Reforming English Pre-Service Teacher Education (Part 3)

The previous two blogs have drawn on my ongoing work in Iraq. The first described how national research into English education led to revised pre-service curricula, followed by the piloting and evaluation of these in selected universities across Iraq. The second blog described the professional development programme for lecturers in English Departments that was designed to support the implementation of the new curricula. Here I wrap up this three-part series by highlighting some of the learning points that have emerged from this educational reform work. While grounded in my experiences in Iraq, the insights will be relevant to educational reform contexts elsewhere.

Learning from this work is summarised below in 10 insights.

1. Effective educational reform involves much more than a change in programme content. The work in Iraq was initially driven by a need to update what pre-service teachers studied (i.e. the courses). It soon became clear that planning and teaching also needed to change. Without support for lecturers’ pedagogical growth in these areas, simply changing the courses would have had limited impact.
2. When the goal is national change in traditional higher education contexts, evolution rather than revolution may achieve more. The new curricula needed to build on existing content and ways of working. Stakeholders were strongly invested in specialisations such as Literature and Linguistics, which had to be sustained while creating more space for English language teaching. A radically different programme would not have been acceptable.
3. A participatory approach to programme reform is important but also has drawbacks. Local working groups of English Department heads and lecturers led the curriculum update, strengthening local ownership. However, the groups were necessarily selective, and competing disciplinary interests often made consensus (for example, about which courses to include or omit) difficult.
4. Needs-based professional development provides critical support to educational reform. Alongside new programme content, lecturers needed support with course and session planning, teaching, technology use and assessment. Analyses of course descriptions and classroom observations identified these needs and informed the lecturer training described in my previous blog.
5. Teacher training needs to model target pedagogical strategies and not just explain them. Working with almost 50 lecturers allowed us to demonstrate that strategies such as integrating technology and making lectures more interactive could work in the large classes common in participants’ own classes.
6. Professional development will be more impactful when participants have structured opportunities to apply new ideas in their teaching. For four months after the face-to-face training, lecturers experimented with new ideas in their classes and reflected on the process. Engagement varied, but those who participated fully provided evidence of meaningful learning.
7. Collaborative professional development has great potential to add value, but the conditions needed for it do not always exist. The practical component of the lecturer training created opportunities and structures (WhatsApp groups) for participants to work together, define a shared focus for classroom inquiry, and produce a collaborative report. However, the social dimension of the work was ultimately abandoned in favour of individual reports because of heavy workloads, uneven participation, difficulties reaching consensus and the novelty of classroom inquiry.
8. During national educational reform, changes with obvious pedagogical benefits may not be adopted for non-educational reasons. Political considerations can override educational ones. Raising university admission requirements, for example, may improve student quality, but it also reduces access to higher education, conflicting with government policy to widen participation.
9. National curriculum reform implementation is slow. Educational authorities may be reluctant, sometimes rightly, to change too much too quickly. The new English curricula in Iraq are being released one year at a time, requiring four years for full implementation in pilot universities. National rollout and continuing lecturer support will require additional years.
10. Partnerships are key to effective educational reform. In Iraq, policy makers, universities, department heads, lecturers and international partners contributed different expertise and influence. Although complex to manage, such partnerships support shared ownership, mutual learning and coordinated action, helping reforms remain locally responsive, technically sound and sustainable.

In my next blog, I will share the results of a recent research project in Romania which examined the needs of English teachers who work with vulnerable students.