Central Design

While a progression from input, to process, to output would seem to be a logical approach to the
planning and delivery of instruction, it is only one route that can be taken. The second route I
call central design. With central design, curriculum development starts with the selection of
teaching activities, techniques and methods rather than with the elaboration of a detailed
language syllabus or specification of learning outcomes. Issues related to input and output are
dealt with after a methodology has been chosen or developed or during the process of teaching
itself.
Clark (1987) refers to this as ‘progressivism’ and an example of a process approach to the
curriculum.

We communicate, and if it is found useful we can look at the product of our efforts and discuss what
has occurred by examining the exponents and attempting to relate them to particular notions and
functions, or to lexical and grammatical categories. But this is an after-the-event way of breaking up
the flux and flow of a particular discourse, rather than means of predetermining what one may wish to
say. This does not deny that the teacher and pupil may need to focus on particular elements of rhetorical,
semantic, and grammatical content that arise in the discourse. It seems important to insist, however,
that such focuses should arise out of language in use, rather than precede them, so that learners are
enabled to discover rules of use, form-meaning relationships, and formal rules and systems against the
backcloth of real contextualized discourse (Clark, 1987: 40).

Research on teachers’ practices reveals that teachers often follow a central design approach
when they develop their lessons by first considering the activities and teaching procedures they
will use. Rather than starting their planning processes by detailed considerations of input or
output, they start by thinking about the activities they will use in the classroom. While they
assume that the exercises and activities they make use of will contribute to successful learning
outcomes, it is the classroom processes they seek to provide for their learners that are generally
their initial focus. Thus:

content
methodology
outcomes

Figure 6. Implementing a Central Design

Despite the approach they have been recommended to use in their initial teacher education,
teachers’ initial concerns are typically with what they want their learners to do during the lesson.
Later their attention turns to the kind of input and support that learners will need to carry out the
learning activities (Pennington and Richards, 1997). This contrasts with the linear forward-
design model that teachers are generally trained to follow. Summarizing research on teachers’
planning, Freeman (1996: 97) observed:

[Teachers] did not naturally think about planning in the organized formats which they had been taught
to use in their professional training. Further, when they did plan lessons according to these formats,
they often did not teach them according to plan. Teachers were much more likely to visualize lessons
as clusters or sequences of activities: they would blend content with activity, and they would generally
focus on their particular students. In other words, teachers tended to plan lesson as ways of doing things,
for given groups of students rather than to meet particular objectives.

This is illustrated in an account of how a second language teacher approached her lessons in
a study by Fujiwara, where she describes her struggle to follow the prescribed linear forward-
planning model (1996: 151):

… my method of planning still begins with activities and visions of the class. It’s only when I look at
the visions that I can begin to analyse why I’m doing what I’m doing. I also need to be in dialogue with
students, so it’s hard for me to design a year’s course in the abstract. Just as my language-learning
 process is no longer in awareness, so my planning process is based on layers and layers of assumptions,
experiences, and knowledge. I have to dig down deep to find out why I make the decisions I do.

In general education this approach was advocated by Bruner (1966) and Stenhouse (1975)
who argued that curriculum development should start by identifying the processes of inquiry
and deliberation that drive teaching and learning – processes such as investigation, decision-
making reflection, discussion, interpretation, critical thinking, making choices, co-operating
with others and so on. Content is chosen on the basis of how it promotes the use of these
processes and outcomes do not need to be specified in any degree of detail, if at all.

[The curriculum] is not designed on a pre-specification of behavioural objectives. Of course there are
changes in students as result of a course, but many of the most valued are not to be anticipated in detail.
The power and the possibilities of the curriculum cannot be contained within objectives because it is
founded on the idea that knowledge must be speculative and thus indeterminate as to student outcomes
if it is to be worthwhile (Stenhouse, 1975).

And again:

Education as induction into knowledge is successful to the extent that it makes the behavioural
outcomes of the students unpredictable (Stenhouse, 1970 in Clark, 1987: 35).

Central design can thus be understood as a ‘learner-focused and learning-oriented

perspective’ (Leung, 2012). Graves alludes to this approach when she refers to ‘curriculum
enactment’ as the essence of a curriculum.

The processes of planning, enacting and evaluating are interrelated and dynamic, not sequential. They
move back and forth to inform and influence each other. Classroom enactment shapes planning and
vice versa. Planning shapes evaluation and vice versa. The aim of evaluation is to improve teaching and
learning, not just to measure it.

… In curriculum enactment, what happens in classrooms is the core of curriculum. What happens in
classrooms is the evolving relationship between teacher, learners, and subject matter (Graves,
2008:152-53).

Clark’s description of the features of ‘progressivism’ captures the essence of central design:

• It places less emphasis on syllabus specification and more on methodological principles

and procedures.
• It is more concerned with learning processes than predetermined objectives.
• It emphasizes methodology and the need for principles to guide the teaching learning
process.
• It is learner-centered and seeks to provide learning experiences that enable learners to
learn by their own efforts.
• It regards learners as active participants in shaping their own learning.
• It promotes the development of the learner as an individual.
• It views learning as a creative problem-solving activity.
• It acknowledges the uniqueness of each teaching-learning context.
• It emphasizes the role of the teacher in creating his or her own curriculum in the classroom
(Clark, 1987: 49-90).

Central Design in Language Teaching

Novel Methods of the 1980s. Language teaching in the first part of the twentieth century was
shaped by teaching methods which reflected a forward planning approach. Methods such as the
Audiolingual method, Situational Language Teaching, and early versions of Communicative
Language Teaching had firm foundations in well-developed syllabuses, either grammatically
based or with a more communicative framework as with CLT. But alternative bases for methods
emerged in the second half of the twentieth century with the emergence of a number of
instructional designs that rejected the need for pre-determined syllabuses or learning outcomes
and were built instead around specifications of classroom activities. These new teaching
methods and approaches started with process, rather than input or output and were often
recognized by the novel classroom practices they employed. They reflected the central design
approach – one in which methodology is the starting point in course planning and content is
chosen in accordance with the methodology rather than the other way round. For example,
Krashen and Terrel’s Natural Approach (1983) proposed that communicative classroom
processes engaging the learners in meaningful interaction and communication and at an
appropriate level of difficulty were the key to a language course, rather than building teaching
around a predetermined grammatical syllabus.

In setting communicative goals, we do not expect the students at the end of a particular course to have
acquired a certain group of structures or forms. Instead we expect them to deal with a particular set of
topics in a given situation. We do not organize the activities of the class about a grammatical syllabus
(Krashen and Terrell, 1983: 71).

Like other central-design proposals, there is no need for clearly defined outcomes or
objectives. The purpose and content of a course ‘will vary according to the needs of the students
and their particular interests’ (Krashen and Terrell, 1983: 65). Goals are stated in very general
terms such as ‘basic personal communication skills: oral’ and ‘basic personal communication
skills: written’. The fact that the Natural Approach was not input or output driven (i.e. not built
around a pre-determined syllabus and set of learning outcomes) meant that it could not provide
a framework for the design of instructional materials and textbooks. Hence there are no
syllabuses or published courses based on the Natural Approach.
Gategno’s Silent Way (1972) can be understood as another example of central design in
language teaching. Language input is not the starting point in the Silent Way. Rather than
beginning with the development of a linguistic syllabus, Gategno was sceptical of the role of
language analysis in teaching. Linguistic studies ‘may be a specialization [that] carry with them
a narrow opening of one’s sensitivity and perhaps serve very little towards the broad end in
mind’ (Gategno, 1972: 84). Gategno’s starting point was a view of learning which saw it as a
problem-solving, creative process of discovery. Cuisenaire rods (rods of different lengths and
colors used to teach basic math) and pronunciation charts were artifacts and tools that facilitated
comprehension, memory and recall. The method is intended to activate the learner’s powers of
awareness and capacity to learn. Both input and output are more or less taken for granted. While
mastery of grammar and vocabulary and the ability to use language fluently and accurately are
at the core of language mastery in the Silent Way, these require little detailed pre-planning and
will be the outcome of the activities generated from the use of Cuisenaire rods and other items
manipulated by the teacher.
Part of a philosophy known as a humanistic approach, Curran’s Counseling Learning was
another method that attracted some attention when it was introduced in the 1980s. Curran applied
principles of counseling learning to language teaching. The classroom becomes a community of
learners and teacher (the knower) and students enter into a process in which their interactions,
experience and response to learning is seen as central to driving the teaching-learning process.
Like other examples of central design approaches, there is no pre-determined syllabus and no
specific linguistic or communicative goals. These are specific to each class and an outcome of
the social interaction that occurs during the lesson. Students typically sit in a circle and express
what they want to say. Translation by the teacher is used to help express the learner’s intended
meaning. Later, interactions and messages are recorded and revisited as a source of reflection,
analysis, and further practice.

The progression is topic-based, with learners nominating things they wish to talk about and messages
they wish to communicate to other learners. The teacher’s responsibility is to provide a conveyance for
these meanings in a way appropriate to the learners’ proficiency level; … a syllabus emerges from the
interactions between the learner’s expressed communicative intentions and the teacher’s reformulation
of these into suitable target-language utterances (Richards and Rodgers, 2001: 93).
 Task-based Language Teaching TBLT (Version 1). There are several different versions of TBLT,
some described as task-based and some described as task-informed and since there is no
consensus as to the exact nature of a TBLT course it is best described as an approach rather than
a method. They share in the use of ‘tasks ‘ as the mechanism that best activates language learning
processes. Tasks in this approach are activities in which the primary focus is on meaning, there
is some kind of information gap, learners need to use their own linguistic and non-linguistic
resources, and there is an outcome other than merely the display of language.
Central-design versions of TBLT are those which employ primary pedagogical tasks as the
basis for classroom instruction – specially designed classroom activities that are intended to call
upon the use of specific interactional strategies and may also require the use of specific types of
language (skills, grammar, vocabulary). The tasks drive the processes of second language
learning and linguistic and communicative competence are the outcomes of task work (Willis,
1996). There is no pre-determined grammatical syllabus and the goals are to develop general
language ability rather than the ability to use language in specific contexts and for specific
purposes. This use of TBLT is sometimes applied in teaching young learners and in other
contexts where learners do not have very specific needs for the English. (Compare this with
TBLT version 2 below in a backward design approach).

Dogme. A more recent example of the use of central design in language teaching has been
labelled Dogme (a term taken from the film industry that refers to filming without scripts or
rehearsal) by Scott Thornbury – who introduced the approach to language teaching (Meddings
and Thornbury, 2009). It is based on the idea that instead of basing teaching on a pre-planned
syllabus, a set of objectives and published materials, teaching is built around conversational
interaction between teacher and students and among students themselves.

Teaching should be done using only the resources that the teachers and students bring to the classroom-
i.e. themselves and what happens to be in the classroom.

Thornbury explains that dogme considers learning as experiential and holistic and that language
learning is an emergent jointly-constructed and socially-constituted process motivated both by
communal and communicative imperatives.

(http://scottthornbury.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/a-is-for-approach).

An approach that shares some features with Counseling Learning (but without the New Age
psycho-babble), the syllabus or language focus is not pre-planned and language and content
emerge from the processes of interaction and negotiation that the teacher initiates. Midlane
comments:

A Dogme approach focuses on emergent language; teaching is not a question of imposing an external
language syllabus, but of nurturing the students’ in-built language-learning mechanisms and language
acquisition agenda

(www.deltapublishing.co.uk/content/pdf/teaching-unplugged/TU_TEFL_review.pdf ).

Post-method Teaching. This term is sometimes used to refer to teaching which is not based on the
prescriptions and procedures of a particular method nor which follows a pre-determined syllabus
but which draws on the teacher’s individual conceptualizations of language, language learning
and teaching, the practical knowledge and skills teachers develop from training and experience,
the teacher’s knowledge of the learners’ needs, interests and learning styles, as well as the
teacher’s understanding of the teaching context (Kumaravadivelu, 1994). The teacher’s
‘method’ is constructed from these sources rather than being an application of an external set of
principles and practices. The kinds of content and activities that the teacher employs in the
classroom as well as the outcomes he or she seeks to achieve will depend upon the nature of the
core principles that serve as the basis for the teacher’s thinking and decision-making.
The Ecological Classroom. Van Lier refers to the classroom as an ‘ecology’. As summarized by
Graves (2008: 168):
In a classroom as an ecology, learning is not a system of “inputs” which individual learners convert into
“output”. Rather, the environment provides affordances or opportunities for meaningful action.
Therefore the learners’ activities and participation are structured “so that access is available and
encouragement encouraged” (van Lier, 2000: 253). Learners are seen as a heterogeneous group in which
each member has something to say to each other and to the teacher (van Lier, 2007). In the ecological
perspective, the curriculum does not start out by specifying and sequencing materials, “but with the
‘activities, needs, and emergent purposes of the learner. On the basis of activities and emergent needs,
the teacher makes resources available in the environment, and guides the learner’s perception and action
towards an array of affordances that can further his or her goals” (Graves, 2008: 8).

Tsui (2005, cited in Graves 2008:168) contrasts the ecological approaches with traditional
approaches by comparing the kinds of questions a teacher might ask working within what is
described here as a forward design and central design approach: Forward Design Issues:

What linguistic forms do we want to teach?

How do we represent these items in the form of tasks or activities?
How do we get learners to use the target items to complete the tasks or activities, either
individually or in pairs/groups?
Are there any gaps between the target language structures/functions and those produced by
the students?