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Challenges In Implementing ELT Curriculum From The Viewpoints Of MA Students: A Qualitative Study
[Full Text]
AUTHOR(S)
Nazanin Ghiasi Esfahani, Hossein Heidari Tabrizi
KEYWORDS
Curriculum, ELT, Faculty, Student, Viewpoint
ABSTRACT
the outburst of new trends of technology, teachers’ personal interests, students’ demands, demographic changes, increasing need for communication and language learning, has made the need for revising ELT curricula, inevitable. As a result, it is beneficial to study stakeholders’ viewpoints as a guide for curriculum developers. This study was implemented to investigate students’ viewpoints towards challenges in an MA program curriculum. the conventional qualitative content analysis method was used in this study carrying out group interviews for data collection. 10 students in an MA ELT program were selected through purposive sampling. Data was analyzed using MAXQDA10. after the conduction of interviews and data analysis, 104 codes, 20 subcategories, and 4 categories were emerged including administrative challenges (inaccurateness and improperness in implementation, lack of executive programming, lack of coordination among teachers for integrated courses), instructional challenges (lack of access to sufficient information resources to justify the students, lack of time for presenting educational content, lack of access to professional teachers, inequality in education, employing unprofessional teachers, use of irrelevant content in syllabus, disregarding the preliminaries for conducting some courses, neglecting the standards of education in language teaching), subjective challenges (lack of an informative source to share the problem with and ask for practical solutions, being used to previous curriculum, negative perspective towards the new curriculum), and structural challenges (modifications in the structure of the curriculum, lack of facilities, and lack of professional human resources). the challenges proposed by students remarks the need for formation of a knowledgeable team to revise the curriculum, establishment of the preliminaries for some changes, conduction of a pilot program, supplying sufficient and efficient human resources, and the observation of the curriculum by curriculum development experts.
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