Giving English Teachers Autonomy and Choice: Coping with Curriculum Change in Poland
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Abstract
Tetiurka focuses on the challenges posed for English teachers and learners by the move to a more decentralised education system, which gives teachers unprecedented freedom to make their own choices about the methodologies and materials that they use in order to enable their learners to achieve the goals of the new Core Curriculum. While such freedom seemed initially attractive to the teacher interviewed, she now considers the additional responsibilities that such decentralisation entails as more of burden than a liberation. Policy makers’ lack of communication with or involvement of stakeholders at the initiation stage resulted in insufficient recognition of the challenges posed and inadequate professional support provision. These omissions have contributed to teachers’ feelings of uncertainty about and discomfort with the choices they are expected to make.
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