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Hernández Hernández, M.; Izquierdo, J. Teachers’ Perceptions and Appropriation of EFL Educational Reforms. Encyclopedia. Available online: https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/47671 (accessed on 18 May 2024).
Hernández Hernández M, Izquierdo J. Teachers’ Perceptions and Appropriation of EFL Educational Reforms. Encyclopedia. Available at: https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/47671. Accessed May 18, 2024.
Hernández Hernández, Miguel, Jesús Izquierdo. "Teachers’ Perceptions and Appropriation of EFL Educational Reforms" Encyclopedia, https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/47671 (accessed May 18, 2024).
Hernández Hernández, M., & Izquierdo, J. (2023, August 04). Teachers’ Perceptions and Appropriation of EFL Educational Reforms. In Encyclopedia. https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/47671
Hernández Hernández, Miguel and Jesús Izquierdo. "Teachers’ Perceptions and Appropriation of EFL Educational Reforms." Encyclopedia. Web. 04 August, 2023.
Teachers’ Perceptions and Appropriation of EFL Educational Reforms
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This entry is adapted from the peer-reviewed paper 10.3390/educsci13050482

Educational reforms and educational policy changes have favored the learning of English as a foreign language (EFL) in public education. Empirical research has examined how EFL specialist teachers in urban public schools perceive these changes or the extent to which they adopt a new curriculum. Nonetheless, the new EFL policies have also had an impact on rural schools where generalist teachers are forced to teach English along with other areas of the curriculum.

English Language Teaching (ELT) curricular reforms teachers’ perception

1. Introduction

Many countries around the world have experienced significant changes due to the impact of supranational financial, environmental, and sociopolitical challenges. These challenges, alongside the imperialism of English as a global and useful international language, have led many countries to undergo major educational reforms that sanction the learning of English as a second/foreign language (EFL) in public education [1][2]. In these reforms, curricular changes constitute the main axis of educational development and, in the case of EFL education, instantiate the renewal of the day-to-day teaching and learning practices [3].
Through educational reforms, public educational systems require teachers to adopt instructional models that aim to help learners develop particular and general EFL competencies [4]. However, the implementation of reforms is not straightforward. Their success greatly depends on teachers’ willingness to accept, adapt, and implement a curricular change; nonetheless, these actions demand a critical reorganization of well-established teaching habits [4]. Some authors affirm that the critical reorganization of teaching habits is partly influenced by the positive or negative perceptions that teachers hold with respect to the educational reforms [1][5]. Moreover, for educational changes to occur, teachers need to appropriate the educational practices outlined in the new curriculum. This effect implies that, vis-à-vis the educational reforms, teachers need to become educational policy enactment agents who perceive and appropriate curricular changes [6].
The constructs of teachers’ perception and appropriation of EFL curricular changes have received attention in previous second language research [5]. Nonetheless, they have been separately examined by a handful of studies; often, these studies have been conducted with EFL specialist teachers who deliver language instruction across different levels of public education in urban areas [7]. It should be noted though that the educational policies have not only sanctioned the learning of English in urban areas. They have also made the learning of English obligatory in rural settings where there is a lack of specialists in English language teaching or other areas of the curriculum [2]. Therefore, in rural schools, one generalist teacher is compelled to teach all areas of the public school curriculum, including English [8][9][10][11], to the same group throughout the school day.

2. Teachers’ Perception of EFL Curricular Reforms

From a psychological viewpoint, the construct of perception refers to understanding how a context is perceived. In the field of education, perceptions are conceived psychological notions that encompass, for instance, thoughts, emotions, behavior, beliefs, and cognition [12][13][14]. In second language research, teachers’ perception is conceptualized as a cognitive process that is based on what a teacher feels, creates, thinks, and understands and how a teacher behaves with respect to a particular aspect of language education—in this case, a curricular change [5][12][15]. This cognitive process is nurtured by a set of external and internal factors [14]. While the former includes school policies and the teachers’ social, cultural, and professional background [15], the latter spans ideologies, knowledge, and attitudes [2][5][15]. Teacher’s perceptions about curricular changes develop from internal ideologies that emerge from observation, knowledge, and discernment of (new) teaching approaches and curricular guidelines [16]. The construct of teachers’ perception builds upon a wide array of factors, but theoretical and empirical researchers agree upon the dimensions of opinions, beliefs, behaviors, and emotions. During curricular changes, these dimensions allow teachers to interpret educational policies and teaching demands [5][17][18].
Opinions constitute a set of subjective interpretations that teachers develop in a specific context or toward an issue [19]. In language teaching, opinions are considered positive or negative constructions that teachers build on, taking a stance in favor of or against the English teaching philosophy [5][20], curricular guidelines, teaching strategies, content, or other elements of the language educational reforms [5]. Beliefs are assumptions that emerge from knowledge [21]. In second language teaching, beliefs [6][15] are part of teachers’ cognition [5] and encompass multiple aspects of language education, such as pedagogical processes, learning processes, and evaluation processes [14][21]. Teachers prioritize beliefs of language teaching and learning based on their educational environment and their professional background experiences [5]. Behaviors are complex processes, as they imply that cognition transfers into actions [5]. In turn, these actions are known as pedagogical practices that teachers consider relevant for the teaching and learning process [22]. The behaviors that teachers display could be connected to all aspects of the curricular changes, for example, language policies, guidelines, content, teaching practices’ impact on students, and other aspects of the curriculum that are tightly connected to the classroom [5][23]. Emotions rely on different conceptual psychosocial or psychoeducational conditions. [13]. In language teaching education, teachers experience positive or negative emotions, for example, excitement, joy, motivation, dissatisfaction, fear, and burnout, as a result of their practice or curricular reforms [14][24].

3. Teachers’ Appropriation of EFL Teaching Practices

The construct of appropriation refers to teachers’ adoption of curricular changes [25]. Appropriation is achieved when teachers understand the new curricular demands and reorient their practice accordingly [3]. Depending on the level of adoption, five levels of teachers’ appropriation of curricular changes can be identified [26]: (1) absence; (2) superficial; (3) surface; (4) conceptual underpinning; and (5) engagement. Two relevant aspects of the appropriation encompass regular teaching practices and evaluation processes [26].
The teaching practices are connected to the development of a lesson; thus, this teaching process is supported by the bases of curricular, disciplinary, or pedagogical knowledge that teachers need for the implementation of learning activities in the classroom [25]. However, a teaching practice could be limited when teachers are non-specialists or lack teacher training [27]. Teaching practices are framed by experiences on learning and teaching and are complemented by teachers’ professional development [28]. In the context of curricular reforms, a teaching practice is connected to teaching activities that are built upon curricular guidelines. As for the evaluation dimension, it is a complex aspect of appropriation. It goes beyond the adoption of measurement and testing, which implies systematic measures of a specific competence. Instead, evaluation encompasses judgments of the learning progress and the achievement of the learners within the curriculum [2][22]. Moreover, it provides teachers with valuable information about the effectiveness of their teaching practice, their commitment to curricular demands [29], the appropriateness of the material, and the role of the learning context, among other elements [2]. In English Second Language (ESL) or EFL, teachers often conduct evaluations using a language framework and guidelines about the teaching, learning, and evaluation processes in their curriculum [30].

4. The Interphase of Perception and Appropriation

In the field of second language education, perception is associated with behaviors, beliefs, thoughts, and emotions tightly connected with the process of learning or teaching a new language [5][14][31]. Appropriation, however, encompasses the adoption, adaptation, and interpretation of new curricular changes [26][32]. Some studies have examined these two constructs separately [31], while other studies have explored a possible interphase among them.
In this regard, some studies from Libya, Iran, Argentina, and other countries have examined how language teachers perceive and react to curricular changes [33][34]. These studies have examined teachers’ perceptions of curricular changes using a qualitative approach through interviews, written reflections, and observational data. Their findings show a negative perception of curricular changes. In the same way, other qualitative studies in China, Vietnam, and Libya have focused on the construct of appropriation and analyzed how language teachers implemented or appropriated the language curricular reforms to innovate in their practices [35][36][37]. The qualitative interview and observation data from these studies indicate that the participants showed difficulties in adopting the curricular changes.
While the aforementioned studies have explored these constructs separately, empirical evidence has revealed a harmonious interphase [37][38], which supports teachers’ understanding of the curricular changes and reorientation of their pedagogical practices [3][8][18]. In Hong Kong, for instance, using a mixed methods approach, a pioneer study [38] analyzed how English teachers from public schools appropriated the curriculum. The interview and observational data showed that teachers implement the curriculum based on their training and experiences due to a constant interaction with stakeholders. In turn, the quantitative results from an attitude Likert scale revealed a positive tendency to the challenge of language curricular innovation [38]. In Taiwan, a research study [7] collected quantitative and qualitative data to obtain a holistic appreciation of the appropriation of curricular changes. The quantitative findings revealed that teachers were aware of and showed positive perceptions. However, the qualitative data revealed a lack of appropriation of the language curricular guidelines [7]. This finding is in line with those from a qualitative study in Argentina, where Banegas (2016) found a remarkable incongruence between teachers’ practices and curricular guidelines [34].
The above evidence provides valuable insights into the perception and appropriation of curricular changes among EFL teacher specialists who work in urban public schools. Nonetheless, there is a growing interest in exploring the perceptions and appropriation of language curricular changes among teachers who are neither language teachers nor specialists in teaching English [2]. This interest emerges from the fact that, in a rural context, there is often a lack of language specialists to deliver second language instruction [2][39]. Thus, non-specialized teachers are obligated to teach English using the educational policies established by the reforms [39]. These teachers are often generalist teachers [2] or educators whose teacher education focuses on the teaching of subject matter from different areas of the public curriculum (i.e., first language literacy, geography, mathematics, etc.) [2]. In their rural schools, they often need to deal with overcrowded school groups, a lack of teaching resources, and the teaching of multiple school grades in the same classroom. Their students have agricultural responsibilities that limit their time to study and cause absenteeism [40]. With respect to the teaching of English, generalist teachers often have very low language proficiency levels and have not attended language teacher training. This fact leads them to implement EFL tasks based on their own language learning experience [2].

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