other courses cannot reach.
• I learned a lot from this course—more than I’ve ever had from any
other course. It developed my research skills in a way that’s going to
help a lot in my future.
• This course has helped me to be a more independent thinker.
• Freedom to choose the research topic.
• We get to do something by ourselves for the first time.
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• The best is how to think critically, to specify my questions, to think

about different issues, and how to conduct real research.
Other comments, however, pointed to some continuing issues.

Recurrent problems were time, course credit and workload. As the sig-
nificance of the research paper in the students’ perception of their stud-
ies increased, it became clear that the course caused many students to
experience notable stress, either because they wanted to devote more
time to it or because they felt the course packed in too much for the
standard three credit points allocated to it. Responses to ‘What difficul-
ties did you encounter in this course?’ included:
• I struggle with time. The discussion part of the project is difficult and
needs too much time to synthesize it.
• I think that this course should be taken with only one or two other
courses since it needs a lot of time.
• This course should be taken in two semesters instead of one semester
because I do really want to conduct a great research project.
• It should be divided into two parts and spread over two courses.
• I think it is better to increase the credit hours for this course from
3 to 6 because this course takes a lot of time and that decreases our
attention in other courses.
• Although the course is very useful it causes stress and pressure.
• There is not enough time to finish our work therefore this affects the
quality of the research we conduct.
Stage 4: A Stable, Evolving Present
As the course enters its seventeenth year, it is evident that there is still
much work left to do to refine its operation. Problems with time, as fre-
quently cited by students, are an issue course tutors have now been aware
of for many years. Despite the coordinators’ best efforts, the university and
departmental authorities have been unwilling to allow either more credit
hours to be allocated to the course (which would mean another course
would need to be dropped) or for it to be spread over two semesters (lead-
ing to staffing problems). There is a vicious circle in these arguments
193
which opponents of the course (of which there are still some) have used
to prevent the course expanding according to student and tutor requests;
while the course has the same credit value as other content courses in the
department, it can make no claim for more time. And while the course
is still limited to one semester, it cannot make a claim for a higher credit
value. These remain issues to be resolved. There is obviously a danger of
recurrent student complaints of time, pressure and credit value ultimately
damaging the reputation of the course and its longevity.
There are also continuing concerns about some of the design aspects
of the course. One of the strengths of the course is that within an over-
all structure, a high degree of tutor independence has been preserved,
with a limited number of set requirements (overall structure of the
research paper, length and main delivery dates) combined with support
instruments (teaching ideas, online source materials, grade descriptors,
cross-marking groups, guide dates and so on). This mix of freedom and
constraint has undoubtedly enabled the course to survive and thrive, and
has resulted in a generally harmonious operation. Yet, there are recurrent
worries over areas such as students’ topic choice, with students in some
sections being allowed to move far from their major (e.g. education stu-
dents doing social science research) while other students are directed to
work strictly within the specialization of a particular tutor. While at
coordination meetings faculty agree on encouraging text-based research
in areas of students’ majors (literature, linguistics, EFL, education), this
rarely translates into practice, and the course has probably reached satu-
ration point in the use of survey instruments, which inevitably mainly get
distributed amongst the student body. Similarly, staff members all agree
on the importance of maintaining an up-to-date database of previous
papers, via Turnitin.com, but not all of them upload their students’ papers
regularly, nor can they be required to do so. There is now the real problem
that the same few topics ‘do the rounds’, partly because they are of interest
to the students themselves, but also because they may have access to earlier
papers by friends or family members. This makes the detection of plagia-
rism difficult. Added to that is the emerging problem of students possibly
buying papers online, to which constant close supervision of student work
over the semester appears to be the only solution. As section numbers have
steadily increased, of course this makes for a very challenging scenario.
194
Findings
As the preceding narrative of events will have made clear, the evolution
of the course was mainly determined by an initially emotional rejec-
tion of the nature of the existing courses and a stumbling forward from
that, dealing with crises and problems as they arose. With the benefit
of hindsight, however, it is also possible to see a number of significant
themes in the development of the course, and ways in which, over time,
it has developed a specific epistemological standpoint in relation to stu-
dent learning. Although broad issues of theory were rarely centre stage
in the struggles for the development of the course, it is clear now that its
development can be seen as largely in harmony with shifts in teaching
methodology, and with writing skills development in particular, across
the world. This realization has added a clearer sense of purpose and
direction to further developments, enabling the identification of basic
principles that need to be maintained, and an identification of the many
strengths which the course now offers. Here, we would like to focus on
five main themes.
A Higher Level of Cognitive Challenge,

Right from the Start
One of the most telling but simple remarks repeated in much student
feedback is that the course ‘makes you think’ and, most succinctly, ‘it
reaches parts of the brain that other courses cannot reach’. One of the
main problems with the original course description was that it focused
almost exclusively on writing form, with little attention to the value and
significance of content or ideas. There is a well-trodden path in educa-
tion which emphasizes this as a preliminary step towards ‘higher-level’
work, arguing (as the protagonists of the original course description
had) that students need to first learn ‘the basics’ before they can be
required or allowed to take on more intellectually demanding work.
This line of thinking has to some extent been underpinned by what we
would see as a misreading of Bloom’s well-known taxonomy of learning
195
(Anderson, Krathwohl, & Bloom, 2001). Frequently represented by a

pyramid of levels, the taxonomy seems to imply that students need to
master the lowest levels (remembering, understanding, applying) before
they are able to move to higher levels of cognitive engagement (analyz-
ing, evaluating, creating). The development of this course, however, has
shown the fallacy in that argument. By immersing students in a scaf-
folded act of creating (the very top of Bloom’s taxonomy), by stimulat-
ing their own ideas and interests in research, the course has shown that
Bloom’s lower levels can be incorporated in a much more interesting
and purposeful manner, with noticeable gains in commitment and qual-
ity of outcomes. The pyramid is upended, and the familiar teacher-led
route to knowledge (as exemplified in the original course description)
has been usurped.
Learning by Doing
One of the most noticeable features in moving from the original course
description to the revised course description was the shift from a trans-
mission mode (where students were told how to write) towards an expe-
riential mode (where students were simply required to produce and
discover for themselves how). This perspective on education, of course,
has a long history, most clearly formulated in the writings of John
Dewey (1916) and more recently Kolb (1984), Kolb and Kolb (2006)
and others, and is a familiar feature of much Western pedagogy. In
the MENA context, however, it is precisely this shift which continues
to cause many students considerable disorientation as they move from
more conventionally taught courses into the research paper course. This
has necessitated reflection on the part of faculty to preserve the expe-
riential nature of the course so as not to revert to transmission modes.
The outcome of this, developed over many years, has been the gradual
evolution of scaffolded, hands-off guidance in the form of guided stra-
tegic questioning, sample documents, provocative feedback and discus-
sion to ensure that the essential core has remained and that the course
focuses on learners doing learning, rather than teachers doing teaching.
196
Constructivist and Dialogic Teaching
One of the first insights that began to emerge with the shift towards the
revised course description was that students by and large had very lit-
tle understanding of what ‘research’ actually meant. This was evidenced,
for example, in the kinds of topics they proposed and what they under-
stood as constituting ‘data’. In moving towards an exploratory method-
ology in which students discussed in groups whether certain questions
were researchable, in tracking their own questions through a flowchart
of criteria, and in sharing their ideas through guided letter writing, the
clear aim was to support the students’ construction of their own under-
standing of what ‘research’ involves. In this sense, then, the evolution of
the course has taken us closer to what Vygotsky and others have posited
as a constructivist approach to education, distinct from conventional
transmission approaches. Central to this is language, where language
functions not as a conduit for knowledge, but as a stimulus for develop-
ing higher mental capacities through dialogic teaching and what Mercer
(2000) refers to as “exploratory talk”—that is, questioning designed
not to test but to challenge to think. Most frequently, this occurs in
student–tutor supervisory meetings, but a major aim of staff currently
teaching the course has been to try to engage students in critiquing each
others’ work, to capitalize on the social construction of knowledge in
a whole-class setting (Alexander, 2008). Given the traditions of educa-
tion in MENA contexts, this has not been easy; students are reluctant
to challenge or question their peers and most often default to socially
more comfortable praise for their colleagues’ efforts. Over time, and
particularly through the impact of events such as the annual Student
Research Conference Day, we anticipate this changing, but progress has
been slow in that regard.
Undergraduate Studies as a Process of Acculturation
The research paper is by now, of course, a common feature of many

undergraduate programmes around the world. Its significance as a
tool for learning has long been recognized, and has for example been
197
cogently argued for in publications such as the Boyer Report (1998,

2003) in the USA, and in work published by the Higher Education
Academy in the UK (see, for example Healey & Jenkins, 2009; Jenkins
& Healey, 2005). In the context of our own research paper course, fac-
ulty members have frequently remarked that it is only once students
have completed the course that they have truly become undergraduates,
definitively leaving behind them the mindset of a school learner, and
embarking on an acculturation into what university education actually
should be. In common with other writers (see, for example, Douglass &
Zhao, 2013), faculty members and students alike have reported impacts
such as students’ improved time management, improved emotional
management of challenges, a greater sense of confidence in communi-
cating knowledge and a stronger sense of identity as an independent
thinker. We remarked earlier that, in the context of this research paper
course, we have preferred to see problems with plagiarism as an indi-
cation that students are not coping, rather than assume as a knee-jerk
reaction that they are deliberately attempting to cheat the system (while
recognizing that some may indeed be trying to do this). In this sense,
then, plagiarism can be seen as evidence of insufficient acculturation
into university work, something which only a greater engagement with
dialogic methods of teaching is likely to remedy.
Autonomy, Ownership and Responsibility in Learning
The ‘selfie at the submission box’ which we mentioned earlier has

become a familiar sight at the end of the semester. For many students,
the research paper course presents itself as an impossible challenge, an
almost unreasonable demand for what needs to be achieved in the short
space of a 15-week semester—a view previously shared by many staff
members. Yet, achieve it they do—often impressing themselves, and
faculty members, with the quality of their work. As one student put it,
“This course is the toughest course that I have studied ever and until
now I am surviving. I am proud of what I have achieved.”
The extent to which the students surprise themselves in what they
achieve can, in no small part, be ascribed to the recognized benefits of
198
allowing for personal autonomy, the cultivation of a sense of ownership,

and the encouragement of personal responsibility for getting things
done. Rotter’s (1954) well-known social learning theory, for example,
emphasizes the impact that the learner’s perception of the “locus of con-
trol” (that is, where decision making lies) has on motivation, a point
underlined by Williams and Burden (1997, p. 128) who argue that
where learners feel that the locus of control is internal to them, stim-
ulating a sense of ownership and personal responsibility, this is gen-
erally associated with greater levels of sustained motivation (see also
Littlejohn, 2012). There is a fine line to be acknowledged here, in that
where a challenge appears too great, feelings of helplessness can result,
and consequent low levels of self-efficacy. Once again, therefore, we
return to the importance of the tutor’s role in maintaining and encour-
aging a sense of learners’ competence.
Implications for Innovation
As the course has evolved over the best part of two decades now, it
is clear in retrospect that there are a good number of lessons to
be learned about how course innovation can be effectively—and
ineffectively—managed. While the course is still far from perfect (with
ever-present tensions in faculty–student ratios, standardization v. var-
iability in tutor offerings, time v. workload, to name but a few), the
course has certainly developed into a much richer experience for the
students than its original version. To conclude this chapter, we would
therefore like to offer what we see as some of the lessons we have
learned along the way.
Take Risks
There is an old adage that you can never really know what you can do
until you try to do it. This is certainly true for the students taking the
research paper course, but it is equally true for course developers. The
significant gamble and risk that the ‘rebels’ took in departing from
the already established course design could, indeed, have resulted in
199
disaster—and very nearly did—but without that risk it is possible that

things would have remained the same. That said, the risk was managed,
in that both the original and the revised course designs ran in parallel
for a good number of years.
Provide Structure and Extensive Support
One significant element ensuring the sustainable nature of the course is

that a good deal of support and guidance has been provided throughout
to tutors and students, keeping to a minimum the specification of oblig-
atory requirements. This has ensured that the sense of ownership and
autonomy which students feel in their work is equally true for the tutors
running their own sections.
Recognize and Value Achievements
Both the establishment of the annual Student Research Conference Day

and the publication of student work have played a very important role
in honouring student commitment and in maintaining a sense of pur-
pose and value for the course. The net effect of both these additions is
that the course is now an integral feature of the work of the department,
thus further ensuring the course’s longevity.
Significant Content and Ownership are Key
We believe that the transformation in student commitment and motiva-

tion which we have seen relative to student participation in more con-
ventionally taught courses is in no small part due to the fact that the
course builds on students’ own questions and own interests, and fosters
a sense that they become experts in their own research. There are les-
sons here—reported by numerous other researchers (see, for example,
the edited collection by Breen & Littlejohn, 2000)—in the importance
of ensuring that students have a meaningful decision-making role in
their classroom work, and in ensuring that the focus of classroom work
is perceived to be of value by the learners themselves.
200
1. The authors suggest that a major cause of student plagiarism is insuf-
ficient acculturation into the ways of a university and excessive work-
load that causes them to look for coping strategies. How far do you
agree with this? What are the causes of plagiarism in places where
you have worked?
2. The authors argue that the eventual overall success of the innovation
they describe was mainly due to the provision of plentiful support
and very little compulsion. Do you think this is an effective way to
ensure innovation ‘sticks’? Does this mean that successful innovation
is always minimal?
3. The authors describe tensions between long-term staff members and
new members, and a breakdown in dialogue. How should differences
of opinion in course development be resolved in these circumstances?
4. Most of the adjustments made to the design of the innovation
described in this chapter came about as problems arose. To what
extent should consultation with students and teachers happen before
a change is made, rather than in reaction to it?
5. The authors insist that ‘transmission’ teaching is an inappropriate
means of developing research writing skills. Do you agree with this?
Should students discover or be taught ‘research’?
References
Alexander, R. (2008). Culture, dialogue and learning: Notes on an emerging
pedagogy. In N. Mercer & S. Hodgkinson (Eds.), Exploring talk in schools:
Inspired by the work of Douglas Barnes (pp. 91–114). Los Angeles: Sage.
Anderson, L. W., Krathwohl, D. R., & Bloom, B. S. (2001). A taxonomy for
learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational
objectives. New York and London: Longman.
Breen, M. P., & Littlejohn, A. (2000). Classroom decision-making: Negotiation
and process syllabuses in practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
201
Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University,

S. S. Kenny (Chair). (1998). Reinventing undergraduate education: A blue-
print for America’s research universities. Stony Brook: State University of New
York at Stony Brook.
Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University.
(2003). Reinventing undergraduate education: Three years after the Boyer
report. Stony Brook: State University of New York at Stony Brook.
Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education: An introduction to the philosophy of
education. New York: Macmillan.
Douglass, J. A., & Zhao, C. (2013). Undergraduate research engagement at
major US research universities (Research and Occasional Paper Series:
CSHE.14.13). Berkeley: University of California. Retrieved from https://
files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED545187.pdf.
Healey, M., & Jenkins, A. (2009). Developing undergraduate research and
inquiry. York: The Higher Education Academy.
Jenkins, A., & Healey, M. (2005). Institutional strategies for linking teaching
and research. York: The Higher Education Academy.
Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning
and development. Englewood Cliffs and London: Prentice-Hall.
Kolb, A. Y., & Kolb, D. A. (2006). Learning styles and learning spaces: A
review of the multidisciplinary application of experiential learning the-
ory in higher education. In R. R. Sims & S. J. Sims (Eds.), Learning styles
and learning: A key to meeting the accountability demands in education (pp.
45–91). New York, NY: Nova Science Publishers.
Littlejohn, A. (2012). The tip of the iceberg: Factors affecting learner motiva-
tion. RELC Journal, 39(2), 214–225.
Mercer, N. (2000). Words and minds: How we use language to think together.
London and New York: Routledge.
Rotter, J. B. (1954). Social learning and clinical psychology. New York:
Prentice-Hall.
Williams, M., & Burden, R. L. (1997). Psychology for language teachers: A social
constructivist approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
10
Developing Communication Skills
Through Participation in Course-Based
Undergraduate Research Experiences
Robert Craig and Brian Bielenberg
Introduction
Numerous reports (American Society for Engineering Education, 2012;
Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2011; Honey, Fasca,
Gersick, Mandinach, & Sinha, 2005; National Committee of Inquiry
into Higher Education, 1977; OECD, 2004) have highlighted the need
for a shift in our approaches to teaching and learning if we are to meet
the needs of professionals in a changing world and create opportuni-
ties for all to participate in the ever-developing knowledge society. These
studies have concluded that the range of skills needed today is much
wider than ever before and include the “personal and cognitive capabil-
ities used to carry out a wide range of tasks” (National Committee of
Inquiry into Higher Education, 1977, p. 133). The reports also concur
R. Craig (*) · B. Bielenberg 
Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi, UAE
e-mail: robert.craig@ku.ac.ae
B. Bielenberg
e-mail: brian.bielenberg@ku.ac.ae
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13413-6_10
204
R. Craig and B. Bielenberg
that knowledge alone will be of little benefit to graduates. Rather,

graduates need to demonstrate responsibility, collaboration and above
all an ability to communicate. The core competencies espoused by the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD,
2004) focus on similar areas. These competencies are: (a) using tools
(language, symbols, texts, knowledge, information and technology)
interactively; (b) being able to interact well in heterogeneous groups
and work in teams, including managing and resolving conflict; and
(c) acting autonomously, which relates to being able to act within the
big picture, form and conduct life plans and personal projects, and
defend and assert rights, interests, limits and needs.
The innovation presented in this chapter addresses the question of how
to promote and continue the development of the English language
needed for undergraduate studies while simultaneously addressing these
broader requirements. We describe an approach to enhancing English
language proficiency and communication competencies in university
English language learners that also increases their motivation for learn-
ing, augments research skills, develops critical and creative thinking, and
enhances teamwork skills. The approach adopted is to teach first-year
university English courses to learners of an additional language (EAL)
through course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs).
CUREs are experiences that engage a group of students in a research
project as part of a formal academic experience (NASEM, 2017).
CUREs build on an idea of undergraduate education that combines
teaching and research as a means of educating students for and through
the conduct of research. This is a concept that goes back to the educa-
tional reforms first called for by people such as Wilhelm von Humboldt
and George Ticknor in the late 1700s and early 1800s, and later built
upon by leading American universities. CUREs have the potential to
promote education that is about the ability to articulate critical and eth-
ical judgements. They provide students with an opportunity to move
beyond grammar, vocabulary, facts and theories to practical application
10 Developing Communication Skills Through Participation …
205
of integrated skills. By engaging in a CURE, the student can see that

the boundaries between teaching, learning and research blur, that their
own experiences are of value and that they themselves can contribute
to the development of new knowledge and ideas (Hamilakis, 2004). In
this way, the student becomes motivated to use English in new and rel-
evant ways, moving beyond simple achievement of the required entry-
level TOEFL or IELTS score.

English has been an important part of the primary and second-
ary school curriculum in the UAE for considerably more than a dec-
ade. Despite this, a large proportion of students continues to require
additional English language development prior to matriculating into
degree studies at university. In many foundation programmes, the need
to achieve a required score in the TOEFL or IELTS exam in order to
matriculate often becomes the main language goal for students (and
instructors). When that goal has been achieved, the motivation for con-
tinued language development may wane, with the assumption that the
achieved score indicates that the student has all the necessary language
skills and competencies, and that language proficiency development is
complete. This assumption is far from the truth; academic English lan-
guage and literacy development has just begun.
Typically, any further formal language development in engineering
and science fields at university is ‘front loaded’ in pre-sessional or first-
year courses which provide little opportunity for students to learn and
use, in context, the language of the discipline of their chosen majors.
Research in language teaching and learning over the past 20 or more
years (Biggs, 1999; Coyle, 2002; Gass, 2003; Lasagabaster, 2011; Little,
2007; Scarcella & Oxford, 1992; White, 2003) points towards the ben-
efits of engagement through a more active, experiential and inquiry-
based paradigm to address concerns in English language programmes.
The development of problem and team-based learning has provided
opportunities for learners to engage, often in small teams, in real-
world problem-solving activities. By their very nature, such approaches
206
require that students do more than simply ‘know’ language; it requires

that they use their knowledge of language to ‘do’ something with it.
The approach promotes the “ability to think critically, analyze and solve
complex, real-world problems, to find, evaluate, and use appropriate
learning resources; to work cooperatively, to demonstrate effective com-
munication skills, and to use content knowledge and intellectual skills to
become continual learners” (Duch, Groh, & Allen, 2001, p. 6). The use
of a CURE is particularly applicable as it can promote language devel-
opment through repeated exposure to the language of content, discus-
sion and decision making, and the employment of higher-order thinking
skills. The collective approach of working together, acquiring, synthe-
sizing and communicating information to solve a common goal may
develop the desired attitude of ‘ownership’ with individuals participating
fully in the learning process and taking responsibility for their learning.
One of the most notable findings of research in the learning sciences
is that students, and young adults in particular, learn best when working
together, sharing their learning, and building on knowledge and under-
standing (Ewell, 1997; Merriam & Caffarella, 1991). Learners “are
active agents involved in constructing knowledge, refining their under-
standing, and learning socially through sharing with peers and teachers”
(Chau & Cheng, 2010, p. 933). Findings also demonstrate that under-
graduates are considerably more receptive to approaches that attempt
to approximate real-world professional practice (Kinkead, 2003). For
excellence in language learning to be achieved, opportunities need to
be provided for students to use language authentically and to engage
in situations and tasks that require problem solving, analysis and inter-
pretation of data (Major & Palmer, 2001). Embedding an undergrad-
uate research experience (URE) into a language course is a particularly
attractive means of doing this.
At our university, over a decade and a half ago, it was evident that
by the end of the freshman year a significant proportion of students
continued to demonstrate low English language proficiency and poor
academic literacy, despite having achieved the requisite language pro-
ficiency score prior to matriculation. As a result, faculty in science,
engineering and mathematics courses were often found to be remov-
ing reading and writing from their courses, avoiding the all-important
207
‘word problems’ and no longer requiring students to engage in reading

texts in the discipline; language was perceived as a hindrance to learn-
ing rather than as a means of acquiring and understanding knowledge.
This was unfortunate, as students were thus being denied opportunities
to practice and develop the very language skills in which they showed
weakness. Such concerns, along with a belief among some of our
English faculty that the existing freshman composition courses (and
the philosophy behind them) were outdated, inappropriate in an engi-
neering school and of little interest to students, led to the development
of a new approach to first-year university English language courses.
The Context and the Innovation

The university where this innovation has been implemented was estab-
lished to provide highly trained engineers and geoscientists for the
United Arab Emirates oil, gas and broader energy sectors. The first
class of male students was admitted in fall 2001 with the first cohort
of female students admitted in fall 2006. The annual total enrollment
is more than 1500 undergraduate and nearly 400 graduate students. In
2016, 84% of matriculated undergraduate students were UAE nation-
als; 59% of undergraduate students were female. Almost all students
are studying in an additional language, as the medium of instruction is
English. Most undergraduates arrive having completed a public school
system that focused on the transcription, memorization and repetition
of material delivered in the classroom. In common with first-year stu-
dents all over the world, the transition from high school to university
can be daunting as they struggle not only coming to terms with differ-
ent pedagogies and standards, but also having to study in a second or
additional language.
From Freshman Composition to Communication
In response to these issues, an integrated-skills approach to language

learning, applied through a CURE, was developed to replace the exist-
ing two-course freshman composition sequence. The new programme
208
aimed to facilitate opportunities for rapid language development and

the acquisition of thinking, information literacy, research and team-
work skills. It was also intended to motivate the language learner. One
of the first changes was to ‘rebrand’ the programme, particularly for
the purpose of drawing the attention of engineering faculty and stu-
dents to the new purposes—the courses were retitled from English to
Communication. The innovation involved focusing on the role of lan-
guage and thinking in content learning, and on developing higher-order
thinking skills. Grounded in social constructivism and based on the
pedagogy of inquiry-based learning, the innovation also integrated the
regular use of technology.
In many respects, the new two-course programme is an extension of
the ‘learning to write, writing to learn’ concept of the Writing Across
the Curriculum movement, with the notion of ‘learning to research,
researching to learn’, added to its rationale. The courses are designed to
provide a variety of opportunities for language practice and formative
assessment, including ample instructor feedback and student reflection
on their own learning, and culminate in a comprehensive research paper
and oral presentation. The rationale for the two-course Communication
sequence is that language proficiency and the communicative compe-
tence required for participation in an English-medium undergraduate
curriculum is best developed through the acquisition, internalization
and articulation of knowledge.
Communication 101 and 151
The first semester of the undergraduate curriculum at our university

includes courses common to most engineering curricula around the
world—Chemistry, Calculus 1, an Introduction to Engineering seminar
and an English course. What is different about our programme is that
the English courses, Communication 101 and 151, are taught through
CUREs. Critical reading, critical writing and oral presentation skills are
developed through a context of involvement in a research project, which
also aims to raise student awareness of quality time-management skills,
teamwork and meta-cognition. Communication 151 (COMM 151)
209
builds on skills learned in COMM 101, with a greater focus on the

application of critical thinking, argumentation and problem-solving
skills.
The approach follows a standard research process and is carefully scaf-
folded to provide teams with abundant opportunity for real-world inter-
action as they work towards negotiating an understanding of their task
and its requirements. Student teams choose their own research topics,
frequently with reference to a list of known researchable areas of inter-
est. COMM 101 topics tend to be related to the social sciences, and the
transition from high school to university has been a popular choice in
recent years. Once a general topic has been agreed, teams brainstorm
more specific areas of interest, resulting in key words and ideas that can
be used as part of a library database search strategy. Students receive ini-
tial instruction on how to use a database and how to identify and eval-
uate academic articles in terms of usefulness to the team project before
they delegate literature search areas to team members. The purpose of
this task is to determine what researchers have already discovered about
the topic. Individual team members contribute source summaries to the
team discussion of what they have discovered; the summaries generally
include the author’s main ideas, beliefs and purpose, methods used to
collect information, main findings, explanations and recommendations.
In particular each team member is asked to identify and share the main
themes of articles they have read, thereby supplementing knowledge.
Through discussion students discover that there are common themes
and conflicting findings across the range of articles. A table format is
often used to map themes and sources which help team members syn-
thesize information for the next step, the team-written literature review.
During this process students use language to present their findings,
argue their points and justify decisions. Through the negotiation for
meaning, the language use of students becomes more confident, natural
and sophisticated. To organize decisions and collaborate on the litera-
ture review, teams have used real-time file sharing, such as Google Docs,
to draft, proofread and edit this first major assignment, and in doing so
learn from each other as they comment and make suggestions.
Further opportunity for interaction and language practice follows
when, having found out what has been discovered globally, teams seek
210
consensus on a local context in order to facilitate primary research.

A research question of, for example, ‘Does time management impact
student performance?’ requires that team members engage in a discus-
sion of the variables involved, the methodology they will use to collect
data, and the data-gathering questions they need to ask. In this case, it
would require developing a questionnaire regarding the type and fre-
quency of time-management behaviour of their peers, and of their aca-
demic performance, to enable comparison of data. Other instruments
may include interviews and observations. This information provides
the basis for the team-written research proposal and presentation in
which they outline and justify the local issue they intend to investigate,
their main research questions and the data-gathering instruments they
will use to collect information. The project management plan they are
required to submit generates a considerable amount of real language as
they consider task responsibility and the order of sub-tasks, and estimate
time needed to complete them. Not only does a well thought-out plan
increase the probability of success, it is also a significant step in develop-
ing an understanding of responsibility, self-regulation and accountability.
Team members take individual responsibility for visualizing collated
data in tables and charts and describing the findings before embarking
on a written team discussion of the most likely causes, effects, implica-
tions and impacts. One particularly interesting impact of this approach
is how it encourages self-belief and restricts plagiarism; for most of the
project, students are describing and explaining their own primary data,
and their understanding of it. The project culminates with teams pro-
ducing relevant and implementable recommendations that address spe-
cific findings as part of the final written report and oral presentation.
Output, the result of input and interaction, is required at each stage,
and describes, explains and justifies the thinking process that team
members have engaged in.
COMM 151 follows a similar procedure, though with reduced
instructor input, and a greater expected output in terms of detail and
critical content. At this stage, teams are encouraged to pursue topics
related to technology, health, safety and the environment (HSE), and
engineering issues. Examples of recent research topics for both COMM
101 and COMM 151 are shown in Table 10.1.
211
Table 10.1 Sample of recent research topics from COMM 101 and 151
COMM 101
• Student-identified high school to university transition issues
• Time management and its effect on academic performance
• Impacts of social networking on student behaviour
• Reading habits among first-year students
COMM 151
• Reducing the carbon footprint in student dormitories
• Reducing water consumption in student dormitories
• An investigation into traditional and modern irrigation methods at local farms
• The impact of sick building syndrome on student health
Fig. 10.1 Learning to research across the curriculum
The level of explicit instruction and amount of scaffolding is further

reduced in the two-course cornerstone design sequence, STPS 201 and
STPS 251, which follows the Communication courses. The courses and
skills development are presented in Fig. 10.1.
Findings, Impacts, Challenges and Solutions

Evidence regarding the impact of the CURE on motivation, language
acquisition, the development of research skills, critical and creative
thinking, teamwork skills, and lifelong learning (information literacy)
212
is collected through a number of instruments across a variety of assess-

ment venues. These include: (1) measurement of outcome-achievement
levels through specific course-based direct assessment tools; (2) student
self-assessment of abilities through a survey instrument; and (3) the
monitoring of performance levels in subsequent courses and activities
through a survey of engineering faculty teaching junior and senior-level
courses. The outcome-achievement data reported are the average out-
come-achievement levels over the past three academic years. The perfor-
mance levels are set as Level 4 Exemplary/Mastery, Level 3 Satisfactory/
Proficient, Level 2 Developing/Progressing to the Standard and Level 1
Unsatisfactory/Ineffective. Descriptors are used for assessing the degree
to which a given performance indicator is achieved. These are normally
presented in the form of a rubric tied to a specific assessment venue,
which are shared with students. The self-reported student survey data
reflect feedback from a total of 761 students over three years, with a
response rate of over 90%. The response rate of faculty teaching jun-
ior and senior-level courses, which we refer to as ‘receiving faculty’,
has averaged approximately 35% over the two most recent biennial
administrations.
Motivation
That the integrated-skills CURE approach is motivating for students is

evident from the level of student engagement observed. Over the past
three years, 63% of students have indicated that they find the approach
somewhat or significantly more motivating than other courses they
have taken or are currently taking. Only 12% have indicated that the
research experience approach is less or significantly less motivating than
other teaching/learning approaches they have experienced, the demo-
tivating factor most often identified being challenges of cooperation
and commitment within the student team. Higher motivation is likely
to lead to greater participation and use of English across all skill areas.
The key to successful development of the target language lies in provid-
ing opportunity for effective, real-world use of group work to address
the common goal of researching and producing written and spoken
213
recommendation reports on the teams’ chosen topics. As one student

commented, “It’s like being given freedom”. Another stated, “I like hav-
ing that could choose [sic] what I wanted to research”.
Language Proficiency
The vast majority of students on both courses (96 and 100%, respec-
tively) were rated at Level 3 or higher (Proficient to Exemplary) on
giving an effective, interactive presentation in which they describe and
summarize observations, arguments and/or ideas related to their team
project. Presentation assessment also considers the fluency and accuracy
of the explanations, the appropriate use of vocabulary and grammar,
and clarity of pronunciation and intonation. Assessment data from the
same period suggests that students do not demonstrate a similar level
of achievement when asked to extract detailed information from dense
scientific academic texts and visuals, and, in the case of COMM 151,
apply critical thinking to the information in texts. This area of perfor-
mance is discussed in further detail in the ‘Information literacy’ sub-
section below.
Student survey data from a three-year period indicate that, on aver-
age, between two-thirds and three-quarters of students on both courses
self-report that their reading, writing, listening and presentation skills
have improved either “a lot” or “quite a lot”. Such perceptions have
been regularly reported since the initial student feedback instrument
(internal course evaluation) was administered in 2006. The achievement
level of learning outcomes as measured through various assessment ven-
ues confirms a high degree of improvement of language skills. The most
recent evaluation of assessment data indicates that 90% of students on
the COMM 101 course were rated as having Proficient or better read-
ing, writing, listening and presentation skills.
Research Skills
By the end of the third-semester STEPS course (see Fig. 10.1), out-

come-achievement levels based on direct assessment tools show that
214
85% of students are determined to be Proficient or better at generating

research questions, with an average performance level of 3.16 on the four-
point scale presented above. By the end of the Communication courses,
an average of 90% of students demonstrate an ability to choose and
develop appropriate research instruments at a Proficient or Mastery level,
with slightly lower percentages demonstrating an ability to analyze, evalu-
ate and draw conclusions. Students struggle with selecting and describing
relevant data, an indication of the need to provide greater scaffolding for
this process during these first two semesters. This finding serves as further
impetus for providing students with ample opportunity to develop these
skills before they become involved in summer internships or capstone
projects, which occur during the junior and senior years.
Students themselves report feeling that they have developed impor-
tant research skills, with 91% agreeing or strongly agreeing with the
statement “My ability to formulate research questions has improved”
and 96% agreeing or strongly agreeing with the statement “My ability
to develop and use appropriate data-gathering instruments to undertake
research has improved”. As students gain greater confidence in their
abilities, they are more likely to feel a sense of self-efficacy (i.e., feeling
that one can engage in a particular skill), a strong predictor of academic
perseverance (Chemers, Zurbriggen, Syed, Goza, & Bearman, 2011)
and essential for the continued development of academic literacy.
Teamwork Skills
As noted above, unequal contribution to teamwork can sometimes be

demotivating, with effective teamwork hampered by attitudinal prob-
lems within teams relating to unequal participation, freeloading or
dominance by one or more team members. To address this issue, we
have experimented with various means of team formation, includ-
ing self-selection, shared research interest, random selection or learn-
ing style (Kolb & Kolb, 2005). We recently implemented an online
peer evaluation system, the Comprehensive Assessment of Team
Member Effectiveness (CATME), which helps to promote more reflec-
tive and balanced teamwork. Respondents assess both themselves and
team members and comment on scores they award. They are asked to
215
respond to five basic aspects of good teamwork: contributing to work,

interacting with teammates, keeping team on track, expecting quality
and having knowledge/skills (including critical thinking, language and
analytical skills). Most importantly, this instrument introduces reflec-
tion into the process. The system collects and analyzes data and com-
ments from all team members and generates a score for each individual,
along with feedback and recommendations on how to improve team-
work skills in relevant areas. It also provides feedback/comments from
teammates anonymously after each assessment. Finally, CATME alerts
instructors to specific characteristics of individuals within a team, such
as ‘confident’ or ‘under-performer’. Students have responded enthusi-
astically to this approach, and data collected via the software indicate
that it has had positive impacts; the main benefits are that more fre-
quent accountability and positive interdependence appear to have had
a positive effect, improving individual contribution to teamwork and
reducing freeloading. Equally important is how the approach encour-
ages students to reflect on their contributions, strengths and weaknesses,
and facilitates open discussion about concerns.
The inquiry-based approach adopted also appears to have a positive
impact on the development of teamwork, which is essential for max-
imizing linguistic input, interaction and the output of language use.
Results from a teamwork survey show that by the end of COMM 151
almost all students demonstrate a high degree of awareness and applica-
tion of the basic requirements of effective teamwork, with nearly 100%
rated at a Proficient or Mastery level. Biennial surveys of junior- and
senior-year faculty report students’ continued ability and willingness to
exchange ideas, collaborate and accept team responsibilities, an indica-
tion that the teamwork skills developed in the Communications courses
are being internalized and transferred to future courses.
Information Literacy, Thinking Skills and Lifelong

Learning
An important aspect of developing gains in the target language is to

promote learner autonomy, and the two appear to be inextricably
linked. Students on the two courses are required to take responsibility
216
for their learning in a number of ways. First, they have to form a work-
ing team and take the initiative in identifying a suitable research topic.
They must plan and manage their research following a standard process,
which requires reflection, critical thinking and decision making.
In terms of locating and organizing relevant sources of informa-
tion, 91% of COMM 101 students are measured as Proficient or
higher (Level 3 or 4) when provided with support and guidance. As
the requirements for doing this more independently increase, as in
the COMM 151 course, the percentage of students rated at Level 2
Developing rises from 6% in COMM 101 to 20% in COMM 151,
indicating that students struggle as the scaffolding is removed. However,
by the STPS 201 course, the engineering design course which follows
the Communication courses in the curriculum, the percentage of stu-
dents performing at a Developing level begins to reduce, to 11%, with
a greater percentage now being able to independently locate and organ-
ize relevant sources at a Proficient or Mastery level even with reduced
instructor scaffolding.
A similar pattern is seen across other performance indicators, which
shows that exposure to the research process in the first year has helped
prepare students for the expectations and required tasks of the subse-
quent sophomore year cornerstone design courses, and that the devel-
oped skills and competencies are transferred. Where students struggle
most is in the ability to extract relevant information from sources, with
an average performance level across the courses of 2.67/4.00 and over
30% of students performing at an Unsatisfactory level (Level 1), a clear
indication of a need to provide additional scaffolding for students in
this area. One initiative implemented to try to enhance student devel-
opment in these areas has been the introduction of individual reading
and writing assessments (IRWAs). In this activity, students are given a
week to read, annotate and make notes on three short academic texts
related to relevant course activities. They are then asked to respond to
an essay-type question associated with the text in class.
The ability of students to synthesize and use information to support
decisions throughout the course sequence sees steady improvement,
with 80% achieving at the Proficient level or higher in STPS 201; how-
ever nearly 10% still perform at an Unsatisfactory/Ineffective level with
217
regard to this performance indicator. Eighty-one per cent of students

self-report that their thinking skills have improved significantly.
Implications
Receiving engineering faculty, those teaching third and fourth-year
courses, are less positive about the skills and competencies of the stu-
dents than the above findings would predict. Feedback is collected from
a survey of their perceptions of student performance on a range of skills
related to language proficiency, research, information literacy and think-
ing skills, and teamwork. The results show that only a third of receiving
faculty respondents estimate that more than 70% of students are satis-
factorily prepared, and that nearly a third believe that less than 60% of
students are satisfactorily prepared in these areas. One possible reason
for this is an apparent assumption on the part of engineering faculty
that students should have mastered these skills by the time they begin
their engineering courses and their capstone projects, rather than under-
standing that acquisition of language and academic literacy is a develop-
mental process that continues through all four years of undergraduate
studies, and beyond. The fact that students have not yet mastered these
skills often leads their discipline faculty to maintain a focus on trans-
mitting technical knowledge through lectures rather than establishing
a more student-centred, active learning approach focused on develop-
ing conceptual understanding and application of knowledge, as such
approaches require students to use language. A second, related issue is
that limited awareness of what is being taught during the first two years
of the curriculum limits the degree to which faculty reinforce, and stu-
dents transfer, the knowledge, skills and competencies learned in pre-
vious courses. It appears that skills gained in the two COMM courses
are not maintained throughout the remaining time on the degree pro-
gramme to the degree expected and desired, supporting the view of
Nunn, Brandt, and Deveci (2016) that “skills gained in one context can
soon lie dormant if not needed and emphasized in others. They need
reinforcing, reapplying and reinventing within a framework that both
requires and encourages their use.” An approach that could address such
218
issues would include aligning course learning outcomes (CLOs) and

performance indicators all of the way up to, and including, the senior
capstone design experience. This would require a rethink of curricular
design as a set of interconnected parts rather than as separate course
offerings.
Active and purposeful engagement in the pursuit of a deeper concep-
tual understanding of the research topic facilitates higher-order think-
ing. As such, opportunities need to be provided for students to engage
in situations and tasks that require knowledge sharing, problem solving,
analysis and interpretation of data, and effective communication. As
these skills develop over a relatively long time, it is important that they
are introduced early and carefully supported across a spine of under-
graduate research, both horizontally and vertically. Our evaluation of
the implementation of this approach has identified that providing suffi-
cient guidance and scaffolding in the early stages is essential as students
shift from a more traditional, rote memorization language-learning
environment into the discourse community of engineers, creating a pur-
pose for the transfer of learned knowledge and skills.
Conclusions
The innovation we have described in this chapter motivates language
learners as they explore topics of personal interest and leads to demon-
strable improvement in their reading, writing and speaking skills as well
as information literacy and lifelong learning attributes. Development
in these areas is a process that takes years, not a single course, and it
is thus important to introduce them early in the curriculum through
research experiences and other inquiry-based pedagogies. Engagement
in research experiences as part of the undergraduate curriculum encour-
ages students to make the shift from being consumers of knowledge to
producers (Buckley, 2011). It promotes higher self-confidence, greater
analytical development and the creative abilities that are essential to
engineering design (Karantzas et al., 2013). A final benefit of incorpo-
rating a CURE in the first two years of technical curricula is that stu-
dents are more likely to persist in engineering studies if they are exposed
219
to real-world problems and experience engineering early in their aca-

demic career (Gomez, 2013; Kinkead, 2003).
The findings of the past 12 years of full implementation of this inte-
grated-skills approach through CUREs demonstrates that such an
approach motivates the language learner, moving them beyond the fos-
silization of skills that can often occur in language learning. In addi-
tion, this pedagogical approach enables the development of additional
competencies needed by today’s global citizen—teamwork, thinking
skills and lifelong learning abilities. However, such skills are often just
beginning to develop in the first year. The difficulty is in how to teach
for transfer—the ultimate purpose of education. In terms of commu-
nicative competence, research and professional skills, an approach
to higher education language teaching such as that presented in this
chapter is just the beginning. While we have seen positive impacts, the
transfer is still limited. But why? Probably most important is that lan-
guage and academic literacy development are often viewed as the sole
responsibility of foundation and first-year English teachers or a univer-
sity writing centre, and not of discipline teachers. Similarly, learning
how to research and think creatively and critically about technical issues
is thought of as solely the responsibility of the content area teachers.
However, we argue that there must be shared responsibility for both.
This begins by bringing together faculty from diverse disciplines to
share their knowledge and experiences with one another, helping to
create a cross-departmental and cross-disciplinary understanding of
the overall content and intended learning outcomes for a sequence of
courses taken by all of our engineering students.
The ultimate benefit of the approach is that through incorporation
of research experiences in first-year courses, we are exposing students to
‘doing science and engineering’ and to developing skills and competen-
cies that will benefit them not only in their academic studies and pro-
fessional career, but also as contributing members of a knowledge-based
society. The requirement today is not only to challenge students “to
think like professional scientists and engineers but also to communicate
like them” (Poe, Lerner, & Craig, 2010). To do anything less for today’s
students would be a disservice.
220
1. How would you encourage colleagues and academic leadership to
implement an innovation such as the one presented in this chapter at
your school or university? What resistance might you expect? Why?
2. What role does motivation play in language acquisition? In what
ways can approaches such as that described in this chapter motivate
students to learn language?
3. To what degree should a language course promote and enhance
professional skills such as teamwork, critical and creative think-
ing, information literacy and research skills in addition to language
development? Should these be core learning outcomes of language
courses? Why or why not?
4. In many university foundation programmes, the need to achieve a
required score in the TOEFL or IELTS exam in order to matriculate
often becomes the main language goal for students (and instructors).
To what degree is this true where you teach? Is there a problem of
washback from this? If so, can innovations such as the one discussed
in this chapter help to overcome the issue?
5. What assessment tools and methods could be employed to determine
the degree to which clearly defined CLOs are being achieved by the
class and by individual students?
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individual in the communicative classroom. Boston, MA: Heinle and Heinle.
White, L. (2003). On the nature of interlanguage representation: Universal
Grammar in the second language. In C. Doughty & M. H. Long (Eds.),
The handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 19–42). Malden, MA:
Blackwell.
11
Preparing for a Digital Future: CALL
Teacher Education in Iran
S. Susan Marandi
Introduction
While digital technologies are increasingly becoming an inseparable
part of people’s lives all over the globe, they are still not being given a
serious role in the education system of many countries. Many reasons
have been cited for this apparent neglect: the universally acknowledged
economic strain imposed by investing in modern technologies, the
ineptness of educators in using them, the inflexibility of school syllabi,
cultural conflicts, and so on. However, most people now acknowledge
that whether we like it or not, digital technologies are here to stay, and
we can no longer afford to ignore their potential in education. To do
so would be to neglect a considerable part of the ‘literacies’ of today
and to impede our learners from fully functioning in society. This is at
least equally true in language learning, where digital literacies often play
an even more prominent role than elsewhere, especially since much of
S. S. Marandi (*) 
Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran
e-mail: susanmarandi@alzahra.ac.ir
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13413-6_11
224
S. S. Marandi
today’s international interactions take place via the Internet, making

digital literacies a prerequisite of our learners’ becoming global citi-
zens in its truest sense, and enabling their voices to be heard. In the
current auto-ethnography, therefore, the author describes her efforts of
over a decade to introduce computer-assisted language learning (CALL)
in Iran; she recounts the steps taken, the blunders made, the lessons
learned, as well as the challenges and opportunities she faced, and the
successes and failures that shaped this venture. It is hoped that sharing
this experience will serve as an encouragement to people in similar cir-
cumstances, and assist them in implementing their plans with less effort
and higher quality.
Language teachers are closely involved with the concept of ‘literacy’
and a major part of their efforts are directed toward helping students
of foreign languages become literate in a language other than their
mother tongue; therefore, recent developments in our understanding
of this concept naturally have direct and important ramifications for
language teachers: “… the definition of literacy today is more com-
plex. The process of becoming literate today involves more than learn-
ing how to use language effectively” (Kasper, 2000, p. 105). In fact, the
idea of literacy itself is being superseded by that of literacies and mult-
iliteracies (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009; Gee, 2015; New London Group,
1996). Unsurprisingly, considering the major impact that digital tech-
nologies have had on all aspects of human life in recent years, quite a
few of the newfound literacies which have found their way into the lit-
erature make explicit reference to digital skills and competencies, such
as computer literacy, digital literacy, electronic literacy, technological lit-
eracy, media literacy and silicon literacy (Dakers, 2006; Snyder, 2002;
Warschauer, 1999). These new literacies have far-reaching implications,
extending beyond the classroom. As Cope and Kalantzis (2009) point
out, the new literacies which have come into being as a result of the
innovative communication practices of recent years are exemplified in
“new social practices—ways of working in new or transformed forms
11 Preparing for a Digital Future: CALL Teacher Education in Iran
225
of employment, new ways of participating as a citizen in public spaces,

and even perhaps new forms of identity and personality” (p. 167).
Therefore, it would appear that technology is no longer just a ‘tool’;
it is actually an inseparable part of the literacies we are attempting to
teach our students (Marandi, 2013). This means that whether we like
it or not, our responsibilities as language teachers have increased dra-
matically, since a student who has learned the language but is unable to
communicate via digital technologies may still be considered illiterate
by others!
Unfortunately, however, many language teachers are still inadequately
equipped to deal with such new responsibilities and, in fact, often resist
them (Chenoweth, Jones, & Tucker, 2006; Marandi, 2010; Silviyanti &
Yusuf, 2015). This is especially true in regions where the Internet pen-
etration rate is still fairly low, such as Africa and Asia (see Table 11.1).
Older teachers are notoriously resistant to changing their ways; however,
even younger teachers are less likely to introduce digital technologies in
the classroom without adequate facilities, support and training (Kessler,
2006). This calls for a person or body taking the initiative to establish
CALL teacher education classes, the focus of the current article.

In the year 2002, having read about the fairly new idea of CALL in the
ELT literature, I carried out a small-scale survey of 31 university pro-
fessors in three major universities in the capital of Iran, Tehran. Using
self-completion questionnaires, I investigated the CALL attitudes and
practices of these professors, all of whom specialized in teaching English
as a foreign language (TEFL). The results suggested that most Iranian
language educators believed in the importance of using digital tech-
nologies and the Internet for learning purposes, but did not have suf-
ficient know-how to apply them in the classroom, and thus avoided
using them (Marandi, 2002). I was then a Ph.D. candidate in TEFL
nearing my graduation and wanted very much to receive CALL teacher
education before obtaining my doctorate; however, as CALL classes did
not then exist in Iran, I decided to take an online CALL class and share
226
Table 11.1 World Internet usage and population statistics, 30 June 2018

S. S. Marandi
World regions Population (2018 Population % of Internet users (30 Penetration rate Growth Internet
est.) world June 2018) (% pop.) 2000–2018 users %
(%)
Africa 1,287,914,329 16.9 464,923,169 36.1 10,199 11.0
Asia 4,207,588,157 55.1 2,062,197,366 49.0 1704 49.0
Europe 827,650,849 10.8 705,064,923 85.2 570 16.8
Latin America/ 652,047,996 8.5 438,248,446 67.2 2325 10.4
Caribbean
Middle East 254,438,981 3.3 164,037,259 64.5 4894 3.9
North America 363,844,662 4.8 345,660,847 95.0 219 8.2
Oceania/ 41,273,454 0.6 28,439,277 68.9 273 0.7
Australia
World Total 7,634,758,428 100.0 4,208,571,287 55.1 1066 100.0
Source Taken from internetworldstats.com/stats.htm, 12 October 2018
227
whatever I learned with my colleagues and students. I did an Internet

search and came across an online CALL class at an American college.
Finding the course description to be interesting and close to what I had
in mind, I emailed the instructor, who initially discouraged me from
participating, since I was on a dial-up connection which was extremely
slow and disconnected frequently, and she was worried that I might find
the experience too frustrating, particularly in the synchronous sessions.
Therefore, I did not register that year; however, the next year (2003)
I realized that I might have to wait a long time for a change in my situ-
ation, and decided to give the online course a try despite the difficulties.
This simple decision ultimately led to major changes in my own profes-
sional development and in the status (or lack thereof!) of CALL in Iran
within the short space of a decade.
The Context
In 2003, while finishing my Ph.D. dissertation at the University of
Tehran, I had started my career in the English department of Alzahra
University, a comprehensive all-women’s university also located in
Tehran. Both universities are currently equipped with computers and
make extensive use of digital technologies; in 2003, however, I did not
have access to a computer in either university, nor had e-learning been
established in either. Those relatively few professors who were computer
literate used PCs at home, but the majority were still unaware of the
potential of computers and often considered them to be an extrava-
gance with little or no applications for the language teacher. Most of
my colleagues and students were computer illiterate, and some suf-
fered from computer phobia. Digital “natives” (Prensky, 2001) were
still an unknown species, and since Iranian schools and the public in
general were even less accustomed to using computers than university
academics, most entering students had no or little previous experience
with computers. At the time Alzahra University had just one poorly
equipped computer lab for the whole university (several thousand
students back then), and the concept of a helpdesk was non-existent.
I therefore attended the online CALL class from home, paying for an
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S. S. Marandi
expensive dial-up connection I could ill afford and which was likely to
disconnect at any given moment (and very frequently did), and strug-
gling through the technology difficulties as best I could (and shedding a
few tears when I could not).
Almost all my CALL classmates lived on campus at the college and
in fact I later learned that they were sitting beside one another in the
college lab during our synchronous online sessions—in the same room,
in fact, as our instructor. Most were taking this course as part of their
master’s degree in TESL at the college; thus they also shared other
courses. I was in every way the odd one out, and would have definitely
remained so were it not for the steady encouragement and feedback of
the course teacher. In fact, one of my most vivid memories of those days
is my computer crashing two days before a deadline: I had no back-up
of my work, no technology savoir-faire, and no one to turn to for help,
and in fact, for a few days, no way to even let my professor know what
had happened. I finally managed to get a message through to her, but
didn’t have access to the Internet to receive any reply, so as I waited for
my computer to be repaired, I decided the only thing I could do was to
panic, and accordingly did so.
Findings
To my great surprise my professor called me long distance to reassure
and comfort me, teaching me the importance of the human factor in
CALL and demonstrating the all-important lesson that computers can
never fully replace teachers. This incident was far from being the last, as
will be seen below, but I gradually learned that CALL requires a great
deal of patience and persistence, and that a successful CALL teacher
needs to become used to dealing with mini-crises and be prepared to
undergo a lot of trial and error. In fact, one of my mantras in my future
CALL teacher development classes became ‘Always have a Plan B …,
Plan C … and Plan D!’
After finishing the course, I stayed on for a term as teacher assistant
at my professor’s kind invitation. The learners in this new class were
not as friendly or active as those in the previous one, and I remember
229
that my efforts to maintain an interesting dialogue were often futile.

My comments and questions were often ignored by the learners, and
one of them occasionally directed racist remarks toward me, making
me feel lonelier and more ostracized than when I was merely a newbie
learner on a bad dial-up connection. I could almost hear the silence in
the forums as my virtual ‘Hello?’ echoed throughout cyberspace with-
out receiving any reply, frequently bringing the words ‘haunted house’
to mind. This led me to understand how much of the success of online
courses was dependent on factors such as interaction, the sense of online
presence, intercultural competence, giving and receiving encourage-
ment and feedback, and in brief, the sense of belonging to a community
(Lehman & Conceição, 2010; Palloff & Pratt, 2005).
When the college’s online CALL classes were over, and through the
encouragement of my CALL teacher and one of her friends and guest
speakers in the CALL class, I continued to learn about CALL through
the annual Electronic Village Online (EVO) sessions, free online
courses about TEFL/TESL (usually but not always focused on various
aspects of CALL and new technologies) which were held each year for
six weeks by volunteer teachers, as an extension of the yearly TESOL
conference. I participated in the EVO for several years, first as a learner
and later for four or five years as one of the coordinators of this world-
wide project. The first year (2005) I participated in two online sessions,
‘Becoming a Webhead’ and ‘Using Weblogs in ESL/EFL Classes’.
Formerly, the EVO asynchronous discussions were conducted largely
through Yahoo! groups, and while my personal evaluation is that these
sessions were generally extremely successful, the overwhelmingly large
number of participants sending messages at the same time often led
to chaos, making it difficult to follow the discussions. The large num-
ber of participants in each session (often several hundred) made it vir-
tually impossible for the moderators to teach everything themselves,
and a great deal of emphasis was naturally placed on discovery learn-
ing and autonomy, as well as peer collaborative dialogue and scaffolding
(Healey, 2007; Zeng, 2017).
At the time, I was very much accustomed to a learning system in
which the learners looked to their teachers for the final word on all aca-
demic questions, and I always had plenty of questions. Until once when
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S. S. Marandi
I asked a question in the weblog session, and one of the moderators

responded, “That’s a very good question, but you don’t want me to take
away all the excitement of discovering the answer, do you? Why don’t
you explore it yourself and share the answer with us when you find it?”
I remember the initial disappointment (and stress) I experienced, before
spending ten straight hours on my terrible dial-up connection explor-
ing the Internet and ignoring other pressing issues (including meals and
using the bathroom!) while I tried to find the answer so as not to disap-
point the moderator. I also remember the thrill of triumph I felt when I
succeeded.
In some ways, this was an important turning point for me, both as
a learner and as a teacher, as it encouraged me to be more self-reliant.
As a person who was by nature somewhat computer/technology pho-
bic, it also helped me overcome my fears and avoid giving up as soon
as I reached a stumbling block or experienced a failure with technol-
ogy. In light of the innumerable problems which arise on a daily basis in
our use of digital technologies, such transformations are vital for anyone
interested in their CALL professional development, particularly those
from countries where digital technologies are still making their way into
people’s lives. This was by no means the end of my difficulties, however,
and I remember in particular the frustration I felt when I also realized
through such explorations exactly how time-consuming learning about
CALL can be, and when I further noted that it was literally impossi-
ble to keep up with technology developments despite spending so much
time. Being a perfectionist, I found this absolutely exasperating, but I
ultimately taught myself to change my attitude, convincing myself
that the point is not to always be at the cutting edge of technology, but
instead to learn how to put it to good pedagogical use. This is what good
CALL practice is truly about, and it is also a more realistic and, in my
opinion, a more useful goal.
The acquisition of this valuable insight was facilitated through
another e-learning experience I had about the same time. Having expe-
rienced how very useful and interesting both the online CALL classes
and the EVO sessions were and on comparing these with some of my
face-to-face classes, I had naturally concluded that online classes are
necessarily more interesting and motivating than ‘regular’ classes, and
231
I remained convinced of this for the first few years of my e-learning

experiences. In brief, I had mistaken CALL for a language teaching
approach in its own right, with its own principles and methods. I had
come to believe that an online class would necessarily be more fruit-
ful than a face-to-face one, and I took CALL to be the panacea we are
so often warned against believing in. Around the same time, however,
I had the opportunity of taking part in some other online classes, and
found them exceedingly ‘traditional’ pedagogy-wise, despite using the
latest technologies. Instead of the collaborative, interactive classes I had
become accustomed to, these classes consisted almost wholly of a series
of video clips, audio files and text files to be downloaded and used. The
learners learned in isolation, without any meaningful exchange of ideas
with one another or with the instructors (who were indeed instructors,
with all the connotations of one-way instruction). From this experience
I gained the invaluable insight that although digital technologies offer
new and exciting affordances to the learning situation, yet like any other
teaching mode, the success or failure of CALL depends wholly on how
such technologies are used. In short, I came to recognize the important
role that pedagogy plays in successful e-learning (Healey, 1999; Mishra
& Koehler, 2006).
On being invited to join the EVO coordinating team, I had the good
fortune to work closely with some of the top CALL teacher educators,
and gain first-hand experience from them. This team had the respon-
sibility of planning each round of EVO sessions, sending out calls for
proposals for the annual sessions, reviewing the proposals and deciding
which should be accepted. Once the proposals were accepted, the mod-
erators of the upcoming sessions were invited to several weeks of online
sessions, in which the coordinators worked together with the moder-
ators to ensure that they were all fully prepared for the challenges of
presenting online to large numbers of language teachers from all over
the world, coming from different countries, educational backgrounds,
time zones, and so on. The initial course proposals were gradually devel-
oped into complete online courses and the session moderators, who
were often experiencing their first online courses, became accustomed to
dealing with the various challenges and to using the customary venues
and tools necessary for both synchronous and asynchronous sessions.
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S. S. Marandi
Through these coordinating sessions I became acquainted with many

wonderful CALL teachers and teacher educators—the ‘Webheads’.
I also learned many valuable lessons about CALL teacher education. For
example, I realized that many of the moderators (session teachers) expe-
rienced technology difficulties and even various degrees of stress and
phobia (ironically similar to those of their future learners) during the
coordinating sessions which preceded their own sessions. This indicated
to me the absolute necessity of CALL teacher education and planning,
and rather surprisingly, proved to me that not even all teachers from
technologically advantaged countries who were entirely accustomed to
using all kinds of cutting-edge technologies necessarily knew how to use
them with success for online teaching. That is, one’s personal Internet
skills will not necessarily ensure success in one’s pedagogic use of the
Internet. (In an interesting analogy, Kessler [2006, p. 26] compares such
a false expectation to the “long held fallacy that any native speaker can
teach grammar without explicitly studying grammar”.)
Similarly, I noted how very important it was for teachers of online
courses to become completely conversant with the venues and tools they
intended to use. I also appreciated more than previously how imperative
careful planning, time management and team work could be in online
classes, especially when dealing with large numbers of learners. I also
learned to appreciate the different roles of synchronous and asynchro-
nous online education. For example, I realized that handling synchro-
nous sessions with very large numbers of participants was not always
easy or recommended, due to both the chaos which sometimes ensued
and the limitations of the technology which made it impossible for all
the learners to participate actively at the same time. This highlighted
the importance of the asynchronous course components. On the other
hand, I often found the synchronous sessions were very comforting to
those learners who were less comfortable with online education or who
were accustomed to more traditional forms of teaching and learning.
Based on this experience and for the online CALL teacher education
classes that I occasionally held in the following years for Iranian lan-
guage teachers, I ultimately came up with a compromise very similar
in some ways to what is nowadays referred to as ‘flipped classrooms’
(e.g. Razak, Kaur, Halili, & Ramlan, 2016), with the main learning
233
taking place before the synchronous sessions through the materials pro-
vided online as well as through the asynchronous forum discussions and
activities, and then being consolidated through the more direct teaching
that took place during the synchronous sessions. I also took care to have
a co-teacher or teacher assistant at hand, both to encourage interaction
and to provide constructive feedback, and more especially to deal with
unexpected technology problems which arose during the synchronous
sessions and which could otherwise have interrupted the flow of the
class.
As I gradually gained confidence in using various technologies for
educational purposes, I decided to put my newly acquired CALL
knowledge into practice in my own classes at Alzahra University and
to embark on my mission to introduce CALL into language teaching
in Iran. This was, of course, much easier said than done, and at first I
experienced nearly every possible hardship under the sun! The first dif-
ficulty was obtaining permission to use the computer lab for my classes,
since the number of people who had started using the lab to check their
emails and so on was rapidly increasing, and they were always displeased
with the fact that I would monopolize it for my classes. In fact, a few
people were usually outside the door waiting for us to vacate the lab.
However, even when people had become used to the strange lan-
guage teacher who unaccountably persisted in occupying the sole com-
puter lab of the university for her classes, many difficulties remained.
Our Internet connection had many problems and would occasionally
disconnect in the middle of an interesting activity. In those days we also
occasionally experienced power cuts, and although later the university
was equipped with a generator, at that time it was not uncommon for
us to lose power in the middle of class. Furthermore, I was not given a
key to the all-important lab, so once when the person in charge of the
lab became ill and failed to show up, we were left in the corridor behind
a locked door! And of course, so many websites were being filtered by
both the Iranian and American governments that I was never sure that
I would be able to use the website or web tool I had in mind, even if
I had been able to access it from home the day before. All in all, there
were whole sessions during which we had to work without the comput-
ers altogether and, in fact, I was obliged to prepare so many alternative
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S. S. Marandi
plans that I never knew what my class would ultimately look like by
the end of the day! This was exacerbated by the fact that I didn’t know
enough about technology myself, and in those early days, no one was
assigned to the lab to help out with the technology problems arising in
class. At that time, most of my students didn’t have access to computers
outside class either, and I had to be careful not to expect more of them
than I could myself deliver in class, especially as I did not want the eco-
nomically challenged ones to feel pressured to purchase a (then expen-
sive) computer.
I persisted notwithstanding: I started using student blogs and
class wikis for my writing classes, podcasts for my oral skills classes,
WebQuests for my reading classes, concordancing for teaching vocab-
ulary and grammar, and so on. However, not a few complications also
persisted. For example, especially in the early years, I had to devote so
much time to teaching my students the absolute basics of using com-
puters and the Internet that I constantly worried that they would not be
learning enough about language itself, especially as I further noted how
often they were distracted from what they were supposed to be doing by
the bells and whistles of the Internet. However, even before the general
level of computer and technology literacies in Iran began to rise (and I
started meeting students who knew more about technology than I did),
I was comforted by the greatly increased motivation of my students
and by seeing that most of them were spending much more time than
formerly on their class assignments. I was convinced that in the long
run they would learn more about English than the others through their
increased use of the Internet outside class—a kind of indirect, inductive
and lifelong learning. At the same time, I started creating/downloading
PowerPoint slides and video clip tutorials for my students to use outside
class. I also gradually learned to make use of the faster or more technol-
ogy-savvy learners as teacher assistants in class. Furthermore, I learned
that the success of my endeavours depended largely on the students
receiving immediate feedback on their efforts, and I would occasionally
email the URLs of their weblogs or podcasts to my foreign friends and
ask them to leave comments on a couple of them. I found having an
authentic audience as well as experiencing real-life tasks encouraged my
students to take their work seriously; several of them continued their
235
weblogs and other online activities well beyond the school year and
even had regular readers and contributors from other countries.
Not all the problems of persevering in a CALL career were as eas-
ily resolved as this, even when the university started building multiple
computer labs and paying for technology support inside the classrooms.
One enduring difficulty was that in addition to learning opportunities,
there were all kinds of culturally and ethically inappropriate content on
the Internet; and I often worried about being the person to introduce
my young students to the mélange that was the World Wide Web, espe-
cially as it would also expose them to all the common but less acknowl-
edged threats of cyber citizenship, such as phishing, being hacked, and
so on. To deal with the first concern, I tried to raise cultural awareness
in my students and to encourage critical CALL; in addition, I encour-
aged them to make the effort to be producers instead of mere con-
sumers of Internet content. In order to address the second concern,
I started each new class by teaching my students what I knew about
how to protect their online safety and privacy. I eventually wrote a
number of articles about this in a popular multilingual journal widely
circulated among Iranian language teachers, Roshd FLT. At the same
time, I comforted myself with the thought that some day they would
need to learn how to become successful cyber citizens to function in the
global society, and that I was therefore doing them a service which they
could not easily receive elsewhere. I also told myself (and others who
occasionally raised similar concerns) that by introducing them to use-
ful websites and teaching them how to put the Internet to good use,
I hoped to prevent their browsing through destructive websites and
putting themselves in harm’s way. Nonetheless, I confess that although
events confirmed my prediction that learning how to use digital tech-
nologies and the Internet would become necessary for all, my worries
about the cultural and personal evils of the Internet have still not been
appeased (nor do they seem likely to be in the near future).
In any case, I gradually became accustomed to using various technol-
ogies for my language classes, and imperceptibly, dealing with the ups
and downs of it became easier for me. My spirit and ambition began
to reassert themselves, and I embarked on the next phase of my plans
for CALL in Iran. As a language teacher educator who was interested
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S. S. Marandi
in CALL, I felt I needed to share my hard-earned CALL experiences

with my MA and Ph.D. students at Alzahra University and elsewhere,
as these would otherwise ultimately be wasted. As a first step, I began
supervising CALL theses and dissertations; and gradually I began mur-
muring about the necessity of adding a CALL course to our M.A. and
Ph.D. TEFL curricula. For the first few years, however, I had to deal
with a colleague who strenuously opposed my efforts to introduce
CALL into the TEFL programme. More than once, she reproached me
for encouraging an ‘unrealistic’ view of their future profession in our
students. “You are doing them a great disservice by encouraging them
to be dreamers instead of teaching them to deal with the realities of
life,” she would tell me. The majority of my colleagues were supportive,
however, and in 2007, I ultimately succeeded in adding an elective two-
credit CALL course to Alzahra University’s Ph.D. in TEFL. Following
the success of this course, a similar one was added to our MA pro-
gramme in 2012.
These additions remained specific to Alzahra University’s English
department for some years. Gradually, however, national interest in
CALL increased (although Alzahra University is still widely known as
leading the Iranian universities in work on CALL, especially with the
gradual addition of like-minded people to our English department
over the years). Recently, I was also fortunate enough to play a role in
adding CALL courses to the national TEFL curricula offered by the
Iranian Ministry of Science, Research and Technology, and lately some
of the other Iranian universities have also begun offering CALL courses
to their TEFL students, some of them taught by Alzahra University
alumni. Most recently, with the help of colleagues, I have developed a
master’s degree programme in CALL which has already been approved
at Alzahra University, although it still has to receive the approval of the
Ministry and is currently undergoing scrutiny there. If such a major
step does indeed take place, we can hope for a dramatic growth of
CALL awareness and practice, and CALL teacher education throughout
the country.
Not all CALL problems can be solved through national aware-
ness and support, however; sometimes collective international efforts
are required. A problem I had noted with the EVO sessions was that
237
the tools and venues introduced were not always equally accessible to
all nationalities; yet little attention was paid to this, nor were attempts
necessarily made to compensate for it in the sessions. Connecting from
Iran, for example, access to some of the venues was occasionally denied
me (some by the Iranian and some by the American governments), but
there were no suggestions of alternatives which all could equally ben-
efit from. I was (implicitly) expected to solve my problem and catch
up. This was when it gradually dawned on me that the Internet was
not as democratic and egalitarian as everyone seemed to believe it was,
and that inequality, elitism and gatekeeping existed on the Internet as
well (Krotoski, 2013). In many ways this discrimination was under-
stated, making it sometimes even more threatening than more blatant
discriminatory practices, since it was more difficult to verbalize, expose
or combat. This problem is still unresolved; as a first step, however, I
have begun to share my concerns with other practitioners (Marandi,
2017; Marandi, Karimi, & Nami, 2015), since I believe that part of the
solution lies in creating awareness. In addition, I am firmly convinced
that people living in the region need to begin creating their own learn-
ing materials and applications, so as to both lessen their dependence
on hegemonic gatekeepers and ensure that their learning materials are
suited to the needs and demands of their own contexts, cultures and
learning situations.
Implications
This chapter has outlined many useful CALL lessons for a person who
simply wants to get started on CALL, particularly for those in regions
where e-learning is still unpopular and digital technologies have still
not been fully integrated into the education system. And while many
of these lessons may already be found dispersed throughout the litera-
ture on e-learning and CALL, what hopefully makes the present auto-
ethnography of more immediate interest, particularly for the local reader,
is the evidence that even with very limited means, encouragement and
help, great changes may be effected in a relatively short space of time
if one doesn’t lose hope or give up. Many parts of the Middle East and
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S. S. Marandi
North African region are currently struggling with various economic,

political or security challenges which often overshadow educational con-
cerns. In such situations, bringing about major changes at a national
level in particular is not always easy. In addition to having a well-
defined vision with short-term and long-term plans, such an ambition
requires creativity, perseverance, and patience (and sometimes just plain
stubbornness!). However, it is indeed feasible, and in fact, all the more
rewarding for being difficult.
1. Considering all that you have read and also drawing on your own
personal experiences, what roles do technology, pedagogy and the
human factor have to play in the success of a CALL experience?
Which has more weight?
2. What do you perceive to be the affordances and limitations of CALL
in your own context?
3. How do you visualize the necessary steps for bringing about a major
change in your own educational context? Can you relate them to the
above experiences?
4. Have you experienced any instances of inequality and gatekeeping on
the Internet? How have you dealt with such experiences? How can
they affect a CALL experience?
5. Do you consider yourself a mere consumer of already existing online
materials, or have you made any concerted effort to produce new
materials? How can producing new online materials affect your own
and your students’ CALL experience?
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12
Online Language Teacher Education for a
Challenging Innovation: Towards Critical
Language Pedagogy for Iran
Arman Abednia and Graham V. Crookes
Introduction
The innovations least likely to be instigated through language teacher devel-
opment—whether in conventional state education systems or private-
sector language schools—are the more demanding ones. They may develop
through word of mouth, or perhaps more likely, if unfamiliar and challeng-
ing to established practice or authorities, they may need teacher-to-teacher
or grassroots-based professional development processes and structures. In this
chapter, we report on a case in which two language teacher development vol-
unteers delivered an online course for developing critical language pedagogy
that was sensitive to the Iranian ELT context. The teacher participants on the
A. Abednia (*) 
Murdoch University, Perth, WA, Australia
e-mail: arman.abednia@murdoch.edu.au
G. V. Crookes 
University of Hawai‘I at Mânoa, Honolulu, HI, USA
e-mail: crookes@hawaii.edu
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13413-6_12
242
A. Abednia and G. V. Crookes
course worked in a variety of teaching institutions. They reported benefiting

from this online collaborative reflection about critical language pedagogy.
The chapter is organized as follows. First, we briefly describe critical
language pedagogy and consider how to characterize it as an innovation.
We then present the impetus for the innovation in terms of values and
also with regard to two aspects of effective innovation: diffusion and
teacher networks. We then discuss the findings from running the course
and conclude with reflections on the course and the consequent impli-
cations, again with a particular focus on teacher networks.
Critical language pedagogy is an approach to second language teach-
ing in which social justice is a central concept and which aims at the
active, democratic engagement of students, both within the process of
instruction and, ideally, beyond it. In this area, the word ‘critical’ sig-
nals a concern with power, and with theories of society, language and
the person in which democracy and equity are fundamental. Proponents
of this approach (such as ourselves) advocate participatory classrooms
in which students contribute to negotiating syllabi and course content
and are encouraged to raise personal or social issues for discussion, read-
ings and exploration through dialogue. The long-term objective is the
development of citizens capable of contributing to societal improve-
ment through democratic participation in whatever opportunities are
present. Out-of-class participation, whether concurrently with the class
or later, as opportunities arise, is considered an important goal. How it
manifests in practice varies considerably from one context to another;
obviously some countries and sociocultural and political contexts may be
much more hospitable to the basic idea and to the out-of-class implica-
tions than others. It would thus be generally recognized that this is quite
challenging. The application of the ideas of critical pedagogy to second,
foreign or world language teaching has been in existence for almost
50 years (cf. Crookes, 2013). Terms such as ‘critical language pedagogy’
and ‘critical literacy’ are increasingly used in our field and at least one
journal (Critical Inquiry in Language Studies ) is entirely devoted to work
in applied linguistics with this kind of inspiration and orientation.
12 Online Language Teacher Education …
243
In a discussion of innovations in language teaching, it is important

to address the issue of whether a possible or proposed initiative really
is an innovation (cf. DeLano, Riley, & Crookes, 1994). The period
of 50 years just referred to suggests that critical pedagogy is not new.
However, in the main applied linguistics journal dedicated to innova-
tions—Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching—the phrase has
appeared only three times, and then merely in passing. Critical peda-
gogy is thus, by virtue of its non-appearance in an authoritative source
of innovations in our field, apparently not a conventional innovation.
Whatever the reasons, it has not been widely taken up, so we believe we
are justified in referring to it as a challenging innovation.
Because of its challenging nature, we cannot expect mainstream insti-
tutions to be supportive of critical pedagogy. In the specific context con-
sidered here (Iranian ELT), it is highly unlikely that established entities
would support the delivery of language teacher education from this
perspective, with all the official, administrative, financial and curricular
approval actions it would entail. With our strong personal commitment
to the approach and its values, we, the authors of this chapter, therefore
decided that independently proposing and delivering a course in critical
pedagogy was probably one of the few ways such a perspective could
be promoted in the Iranian context. Through our personal networks of
professional contacts, we encouraged teachers to take the online course,
which we ran as volunteers.

Why move towards critical language pedagogy in a Middle East context,
and why focus on teacher development for it?
Values Impetus
As an Iranian language teaching specialist with quite a lot of experience

in teacher development in Iranian applied linguistics (as well as recent
experience in Australia), the first author became aware, early in his
career, that there was a values-based perspective available within applied
244
linguistics that spoke to his personal need to unify professional and

personal values, and make his work as a language teacher meaningful
in a country that was struggling to make more visible its actual (and
neglected) progressive and democratic inheritances.
From a domestic point of view, these values were to be found in the
goals of early Iranian educational reformers such as Roshdieh (Madani,
2015), Bahman Beigi and Mojtahedi (Milani, 2008). These are consist-
ent with longstanding radical reform traditions to be found in many
other areas and contexts (e.g., Godwin, 1796), the goals of the French
and American Revolutions (especially Jefferson), and the educational
work of Dewey (1938) and Freire (1970, inter alia). All of these favour
equality, solidarity, freedom and education for democracy. Given the
histories of alternative, progressive and/or radical education from the
late eighteenth century to the present, it is not an innovation to run
schools and teach in ways that orient to such goals. However, in certain
parts of the Middle Eastern world, it is rare.
It is also important to consider the perspectives and views that the
international mainstream is likely to have on Iran and Iranian teachers.
A desire to dispel negative views and also be of assistance to Iranian col-
leagues was part of the impetus for the work reported here. Supporting
this is the author’s own personal experience of Iranian teacher profes-
sionalism and knowledge of the capabilities and aspirations of many
Iranian teachers of English. Though they may not have been explicitly
aware of the kind of innovative approach presented here, it seemed
there were many who would seriously consider the possibility of imple-
menting it once they had access to relevant resources and opportunities
for reflection and dialogue, which would help them examine its feasibil-
ity and potential contribution. And so it proved.
Resistance to Impetus: Innovation Diffusion and Values
Within theories of innovation, the work of Rogers (1962, 2003; Rogers

& Kincaid, 1981) has been very influential and is regularly referred to
in ELT studies of innovation. Rogers has been consistently concerned
with the diffusion of innovations, and in this regard, critical language
245
pedagogy has certainly not diffused widely. Values play a role in likely
diffusion, as Rogers’ ideas explain. Rogers was sufficiently cognizant of
the heterogeneity of values in institutions and societies to refer to them
under the heading of compatibility, partly defined as “the degree to which
an innovation is perceived as being consistent with the existing values”
(2003, p. 15). In our field, not much consideration is generally given to
values (but cf. Crookes, 2009; Wong & Canagarajah, 2009). Thus, it is
not surprising that values are not explicitly considered in an otherwise
comprehensive and up-to-date review of innovations in language teach-
ing, such as Waters (2009). Despite Waters’ emphasis on the managing
of innovation through educational management systems, the failure
of numerous innovations he mentions are quite likely to have been the
result of values conflicts, as detailed inspection of the reports that he
draws upon suggests. Critical language pedagogy, ideally, in its fullest
conception, has values which ought to be opposed to those of the main-
stream, when that mainstream is characterized by inequity, shortsighted-
ness, ignorance, intolerance, religious fundamentalism, racism, classism,
xenophobia, homophobia or gynophobia—unfortunately visible in all
quarters of the globe at the present time. Under these circumstances, it is
not surprising that this perspective has not been diffused broadly.
Supporting Impetus: Community and Networks

in Innovation Diffusion
Are there some features of innovation diffusion that might counterbal-

ance the effects of imbalances in values? Rogers’ work (1962, 2003, pp.
15–16) is also relevant to this question:
COMPLEXITY: the degree to which an innovation is perceived as

difficult to understand and use… TRIALABILITY: the degree to
which an innovation may be experimented with on a limited basis...
OBSERVABILITY: the degree to which the [positive] results of an
innovation are visible to others).
In order to diffuse, critical language pedagogy needs to be understood by

teachers and seen as feasible. We need trialability, in the form of sample
246
materials, possibly in textbook form or at least well-developed lesson

plans which are easily shareable, as well as the support of like-minded
teachers who are also engaged on the same path. We need roadmaps and
guides by which to gradually transition away from our ingrained, autom-
atized teaching practice. We need the ground, the context, for reflection
and the gradual change of ideas or of practices. We need to foster observ-
ability which can be obtained through shared discussion and reflection
on teachers’ practice. We need space to dialogue to achieve or develop
critical consciousness, without having our consciousness otherwise
constrained. Underpinning these requirements is the need for teacher
groups and networks (cf. Adams, 2000). While TESOL teacher devel-
opment groups have been discussed in our literature for many years (e.g.,
Sithamparam & Dhamotharan, 1992), the idea of a teacher network
for critical language pedagogy seems even more necessary, given the fact
that interested teachers are usually widely scattered, and that it is rare for
them to find many like-minded individuals in the same school.
The literature offers some analysis of large-scale, well-financed teacher
networks (e.g., McDonald & Klein, 2003; for general teacher-centred
overviews emphasizing networks see Baker-Doyle, 2011; McCormick,
Fox, Carmichael, & Procter, 2011), but there is comparatively little
guidance on this point in the TESOL literature. Zappa-Hollman and
Duff (2014) discuss networks for learner socialization, and the term has
also been used for at least one case of particularly oppositional teachers
when some members of the outlawed teachers’ union of South Korea
reconfigured themselves as a teacher development group during the
years the union was illegal (Ahn, 1996; Cho, 2005). There are also a
few studies of support groups of non-mainstream students (e.g., Grier-
Reed, 2013) and resistant teachers (e.g., Picower, 2011). In discussing
teacher networks, Adams (2000, p. 25) notes that “one can view teach-
ers as embedded within two systems: a local policy system… and a pro-
fessional one. The professional system, operating as a teacher network,
provides an alternative source of perceptions, beliefs, and actions for
its members.” Adams was not thinking in terms of a radical or critical
alternative, but the idea of networks of teachers who may be attempting
professional development in opposition to dominant trends and pat-
terns in education seems to apply.
247
Schools are often written about as though they are unitary, and refer-
ence is made to ‘the’ school community, which suggests some degree of
homogeneity concerning purpose and values. In reality, however, con-
flict may be prevalent, or attempts to avoid it (cf. Achinstein, 2002).
We hear about the isolating or isolated nature of teacher life as “a fun-
damental social reality of teaching” (Adams, 2000, p. 22), and the term
‘privatized’ is used, meaning that teachers consider their work private to
themselves, not to be shared or discussed. Teachers are often the only
adult in their classroom, are often reluctant to share problems, rarely
team-teach, do not observe each other and are not usually provided
with opportunities for shared professional development. On the other
hand, in some parts of the educational world, with increased availability
of technology, both central government and local administrative con-
trol has increased, to the extent that surveillance now characterizes some
schools (Taylor, 2013).
Schools are often characterized by dissension and potential conflict,
and teacher values may differ greatly either among teachers or across
the teacher–administrator divide. Yet we want like-minded teachers to
communicate with each other, or share and solve problems together. We
therefore need to try to establish a degree of community among teachers
when they are learning together (see Rasulo, 2008) and foster a form of
community that is overarching and reaches beyond individual institu-
tions, after any short-term form of professional development. If a sense
of community, through membership in a network that goes beyond any
one individual school, can develop, that may support an educational
innovation in taking root. In the case of the course reported here, the
teachers involved may not find like-minded colleagues in the educa-
tional institutions where they work; they probably need to draw support
from like-minded colleagues scattered across their area, if the innovation
we are concerned with here is to disperse or put down any roots.
The ideas sketched in the preceding sections were in our minds,
to some extent, as we constructed and engaged in the volunteer pro-
gramme reported here, and remain with us now as we have both
reflected on our efforts and recently reached out to the course members
to ask them to similarly reflect on the programme. We now turn to a
description of the programme itself.
248
The Context
Participants
Seven teacher-students from Iran (six female and one male) participated
in the course, all of whom had been teaching EFL in language centres
and schools for several years. Most of them were MA TESOL students
or graduates and one was a Ph.D. student. They had participated in
several teacher training courses and workshops, and a number of them
had also taken part in several online courses. They reported that these
courses were mostly on conventional topics, such as error correction and
learner engagement, and innovative, yet non-critical topics like use of
technology in language instruction. The major reasons for their partici-
pation in our course were their interest in learning (more) about critical
pedagogy, their familiarity with our professional background and, for
some, awareness of their friends’ intention to enrol. The present authors
co-facilitated the course remotely.
The Course
The critical language pedagogy course was created and made available
through Google Sites. In addition to an introduction and a closing ses-
sion, the course had eight modules which focused on critical perspec-
tives and practices related to several aspects of ELT: classroom content,
classroom management, the four language skills, grammar, pronuncia-
tion and assessment (vocabulary was addressed in the reading module).
Each module had two sections—content and activities.
Course Content
The content consisted of selected readings and videos which formed the
basis of participants’ discussions in a text-based forum. The readings/
videos were selected by us; however, we encouraged the teacher-students
to contribute to the content. Students did upload a few readings and
videos themselves.
249
Most of the readings were short papers published in practitioner-ori-

ented journals (e.g., English Teaching Forum, ELT Journal and TESOL
Journal ) and a few came from more research-focused journals (e.g.,
TESOL Quarterly and Language Testing ). We also included some of our
own publications on critical ELT, such as Abednia (2015) and sections
from Crookes (2013). While a few of these readings were conceptual,
most were teacher-researchers’ accounts of their experiences of adopt-
ing a critical approach to ELT. To give the course a multidisciplinary
flavour, we incorporated a few papers from journals in other disciplines
(e.g., Teaching Psychology and International Journal of Listening ). The
readings also included other types of materials published online, such
as learning resources provided in university websites and readings from
educational websites like www.edutopia.org and www.teachingchildren-
philosophy.org. The videos were mostly taken from YouTube. Some
were of a mainly informational nature (e.g., introducing critical writ-
ing or giving a historical background on critical pedagogy). The rest
included teachers’ voices, where teachers shared their experiences and
ideas related to critical practice in ELT and mainstream education. We
also incorporated a few videos on relevant practices from other fields
(e.g., active listening in counselling).
We made a deliberate attempt to include readings and/or videos on
practising critical pedagogy with young learners and low-proficiency
students, areas on which the literature does not offer much. In addition,
throughout the course, the forum discussions incorporated a focus on
challenges in teaching with a critical approach and possible solutions.
Course Activities
In each module, discussions based on the readings and videos were
followed by activities intended to engage teacher-students in differ-
ent types of experience relevant to developing an initial understand-
ing of critical language pedagogy. Early in the course, the activities
were mostly questions and scenarios which encouraged participants
to reflect on the aspects of teaching focused on in the related mod-
ule, exchange ideas and share any relevant experiences with critical
250
pedagogy, including their achievements, challenges and solutions that

they adopted or thought of adopting. The activities moved progressively
towards those asking teacher-students to modify sample lessons taken
from ELT textbooks to give them a critical dimension.
For example, an activity in the writing module from Four Corners 2
(Richards & Bohlke, 2011, p. 43) simply asked students to imagine a
dream home, with the stimulus being pictures of luxurious houses. One
of our students modified this simply by adding text to the question,
so that it became “how do you feel about living in your ‘dream home’
when there are many homeless people in our society?” Another added
“would you be able to be happy living in it when others are envious of
you?”
Later modules asked participants to develop critical tasks from
scratch. The task in the listening module, for example, asked them to
choose an audio/video file and develop a 20-minute critical listening
task, taking into account the target group’s proficiency level and age.
Another type of activity engaged participants in evaluating other
teachers’ attitudes or practices. In the pronunciation module, for exam-
ple, they were asked to critically read an online post by a teacher enti-
tled ‘Good pronunciation: intelligibility or impact?’ and share their
reflections. The module also included a video which showed a teacher
teaching the American pronunciation of ‘Goodnight’. Participants were
to analyze the teacher’s style from a critical perspective.
The course lasted two months and had a predominantly asynchro-
nous mode with one synchronous discussion held towards the end of
the course.
Findings
Our findings are organized, first, in reference to what the students said
about the innovation that is critical language pedagogy. Second, we note
aspects of the potential of the course to foster that innovation, given
the questions we raised earlier about community and networks. To get
detailed feedback on the course, we approached the teacher-students, all
of whom agreed to be interviewed about their perceptions of the course.
251
We sent them interview questions by email. Initial analysis of their writ-

ten responses led us to send them a few probing questions for further
data. In some cases, this meant multiple email exchanges.
General Feedback on the Course
The teacher-students commented positively on different aspects of the

course. They believed that the content and the activities were “insight-
ful”, “engaging” and “useful”, and the discussions and interactions were
“motivating” and increasingly “meaningful”. They also reported that the
structure of the course was “clear” and talked positively about the time
and location flexibility afforded by the online and mostly asynchronous
nature of the course. However, slow Internet connections had limited
some participants’ course engagement.
Uptake: From Learning About and Experimenting

with Critical Pedagogy on the Course to a Refined
Teaching Practice
Most participants reported their engagement in the online course as

likely to inform their classroom teaching practice. The course had
helped one become a “critic of [her] own instruction as well as the sta-
tus quo of institutes”, had “opened up new lines of pedagogy” for her
and had given her “voice to implement her method of teaching”. It had
helped another participant “learn about the challenges of practicing
critical pedagogy (CP) and the ways of minimizing them”. Recalling the
emphasis on taking ‘baby steps’ in practising critical pedagogy, he said
that he had “learnt to have a more reasonable and cautious view about
incorporating CP in [his] classes”. Another teacher-student explained, at
considerable length, several aspects of her teaching in which she incor-
porated what she had learned in the course. (The quote has been short-
ened and slightly edited for clarity.)
One aspect is classroom management, which I practice a bit more

realistically when I create a democratic condition in the class and
252
give students voice… Another aspect is how to raise questions which

I learned from the assignments in this course. In addition to reconsider-
ing the way I develop questions about content, I usually ask students to
raise questions from the texts… Another aspect is materials. Although
even at university General English classes the materials are determined
by the departments, I usually take some texts to the class that are related
to the students’ age, social concerns and major. Although sometimes dis-
cussions turn into Persian… the vocabulary I introduce, the structures
I use, etc. become part of the students’ conversations and writings, either
seriously or as jokes.
Another participant explained in detail a few examples of critical top-

ics and tasks she had included in her teaching and their learning out-
comes, concluding: “I think all aspects of critical pedagogy are doable
in the classroom environment and if we as teachers know the concept
of critical pedagogy and how to employ it, it could be so helpful and
interesting.”
Two teacher-students, however, were explicit that they were not
going to incorporate critical pedagogy into their teaching practice. One
explained her position on the grounds of contextual limitations.
The top-down educational system, class size, limited class time and insuf-
ficient information about the learners’ background are the main barriers
which prevent me from applying the principles of critical pedagogy in
my teaching. I must teach the materials already determined by institutes
and follow the teaching procedures, techniques, and even steps dictated
to me. If I have an institute, I will use some tenets of CP, because I will be
the manager.
Sharing similar concerns, the other participant additionally stated that

critical pedagogy is “too good to be true”, it is “primarily ideology-ori-
ented”, it has “theoretical problems” and “when put into practice it
is replete with problems”. She said there is a “lack of outstanding
examples of CP being put into practice”, and “most of the examples
that I have read about CP in my own context are more like scattered
flashes”.
253
Developing a Sense of Membership in the Course
The teacher-students’ development of a sense of membership in the

course was informed by their past experiences and aspirations as well
as their interactions with us and each other during the course. They
reported seeing themselves as members of a community evolving in the
online course, because of their shared interest in critical language peda-
gogy, their similar background knowledge about the topic, their shared
concerns about how to practise critical pedagogy, their experiences of
the challenges involved and the prior acquaintance between some of
them. A relevant excerpt is as follows.
We were all Iranian language teachers who wanted to learn about criti-
cal pedagogy and probably become critical educators. And since the prac-
tices of a critical course can be very much context-specific, the topics we
worked on and the challenges we faced had a lot in common. Therefore, I
think we can call ourselves a community that has the same goal and faces
similar challenges.
In the case of one teacher-student, knowing no other participants, cou-

pled with lack of prior experience with online courses, had led her to
feel “like a stranger in a group”. “After some sessions”, however, “I saw
myself as a member of that group”, she said. Lack of familiarity with the
concept of critical pedagogy had made the course initially feel “strange”
to another teacher-student, who believed that, unlike her, some of the
other participants “had already internalized different aspects of CLP and
applied them in their courses”. This had led to her limited engagement
in discussions. However, she stated that she was later able to overcome
these challenges through our “support and understanding”.
Community-Building Potential of the Interactions in the

Course
The participants believed that the course “created a friendly atmos-

phere for exchanging ideas”; interactions were “usually motivating and
254
helpful”; and “we were all helpful, supportive” and “felt at home around
the course”. They also believed that the online nature of the course con-
tributed to their engagement. Some attributed this impact to the inher-
ently attractive nature of online courses.
For tech fans, like me, the online courses are always very fascinating.
Online classes are a new thing and for us, who are sort of digital immi-
grants, attending these types of classes is so interesting and different.
They further focused on how the online nature of the course may have
enhanced its interactive and supportive atmosphere. A teacher-stu-
dent said that in online courses, participants are “more flexible” and
“friendly” and characterized these courses with the “availability of men-
tors and other participants anytime anywhere”. Another participant
reflected on the benefits of the online mode of the course as follows.
It let us have time to think and take our time in doing its every single
activity. This cannot happen in normal courses held in classrooms as the
time is limited and conversations are real time. A second advantage was
that every single exchange of ideas between all members was ready and
available to all members to read, save, or comment on, and this almost
never happens in regular courses because the time of sessions are limited
and if out-of-class assignments and feedback are provided, usually it is
just the teacher who sees each student’s work and comments on it.
The above excerpt implies a focus on the largely asynchronous mode

of the course. Yet, another interviewee specifically acknowledged the
flexibility and positive impacts of this mode on her engagement in the
discussions.
In this online course I felt relieved and concentrated while communi-

cating with other participants… this might be due to its asynchronous
nature that made me feel connected 24/7… it was possible to read
the others’ comments at our speed, think about them, focus on our
answers… I did not feel in rush for sharing my comments… sometimes I
wouldn’t come up with a clear idea, then when people added their com-
ments, ideas popped up in my mind and I could share a comment.
255
This participant went on to make a positive comment about the text-

based environment of the course discussions.
Although a video or audio interaction would be more helpful at times, I

liked that I would not need to be fussy about my hijab, clothing, appear-
ance, accent, etc. I was just a relaxed version of [her first name].
Teacher-Students’ Contributions to Each Other’s

Engagement and Learning
The participants spoke positively about their peers’ contributions,

including their comments relating to the readings and the activities,
their responses to each others’ questions and comments, the teaching
experiences they shared and the lessons/tasks they designed. In addition
to generally acknowledging their peers’ input as having “inspired” and
“motivated” them, they believed that it had also “flare[d] up the discus-
sions”, helped them come up with ideas to share and, thus, participate
in discussions more actively, and “encouraged [them] to read and think
more about the content of the course and look at them more critically”.
The teacher-students further reported the positive impact of their
peers’ posts on their learning. Their classmates’ contributions, they
believed, helped them “look at issues in language teaching from differ-
ent angles”, “revisit and reconsider [their] standpoints”, and learn about
“some practical ways for conducting critical pedagogy in [their] own
classes” and “materials for incorporating CP”. They felt encouraged “to
experience what others have done”. And they learned about the chal-
lenges their peers experienced in practising critical pedagogy.
Taking It Beyond the Course: Towards a Dispersed

Network
While some participants were previously acquainted, the rest got to

know their classmates as they took part in the course. Although initially
limited to the discussions within the online forum, they reported that
their interactions later expanded beyond the course and cyberspace,
256
as they met at academic events such as conferences and workshops. In

the two excerpts below, two participants explain how they met for the
first time at a research workshop and then again at a conference in Iran.
At the research workshop at [a university’s name], I and 2/3 other stu-

dents of the CLP course somehow got the chance to get to know each
other in person and discuss the course and our reasons for participating
in it. I also got to know that [a teacher-student’s name] had worked on
CP in her thesis as well, and asked her about her research and the method
and the sources she had used. She later sent me some of the materials that
she had used in her own work on CP.
I saw him in the workshop… He said that he had become interested
in CP and would like to conduct his MA thesis on CP. Then he asked me
for some papers on critical pedagogy. The next time I saw him at the con-
ference held by [a university’s name], he had a presentation on CP.
The first of these teacher-students also talked about discussions he had

with another course participant at the workshop about his thesis and
the difficulties involved in practising CP.
I remember that I talked to [a teacher-student’s name] about my thesis on

CP and she seemed interested in my work and gave some helpful com-
ments on it. We also discussed incorporating CP in our classes and the
challenges and possibilities of doing it in our specific teaching contexts.
I specifically remember talking (somehow complaining) about the extra
time that we had to spend on our classes for having a more critical atti-
tude in it.
The following two excerpts show how two other teacher-students met
on a different occasion.
Right before the end of the course, there was the conference [name of
the conference] in [name of the city in Iran]. As she saw my name in the
schedule, she emailed me and we arranged to meet there. I think you
[Arman] introduced us after my presentation. So far we have been in
touch, and she has asked me questions about [the] PhD exam. Now that
she comes to Tehran to do her PhD, we will most probably see each other
frequently.
257
[teacher-student’s name] is one of my best colleagues interacting with

me during the course. We went through our experience as language teach-
ers to find a common point by reviewing what we had learnt in that
course.
While the first excerpt shows that these participants’ exchanges at the
conference had a non-critical focus (the Ph.D. entrance examination), it
was the online course that had initiated these exchanges. Furthermore,
as understood from the second excerpt, these two teacher-students’
conversations were at some stage, and may continue to be, about their
teaching practice and were informed by their learning about critical lan-
guage pedagogy on the course.
Implications
The findings reported above show that the online course we co-facili-
tated afforded us a reasonably rich opportunity to contribute to the
diffusion of the innovation that is critical language pedagogy. Based
on what our teacher-students said, we could argue that the con-
tent and dynamics of the online course met, to varying degrees, most
of the attributes Rogers (2003) proposed for successful diffusion of
innovations.
Regarding Rogers’ complexity, there was no evidence to suggest that
the participants considered the course readings and videos difficult to
understand or the activities difficult to fulfil. Rather, they characterized
them as “insightful”, “engaging” and “useful”. The course, therefore,
provided them with an accessible understanding of critical language
pedagogy.
There was an adequate focus on and acknowledgement of the trial-
ability of critical pedagogy in the language classroom. Instead of pre-
senting a view of critical language pedagogy where teachers are to
shoulder all stakeholders’ responsibilities, we emphasized taking small
steps towards developing this approach in practice. The activities, which
the participants found engaging, facilitated small-scale experimenta-
tion. Several readings and videos, similarly considered engaging by the
258
participants, were accounts of teacher-researchers’ experimentation with

techniques and activities that could be used with critical language peda-
gogy in the classroom.
The teacher-students’ engagement with these readings, the reflective
discussions, the activities, the positive and constructive feedback they
received from their peers and us on their thoughts on critical pedagogy
and the lessons they designed all helped them observe the outcomes of
practising this approach. Their reported investment in continued exper-
imentation with critical pedagogy during the course suggests they found
critical language pedagogy “doable” and “helpful”, as one p articipant
put it. (This was not an absolutely uniform position: one teacher-
student disagreed with the former descriptor and one with the latter.)
A reason why we consistently focused on a baby-steps approach to
practising critical pedagogy was our shared awareness of its inability to
meet one of Rogers’ criteria, namely compatibility with dominant values
and beliefs, and market demands. The bottom line, however, is that lim-
ited compatibility is what makes critical pedagogy critical. Otherwise,
this concept must be redefined in critical terms: compatibility with
human agency and values like social justice, human emancipation and
social transformation.
Values concerns, indeed values incompatibility, is one obvious reason
why courses like the one reported above are rare. But this is also what
inspired us to offer this course and contribute to the diffusion of criti-
cal language pedagogy as an innovation by facilitating the development
of a dispersed network of teachers who share our critical aspirations.
And they now lead us to conclude that, given all the encouraging find-
ings, we would perhaps have better fostered diffusion of critical peda-
gogy if we had somehow or another facilitated these teachers’ continued
engagement with each other beyond the course or the expansion of this
network beyond their immediate cohort. One way to do this would be
to keep the doors of the course forum open for any of us to share their
achievements, reflections and concerns with the rest, and encourage
the rest to acknowledge their peers’ input and engage in dialogue with
them. In any future offering of the course, we will emphasize course
members’ own improvement of network-developing skills beyond the
course itself. We will also encourage the teacher-students to go beyond
259
their conventional responsibilities and share the role of co-facilitation

with us, itself an exercise in critical pedagogy.
1. The authors argue in favour of a critical element in language teach-
ing in which “students contribute to negotiating syllabi and course
content and are encouraged to raise personal or social issues for dis-
cussion, readings, and exploration”. How far do you agree that the
language classroom is an appropriate venue for this? Should the lan-
guage classroom have as its aim the “development of citizens capa-
ble of contributing to societal improvement, through democratic
participation”?
2. Is it appropriate for language teaching to promote or challenge par-
ticular values?
3. One participant on the course said that she would not be implement-
ing ideas from the course, because of “the top-down educational sys-
tem, class size, limited class time and insufficient information about
the learners’ background”. How far should teachers feel constrained
by their context? Are constraints sometimes more imagined than real?
4. The authors emphasize the importance of three major factors in suc-
cessfully introducing an innovation: complexity, trialability and com-
patiblity. Thinking of innovations you have been involved in, how far
do these factors explain their success or failure?
5. The authors acknowledge that they did not focus on establishing a
teacher network to continue the work of the course. Have you ever
participated in or attempted to develop such a network? If yes, how
did it work? If not, how do you think such networks can function?
Acknowledgements We would like to thank the teachers for participating in

the interviews and for the invaluable feedback on the course they provided us
with.
260
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13
Telecollaboration Among Qatari and US
Undergraduates in a Multicultural Course:
Opportunities and Obstacles
Zohreh R. Eslami, Valerie Hill-Jackson, Svetlana Kurteš
and Lobat Asadi
Introduction
Telecollaboration offers opportunities for higher education institutions
to support their internationalization initiatives by engaging learners in
Z. R. Eslami (*) · V. Hill-Jackson · L. Asadi 

Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA
e-mail: zeslami@tamu.edu
V. Hill-Jackson
e-mail: vhjackson@tamu.edu
L. Asadi
e-mail: asadi@tamu.edu
Z. R. Eslami 
Texas A&M University, Doha, Qatar
S. Kurteš 
The European Network for Intercultural Education Activities,
Funchal, Portugal
e-mail: svetlana.kurtes@enieda.eu
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13413-6_13
264
Z. R. Eslami et al.
dialogue with peers in distant parts of the world. However, this poten-
tial has yet to materialize very often, as telecollaboration projects have
not been mainstreamed into higher education—especially in the Middle
Eastern countries. Furthermore, most of the existing telecollaboration
projects have focused more on participants’ language development, and
less on development of their intercultural communication competencies
(Helm, 2015).
In this chapter, the authors describe telecollaboration curriculum
activities between engineering students at Texas A&M University-Qatar
(TAMUQ) and pre-service teachers at Texas A&M University, Main
Campus (TAMU) in a compulsory multicultural course. While pairing
engineering with education students was exploratory, the results of this
transnational collaboration show promising results, with several partic-
ipants reporting developing intercultural awareness. First, we describe
telecollaboration as a worthwhile innovation and teaching strategy.
Next, we describe the rationale for infusing telecollaboration into a
required multicultural course for TAMUQ engineering and TAMU
education students. Third, the context is explored, and course partici-
pation and activities examined. Fourth, the authors explain two over-
arching ideas that developed from this international telecollaboration
project. Finally, two major hurdles to implementing the telecollabora-
tion are examined. It is our hope that sharing our experience will sup-
port other educators in using telecollaboration to enhance the ability of
students from two different cultural backgrounds to constructively par-
ticipate in difficult dialogues.
Telecollaboration as Innovation
Telecollaboration is a form of intercultural exchange that uses online
communication tools for the development of language and/or intercul-
tural competence (Helm, 2015). Telecollaboration, a form of experien-
tial education, is a collaborative teaching and learning strategy emerging
from the fields of intercultural communication, foreign language and
multicultural education; it is designed to promote intercultural com-
munication (see Fig. 13.1). Internationally dispersed learners in parallel
13 Telecollaboration Among Qatari and US …
265
Intercultural
Communication, Disciplines
Foreign Language, Theoretical premises for subject
and Multicultural Historical and documented
Education Courses knowledge
Experiential teaching strategy

Application and integration of knowledge to
specified goal (STEM/STEAM project)
Telecollaboration
Application of knowledge to personal skill
development through practice, reflection, and
feedback
increased Skill levels in

Intercultural defined subject matter (goal)
Communication and communication process
Increased self-confidence and
self-efficacy
Fig. 13.1 Intercultural communications: progression from theoretical knowl-

edge to heightened self-efficacy
language classes who use Internet communication tools such as email,

synchronous chat and threaded discussion (as well as other forms of
electronically mediated communication) in order to support social
interaction, dialogue, debate and intercultural exchanges are defined as
telecollaborators (Belz, 2003, 2007).
Research substantiates that telecollaboration is a powerful teaching
strategy to engender the skill of intercultural competence (Schenker,
2012). Mason (2016) confirms that telecollaboration, while improving
intercultural communication, can also encourage difficult dialogues by
providing safe, technology-rich spaces for communications between dif-
ferent cultural groups (Western and Middle Eastern, in this case study).
Intercultural communication is a “process in which messages created
in one culture must be processed and interpreted in another culture”
(Bucher, 2015, p. 127). Intercultural communication is a longstand-
ing key concept and skill in foreign language education, multicultural
education and intercultural communication courses, though it is often
difficult to practise. In fact, some would assert that it is essentialist
and reduces people to categories for the commodification of culture
266
Z. R. Eslami et al.
(Holliday, 2011). Furthermore, Dervin (2010) argues that the entire

field needs immediate development because it emerged out of anthro-
pology, thus only serves neoliberal aims and so needs perspectives that
are not divisive.
Impetus for Utilizing Telecollaboration

Recently, intercultural communication, as a learning outcome, has been
incorporated and given prominence in the missions of higher educa-
tion institutions. This shift has come about in response to a changing
global workforce. Higher education institutions are under pressure to
adequately prepare students who aspire to be global citizens to have
the skills and knowledge necessary to actively engage in a multicultural
world (Byram & Golubeva, 2016; Paige & Goode, 2009). Part of the
pressure on academia to teach cultural competencies comes from pro-
fessional organizations that struggle to be competitive in a globalized
market, such as engineering. Many practitioners and scholars in the
engineering community have been involved in critical conversations
on the importance of preparing prospective engineers for worldwide
engagement and competition in a global marketplace (Accreditation
Board for Engineering and Technology, 2015). Integrating intercultural
communication learning objectives into engineering programmes is a
challenge “due largely to the highly sequenced and content-demanding
nature of the curriculum” (Lohmann, Rollins, & Hoey, 2006, p. 121).
Engineering students require a balanced curriculum in which they can
develop effective skills that will help them become valuable team play-
ers and effective communicators to successfully compete in a changing
world (Andersen, 2005; Sheppard, Dominick, & Aronson, 2004).
By contrast, the field of teacher education, which is not as highly
sequenced or content driven, but seminally rests on effective commu-
nication techniques, has wrestled with intercultural competence for
decades, but not always successfully (Darling-Hammond, 2015). In the
United States, nearly 90% of teachers are primarily white, female, mid-
dle class, monolingual and Christian (US Department of Education,
2016). However, nearly 50% of classroom students are students of
267
colour, speak English as a second language or come from homes in

which Christianity is not the dominant faith (Gorski, 2016). The teach-
ing profession, in which relationships and communication are para-
mount for connecting with learners (Haberman, 2017), has struggled to
reimagine a curriculum that gives prospective teachers the opportunity
to become more culturally competent in increasingly diverse classrooms.
The course activities presented here could be used as a model for
addressing educational shortcomings in a globalizing world without
compromising subject-matter content or sequential learning curricula
in diverse fields. The goal of this innovative educational experience was
to take advantage of telecollaboration’s potential to promote the inter-
cultural communication skills of engineering students at TAMUQ and
pre-service teachers at TAMU.
The Context
The participants taking part in the telecollaboration project were based
in two campuses of Texas A&M University: the main one in College
Station, Texas, USA (TAMU) and a satellite campus in Education
City, Doha, Qatar (TAMUQ). The Qatar-based group consisted of
23 undergraduate engineering students (17 of whom were female).
All the students based in Qatar were taking the course Foundations
of Education in a Multicultural Society course to satisfy their cultural
foundations requirement (a core course requirement). The Qatar-
based students were predominantly Qatari nationals, but there were
also a few representatives from other countries in the region. By way
of an online learning management system, the engineering students in
Qatar engaged with American pre-service teachers (n = 35) who were
simultaneously enrolled in the same course in the USA. Thirty of the
pre-service teachers identified as white, female and Christian; the others
were female and Hispanic or African–American. Learning community
dyads, which included students from both institutions, were formed.
Students were prompted to write reflective journals on four current cul-
tural issues and respond to each other’s reflections. Students from both
campuses took the course during the first three years in the programme
268
Z. R. Eslami et al.
(freshman, sophomore, junior) and their ages ranged from 19 to 23.

The course was designed to raise the students’ awareness of current
diversity issues in society and their impact on modern educational needs
and requirements.
Learning Communities
A learning community is a group organized by a variety of approaches

that link or cluster classes, during a given term, often around an
interdisciplinary theme, and enrols a common cohort of students.
This represents an intentional restructuring of students’ time, cred-
its and learning experiences to build community, and to foster more
explicit connections among themselves, their instructors and associ-
ated disciplines (Smith, MacGregor, Matthews, & Gabelnick, 2004).
Telecollaboration can be used to create online learning communities; a
phenomenon in which ‘virtual communities’ form through the cultural
aggregation that emerges when enough people “bump-up” against each
other in cyberspace (Rheingold, 1993, p. 57). It is logical that the con-
nections and friendships developed through this experience also serve to
widen and enrich the students’ personal networks.
The TAMUQ and TAMU students were simultaneously enrolled in
the same course (Multicultural Education), but with different instruc-
tors. The first and last authors designed the activities and they were
the instructors of record in Qatar and the United States, respectively.
The first author focused on the language and communication dimen-
sions of the project while the fourth author concentrated on the cultural
aspects. Qatari students teamed up with a cohort of 35 pre-service stu-
dents from the main campus in College Station. TAMUQ and TAMU
students were randomly assigned to learning communities (LCs) within
the cohort for their home institution. Each learning community con-
sisted of four to six students from each campus, creating eight to ten
LCs for each cohort. The LCs were then given an alpha-numerical iden-
tifier on each campus and matched with their corresponding group
in the other cohort. For example, the engineering students in LC1 of
TAMUQ were connected with student-teachers in LC1 of TAMU.
A total of seven LC dyads were created.
269
These two international cohorts collaborated using asynchronous

online discussions and emails, and synchronous online chats through an
online learning management system—eCampus—used by Texas A&M
University. This platform provided the undergraduate cohorts based
in Qatar and Texas with the opportunity to participate in discussion
forums, post their comments, upload individual and group assignments
and interact with peers, despite being geographically separated. The
engineering students shared ideas and science expertise for pre-service
teachers’ STEM lesson plans, and the pre-service teachers introduced
educational and teaching/learning perspectives to the engineering stu-
dents that supported them in pedagogical aspects of their profession.
Course Activities: Lesson Planning and Reflection
Lesson planning and reflection were the two main telecollaboration

tasks that guided the course activities. Throughout the course, TAMUQ
engineering students and TAMU pre-service teachers participated in
science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) lesson planning
for K-12 learners.1 We chose lesson plans as a main telecollaboration
task because they are considered more advanced forms of interaction as
collaborative product creation tasks. Helm (2015) postulates that tasks
which require collaboration in product creation are less commonly used
in educational contexts than those requiring only information exchange
and/or cultural comparison. These tasks usually take more time for the
coordination of collaborative activities, but facilitate higher-level think-
ing and interaction and offer participants the many benefits that accrue
from having to understand and incorporate procedures and perspectives
which are different from their own (Harris, 2002). Additionally, since
lesson planning that requires integration of cultural and social compe-
tencies with maths and science context expectation entails active stu-
dent collaboration, we assumed it would provide more opportunity for
1STEM is an interdisciplinary curriculum approach that utilizes high engagement and applica-
tion of knowledge. Rather than teach the four disciplines as separate and discrete subjects, STEM
integrates them into a cohesive learning paradigm based on real-world applications.
270
Z. R. Eslami et al.
interaction and exchange of ideas conducive to critical thinking about

intercultural experiences.
Reflections were utilized because they allow for self-study and help
learners develop cultural and global consciousness (Craig, 2015).
Through guided reflection, TAMUQ and TAMU students enhanced
the quality of both their learning and their intercultural competencies.
Helm (2015) classifies reflection activities as information exchange,
but the teaching method presented here surpasses that level of knowl-
edge creation because of its applied and integrated approach. While
there are many approaches to reflection, an approach adapted from Ash
and Clayton’s (2009) description, examination and articulate language
(DEAL) model was the one chosen for the class. However, reflection
continues to be a challenging concept for educators to apply in face-
to-face classroom interactions (Toom, Husu, & Patrikainen, 2015), as
well as in online environments (Gelfuso & Dennis, 2014). This form
of guided reflection allows students to show their instructors that “they
have attained greater understanding, ability to apply their knowl-
edge, problem-solving skills and cognitive development” (Eyler, 2000,
p. 11). Students in both Qatar and the United States completed their
reflections and posted them online to share with peers in their respec-
tive LC dyad. Next, each student was required to select and respond to
one home peer and one international peer in their assigned LC dyad.
As a requirement of the course, students were asked to respond to four
reflection questions over the first six weeks of the semester. Through
these reflection assignments, students explored issues related to cul-
tural values, ethnicity, diversity, gender, pedagogy and intercultural
communication.
For example, the first of the four reflection questions was devoted
to exploring the idea of stumbling blocks to productive intercultural
communication. Instructors developed and shared prompts via eCam-
pus. The first question asked ‘What are your assumptions or fears
about working in groups or LCs with peers from a different discipline
and another country this semester?’ Other topics included discussions
of different viewpoints on controversial topics (e.g., politics, gender
and President Trump’s travel ban). As part of each reflection prompt,
students in both countries were given an article to read. In addition,
271
a video was provided to students on cross-cultural expertise and how

different cultures can successfully coexist. A 900-word essay (with com-
plete citations) encapsulating their reflections on the article and the
video was required as part of their final grade. Each student in the LC
dyads was instructed to cite a required reading and adhere to a four-step
critical reflection process in their writing guidelines:
1. Before engaging with the material, share your assumptions about the
reflection question.
2. Describe the content of the reading and accompanying video by the
cross-cultural expert.
3. Examine what you learned—relative to personal, civic and/or aca-
demic learning.
4. Revisit your assumptions to articulate learning in order to determine
whether your assumptions changed, shifted or remained the same.
Discoveries
Students’ online reflection journals were thematically analyzed. In order

to identify emerging themes and patterns, the initial thematic coding
looked for key recurring words and/or phrases. While Texas A&M has
campuses in both the United States and Qatar, the timing of the tel-
ecollaboration was ripe with concerns about cultural conflicts between
Muslims and Christians. The President of the United States, Donald
Trump, attempted several travel bans and made immigration a platform
for his 2016 campaign. Thus, when asked to write a response to the
question: ‘How does a TAMU USA–Qatar higher education telecollab-
oration project impact the intercultural competence of undergraduate
students in teacher education and engineering?’, it was not surprising
that students expressed concerns. Students from both TAMUQ and
TAMU initially expressed curiosity coupled with concerns regarding
the exchange of ideas between education and engineering students.
Students often comforted each other philosophically by logically ration-
alizing their fears and misconceptions. The initial thematic coding of
TAMUQ students revealed two major disposition orientations: appre-
hension and shifts in perspective.
272
Z. R. Eslami et al.
Apprehension
First, the overwhelming majority of the Qatar-based students expressed

apprehension, as their dominant disposition, when first considering
the prospect of collaborating with their peers from the main campus.
Their concerns related to issues such as linguistic competence, cultural
and religious differences, cross-cultural misunderstanding and collabo-
rating across distinct academic traditions. However, the initial thematic
coding also identified a proportion of students (30%) expressing a neu-
tral or positive disposition, citing the possible benefits (including aca-
demic, social, cultural) of teaming up with peers from the main campus
in College Station. Those respondents expressing a neutral or positive
disposition had previously reported some prior inter- and cross-cul-
tural encounters (either through living abroad for a prolonged period
and/or otherwise being exposed to culture(s) other than their own).
These experiences had made them aware of the opportunity of inter-
actions with others to increase intercultural skills and competences.
Importantly, over two-thirds of the students did not seem comfortable
with the idea of having to interact with students from a different cul-
ture, and this underscores the dire need to increase students’ opportuni-
ties to constructively engage with diverse fields, mindsets and cultures.
Since students in Qatar are living in a highly multicultural setting,
the discomfort and anxiety could be related to interacting with white
female (mostly Anglo-American) students at TAMU, differences in lan-
guage and cultural background, and possible power differences related
to race and nationality.
The lack of self-efficacy in intercultural communications was
expressed differently by the two groups of students. Students at the
Qatar campus expressed concerns primarily of performance inade-
quacy (language, traditions, etc.). Their fears attest to a cultural value
that emphasizes collectivity and the need to conform (Hofstede, 1994;
Triandis, 1990). Students at the Texas campus, however, tried to find
ways to change or manipulate the assignment so that they could have
more control, as would be expected from a culture with an individual-
ist bias, like the United States (Hofstede, 1994; Triandis, 1990). These
273
students experienced greater difficulty focusing on the tasks presented,

staying curious and confronting stereotypes in order to forge ahead with
the telecollaboration. On one level, they expressed fears of offending
their Qatari counterparts, who were Muslims, by giving voice to neg-
ative depictions of Middle Eastern stereotypes by the popular press.
Many of the stereotypes expressed by the American students seemed
propagated by the media and concerns over national safety. A lack of
knowledge about Muslims seemed to create fears of the unknown, of
the ‘other’. Said (1995) explains that “otherization” of Arabic-speaking
and Muslim people is an arm of Orientalism, a theory in political dis-
course in which the ‘other’ is portrayed in media, and perpetuated by
propaganda within the sociopolitical sphere of the globally dominant
Western nations, as weak, passive or subversive. Contrary to this, some
students opted to approach the telecollaboration just like communi-
cation with any other individual, not acknowledging white and native
speaker supremacy and existing stereotypes that might impede intercul-
tural communication. Ironically, these students were prone to downplay
the feelings of their Qatari counterparts by transposing their own sense
of self-efficacy, derived from their individualistic cultural bias. While
American students comforted each other about the unusual, interna-
tional communication circumstances they were under, none identified
the subconscious cultural frameworks within which they operated and
engaged with their environments.
Hofstede (1980), who first theorized about the five dimensions of
culture, explains that ‘individualistic’ cultures emphasize that the rela-
tionship one has with the environment is controllable. Hence, if one
is in an uncomfortable situation, one should change the situation (not
one’s interpretation or actions). This outward-looking sense of efficacy
manifested itself in different ways, and highlighted planning issues for
future collaborations. Some of the students began with soft concerns in
their reflections about the most obvious of issues, such as time differ-
ences. This led to more emphatic concerns, such as examinations of the
potential for technology to fail and therefore hinder their international
communications. Several American students, while expressing discom-
fort over the concept of simply speaking to another student in Qatar,
would focus on the possibility that their ability to communicate across
274
Z. R. Eslami et al.
difference would be exacerbated by technological failure. A perceived

need to modify one’s own behaviour and appear politically correct was
also expressed, indicating that the learners were engaged in the deep
understanding of learning and learning differences vital for learners in
the twenty-first century (Darling-Hammond, 2006).
Other students took a sociological “color-blindness” approach
(Wolsko, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink, 2000), in which people from
non-marginalized groups in Western countries claim they perceive
everyone as equal, and do not notice the racial groups that people
belong to. This approach projects a value, or principle, of equity, and
can be interpreted as a neoliberal behaviour presenting oneself, and
Western culture, as well-intentioned and neutral (Holliday, 2011).
However, the predominance of religious and cultural norms in the
classroom can be overlooked and belittled through this principle of
“color-blindness”. Such principles of equity, which avoid power-laden
interactions, can potentially cause animosity and very real harm in
intercultural communications. But, more importantly, they ignore the
social structures, subconscious cultural biases and individual differences
that regulate how people engage, interpret and adjust to life. These are
some of the most difficult concepts to grasp in intercultural commu-
nications. Despite all the aforementioned reflections about time differ-
ence and technological failure, many of the reflections of TAMU-based
students culminated in elaborate concerns about how they would cope
with dramatic cultural differences respecting culture, religion and ethnic
issues.
Perspective Shifts
The second theme that emerged was the students’ own sense of self-
efficacy when confronting unknown cultures and their increased curios-
ity about the world. Scholars (Phipps & Levine, 2010; Schneider & von
der Emde, 2006; Ware & Kramsch, 2005) have recently recognized that
if more in-depth intercultural understanding is to be achieved in edu-
cational contexts, then a more dialectic approach needs to be adopted.
This would allow potentially sensitive issues to be addressed and tensions
275
to be recognized as an inevitable part of intercultural dialogue. In this

way, tensions can be seen as transformative agents, rather than as some-
thing to be avoided. Meaningful dialogue cannot take place by avoiding
uncomfortable issues or ignoring power inequalities. Students reported
that engaging with the relevant material provided in the prompts, the
self-reflective thought process and cohort feedback provided the space
for meaningful dialogue. The topics they chose to explore pushed stu-
dents to confront controversial events leading to a dialectic understand-
ing of those events. Student comments suggested a rather streamlined
tendency; without exception, they reported progress in their cultural
fluency and cross-cultural awareness, citing the benefits of the collabo-
rative initiative with their peers from the other campus. By critically
reflecting on their initial apprehensive disposition, they were able to rec-
ognize their insufficient level (or complete lack) of cultural and factual
knowledge as a possible cause of their initial concerns and the reserved
attitude experienced at the beginning of the exercise. Additionally, the
students who initially reported a neutral disposition demonstrated fur-
ther sophistication in the development of their intercultural awareness.
Several said that the course materials had a powerful impact, changing
their perspective towards the course because they began to perceive the
global implications of their future careers as engineers or teachers who
would be exposed to various cultures, languages and traditions.
Challenges and Issues
This innovative educational experience also produced several challenges

and issues. One major challenge was the different institutional timeta-
bles. Even though TAMUQ and TAMU are part of the same university,
each institution has distinct semester schedules. For instance, the semes-
ters at TAMU and TAMU start and end at different times (with about a
one-week difference) and the semester breaks are not coordinated. This
caused some disruptions in the flow of communications and grading
of different assignments and deadlines. Participants in our project used
a variety of online tools: asynchronous communication tools such as
email and online discussion forums; and synchronous communication
276
Z. R. Eslami et al.
tools such as Google Hangouts or chat tools on eCampus. Having both

synchronous and asynchronous communication tools facilitated com-
munication and flexibility.
However, lack of sufficient engagement by some students was a chal-
lenge. Some students did not engage in activities in a timely fashion,
or did not put much effort or depth into their online discussions and
reflection journals. It is very important for instructors both to provide
activities/topics likely to promote intense engagement by the students,
especially at the beginning, to help them get involved, and to be aware
of culturally bonding coping mechanisms, so they can be highlighted
and made conscious. It is often our own subconscious cultural frame-
work and the biases colouring our reactions to and interpretations of
events that are hardest to recognize. While working with students to
increase their cultural fluency, instructors were also challenged to exam-
ine their own reactions to students from different cultural frameworks
and define culturally derived behaviours and attitudes. This additional
level of cultural education came through the dialectic process between
teachers and assistants in the two campuses as they reviewed students’
progress. In fact, tellecollaboration offers a unique opportunity for stu-
dents and educators alike, in that it may be more phenomenological and
certainly more challenging than a prescriptive classroom (Helm, 2015)
which, as we noted, allowed for growth for both educators and students.
Another challenge faced in this project was the amount of time
needed to organize the activities, keep track of students’ engagement,
and facilitate both face-to-face and online activities. Telecollaborating
with partner teachers has been reported to be a challenge (Helm, 2015).
Fortunately, in this project, the two faculty members and their research
assistants worked well with each other, and agreed on classroom activi-
ties and reflection journal topics in advance.
Conclusion and Implications
Based on our observations and students’ comments, we strongly believe
that students had overwhelmingly positive experiences through this
intercultural telecollaboration project. They expressed that the reflection
277
topics were relevant and important in fostering constructive dialogue

around critical issues, improving their ability to communicate effec-
tively and developing their intercultural awareness. This innovative
educational experience shows that there are alternatives to studying
abroad which is expensive and often perpetuates societal inequalities
by providing essential (but not mandated) opportunities to those most
able to afford them. Moreover, students at both TAMUQ and TAMU
mentioned that their experience with the telecollaboration project made
them more interested in visiting another country and meeting the peo-
ple with whom they had interacted.
This intercultural telecollaboration experience contributes to a
broader understanding of telecollaboration practices in higher educa-
tion. It highlighted cultural phenomena from the Middle East and the
USA, the importance of types of activities and topics included in the
curriculum, and the perceived value of the educational experience.
Future researchers need to measure the outcome and impact of tel-
ecollaboration to evaluate its effectiveness. Our telecollaboration pro-
ject, similar to other telecollaboration projects, was conducted using
English as the medium of communication. It is important to examine
whether using English as the sole medium of communication would
lead to greater hegemony of English and a move away from the promo-
tion of plurilingualism (Jenkins, 2006; Pennycook, 2007).
To minimize the time commitment needed to design exchange pro-
jects, it would be possible to design pre-packaged telecollaboration
projects with a more or less fixed curriculum, assessment tools and
duration (Helm, 2015). These transatlantic and trans-Pacific projects
could be planned and implemented by consortia of educational institu-
tions across geographic borders. Educators could also be provided with
a well-established syllabus and project to relieve them of some of the
time burden that the organization of telecollaboration projects imposes,
and possibly continuing education units in diversity education. We
suggest instructors dedicate a set amount of time before the project
starts for scenario development (the ‘what ifs’) and discuss coordinated
approaches on how to prevent issues that may arise during the course
(e.g., grading, lack of sufficient engagement by all the students in LC).
278
Z. R. Eslami et al.
The development of intercultural awareness (Council of Europe,

2001; Kurteš, 2012), cultural literacy (Hirsch, 1988) and democratic
citizenship (Starkey, 2002) have long been cited as critically important
skills and competences required for newly qualified graduates, ena-
bling them to function successfully, confidently and autonomously in
an ever-evolving, globalized, professional arena. Being among the sta-
ple items of the wider internationalization of higher education agenda
(De Wit, Hunter, Howard, & Ergon-Polak, 2015), their effective devel-
opment requires a joint transnational–educational effort and a cross-
curricular presence (Kurteš & Kopytowska, 2014). This telecollabora-
tion project intended to contribute to this effort by highlighting a pos-
sible example of best practice in intercultural education. It specifically
addressed the needs of ‘digital natives’ (Prensky, 2001) and makes ample
use of digital technologies, encouraging students to explore the world in
a manner more attuned to their cognitive processing, while facilitating
their intercultural, professional, academic and personal journeys.
1. Why do the authors consider telecollaboration to be useful for pro-
moting intercultural competencies in classrooms? Consider three of
the main reasons given, particularly in relation to the internationali-
zation of universities.
2. What specific activities did the instructors choose to integrate into
their course to build intercultural digital learning communities? Why
did they choose these two primary activities?
3. What other possible activities could be incorporated into telecollabo-
ration in order to promote intercultural awareness and competencies?
4. What principle of equity do the authors consider to be a distraction
from productive engagements across difference? Why do they con-
sider this principle of equity to be a barrier to developing intercul-
tural awareness in the classroom? What approach do they promote?
5. The authors argue that telecollaboration benefits instructors as well
as students. In your opinion, how does telecollaboration benefit
instructors?
279
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Index
A Communication 101 (COMM 101)

Arab digital generation 208–211, 213, 216
(ADG) 24, 25 Communication 151 (COMM 151)
Arab Spring 23 208, 210, 213, 215, 216
Computer-assisted instruction (CAI)
25
B Constructivism 208
Blended classroom 85 Constructivist 196
C D
cMOOCs 27, 29, 33 DigEuLit project 22
Common Educational Digital immigrants 31, 254
Proficiency Assessment Digital literacy 11, 20–23, 26,
(CEPA) 8, 122 29–35, 224
Common European Framework of Digital natives 31, 278
Reference (CEFR) 13, 62–64, Digital technologies 10, 15, 19, 20,
66–68, 118, 122, 157–165, 23, 30, 31, 223–225, 227,
169–172, 174, 175 230, 231, 235, 237, 278
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019 283

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13413-6
284
Index
E I
e-learning 10, 27, 29, 90, 218, 227, Information and communication
230, 231, 237 technology (ICT) 21, 23–26,
Electronic Village Online (EVO) 31, 33
229–231, 236 Innovation diffusion 244, 245
e-literacy 21 Intercultural communication 15, 16,
English for academic 264–267, 270, 272–274
purposes (EAP) 13, Internal course evaluation (ICE) 213
155–162, 164–172, 174 International English Language
English language teaching (ELT) 1, Testing System (IELTS) 90,
4, 6, 7, 9–11, 16, 39, 85–87, 113, 114, 123, 134, 165, 205,
135, 225, 241, 244, 220
248–250 Internet-assisted instruction (IAI) 25
English-medium instruction (EMI)
13, 154, 157, 158
English Proficiency J
Index (EPI) 61 Jasmine Revolution 23
ERASMUS+ 156
Extensive Reading Foundation 12,
110, 111, 124 L
Language Massive Open Online
Courses (LMOOCs) 20, 28,
F 29, 33–35
Flipped classroom 7, 65, 75, 76, Learning communities (LCs) 268,
80, 232 270, 271, 277
Lexile Measurement 147
Lingua franca 6, 8, 41, 155
G Literacy 11, 14, 21, 22, 39–44, 47,
Google Docs 209 51–54, 69, 109, 115–117,
Google Maps 65 134, 135, 137, 142, 205, 206,
208, 211, 214, 217–220, 224,
242, 278
H
Higher education institutions (HEIs)
8, 13, 15, 30, 154–158, 160, M
161, 165, 168, 170, 174, Massive Open Online Courses
263, 266 (MOOCs) 7, 26–28, 32, 167
Index
285
Middle East and North Africa Sequenced writing project (SWP) 12,
(MENA) 1, 4–6, 8–10, 16, 86, 96, 100, 101
20–23, 25, 26, 28, 29, 32–35, Sociocultural 10, 21, 28, 29, 34, 64,
40–44, 55, 90, 102–104, 178, 242
195, 196 Spoken vernacular Arabic (SVA) 116
Mixed-method approach 72
Modern Standard Arabic (MSA)
104, 116 T
Moodle 7, 68, 75, 161, 162 Task-based learning (TBL) 11, 64,
MReader 12, 110–112, 122, 65, 67, 68, 70, 71, 74–76, 79
124–126 Teaching English to young learners
(TEYL) 41–43, 54
Telecollaboration 15, 263–265,
P 267–269, 271, 273, 276–278
Professional development pro- TESOL 7, 9, 10, 16, 40, 41, 64, 66,
gramme (PDP) 4, 157, 70, 229, 246, 248, 249
160–162, 164–166, 169, 174 TOEFL 90, 165, 205, 220
Psychometric Entrance Test 156,
157, 160, 165
U
UNESCO 23, 25
Q
Quality assessment (QA) 170
W
WebQuests 234
R Wikis 234
Refugee 10, 19–23, 26, 28, 29, 32, World Englishes 102
34, 35, 89, 97, 98, 115 Writing Across the Curriculum
(WAC) 91, 208
S
Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SAT) 90, X
113, 122 xMOOCs 27, 28
Second language acquisition (SLA)
63, 64, 79

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NEW LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING ENVIRONMENTS

• Publish cutting-edge research into current developments and innova-

The series is a multidisciplinary forum for the very latest developments

More information about this series at

New Language Learning and Teaching Environments

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019932119

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019

Photo ©: Feng Wei Photography

1 Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching:

2 Refugees from MENA Learning Languages: Progress,

3 Plugging the Gap: Supporting Primary School

4 Task-Based Learning and Teaching in Egypt 61

5 Innovation in Writing Instruction: Towards Nurturing

6 Innovation in Reading in the United Arab Emirates 109

7 Reading for Science: Anatomy as a Metaphor

8 Towards English for Academic Purposes Curriculum

9 The Evolution of a Research Paper Course 177

10 Developing Communication Skills Through

11 Preparing for a Digital Future: CALL Teacher

12 Online Language Teacher Education for a Challenging

13 Telecollaboration Among Qatari and US Undergraduates

Arman Abednia holds a Ph.D. in TEFL from Allameh Tabataba’i

taking up her current post as a teacher trainer in the Ministry of

projects. She is also an expert adviser for national and international

on the connections between language and science learning and on pro-

Fatima Esseili is an associate professor of applied linguistics and

lead poisoning and community education. Dr. Hill-Jackson won a

S. Susan Marandi is currently an associate professor and head of the

and international funded projects on applying ICT to LSP and

of testing, teacher training, curriculum development and professional

Linda Weinberg heads the English Studies Unit at Braude College of

Fig. 4.1 An example of a pre-task, task, and post-task sequence

Table 3.1 Checklist for designing shared reading texts 57

implemented. A brief introduction to the other 12 chapters in this

Defining Innovation in Education

The practice of effective and meaningful teaching can benefit immensely

In more simplistic terms, innovation can also be defined as “the p

In education today, experts opine that the term ‘innovation’ is an

Key Areas for the Promotion of Educational

Innovation in English Language Teaching

pedagogical theory, methodological approach, teaching or assessment

The MENA Context

Innovation in English Language Teaching in the

The Gulf Region

with courses now fully accessed on learning management systems such

1. Baseline test: measures skills and knowledge required for grade 1.

The MENA Region

Other great sources of language teaching and learning innova-

describe innovations that concerned the use of technology in some way

technological: a broader definition of the digital literacy needed to learn

grammar. The results also highlighted the successful components of the

perception that students needed to improve their reading ability, in

the EAP professional community in more ways than one. Authors

Marandi’s chapter ‘Preparing for a Digital Future: CALL Teacher

enrolled in the same course in the USA. Learning community dyads,

Brewer, D., & Tierney, W. (2012). Barriers to innovation in US education. In

Paniagua, A. (2018, February 8). Innovation in everyday teaching: No more

This chapter makes the case that the successful autonomous

An Area of Innovation: Digital Literacy in Online

application of online education to support learning must be appropriate

Martin (2005) goes on to refine this definition for digital literacy:

Digital literacy is the awareness, attitude and ability of individuals to

integrate, evaluate, analyse, synthesize digital resources, construct new

Fig. 4.1 An example of a pre-task, task, and post-task sequence

Table 3.1 Checklist for designing shared reading texts 57

Defining Innovation in Education

Key Areas for the Promotion of Educational

An Area of Innovation: Digital Literacy in Online

Context: The Relevance of Digital Literacy for

Findings: The Importance of Digital Literacy

Implications: Digital Literacy for Online

Impetus for the Innovation

The Design of the Innovation

Preparing for the Workshop

Organization of the Workshop

Participants’ Experience of the Workshop

Teachers’ Experiences of Using the New Materials

Table 3.1 Checklist for designing shared reading texts

D. Boraie · E. E. Badry (*) · M. Habashy 

Impetus for the Innovation

Fig. 4.1 An example of a pre-task, task, and post-task sequence on Google

Background on the SCE

Implementation of the Innovation

Fig. 4.2 The key components of the curriculum innovation