So far, I have discussed research that focuses on the disconnection between policy and practice on the one hand and the shortcomings of the method and post-method discourse in handling variations in teaching and teachers as well as in learning and learners on the other. In both cases, I have explained, drawing from existing literature in the area, some of the reasons for these gaps. The implications of this literature seem to give the unhealthy impression that researchers and educational authorities do not generally work with the interests of practitioners in mind or rather that they are out of touch with practitioner reality. While this can be sustained in different degrees and contexts, it cannot be denied that all educational research, and consequent policy, aims at arriving at the best possible solution to specific educational contexts. As McKeon (1998) explains:
The move to professionalize teaching has research at its heart – both in terms of providing teachers with a more thorough working knowledge of research methods as a way of observing and studying their own classes and in terms of giving them an appreciation and understanding of what research has shown about teaching, learning, and human development. In fact, much of the recent work in the development of content and professional teaching standards across the disciplines reflects this move towards a best practice ideal of teaching and the connection of research and practice (p. 494)
It is this connection between research and practice emanating largely from teachers’ own conscious understanding of their classrooms that is the basis for the move towards best practice models. Best practice therefore comes across as having a potential for developing the profession of teaching because it departs from the essentially ‘laboratory’-based approach inherent in the development of language acquisition
theories that underlie methods but also because it arises from teachers’ own informed responses to their working context (Zemelam & Hyde, 1998). In a sense therefore, best practice provides an argument against the top-down perspective, discussed above, of both policy and method and provides a bottom-up perspective based on theorised practice. The question though is whether the striving for best practice in education has the potential to either enhance or impede the development of the profession and its professionals. To explore this further, it is necessary to examine literature on best practice so as to see the possible directional dynamics this can exert on the work of practitioners.
The terms ‘best practice’ and ‘good practice’ - everyday phrases in the professions of medicine and social care (see for example Grol & Grimshaw, 2003) and also in the field of law (see Zemelam & Hyde, 1998) – describe solid, reputable, state-of-the-art work in a field but as McKeon (1998) explains, the concept of best practice has its roots in the field of agriculture in the early 90s in America when professors of agriculture aided by agents, graduates in agriculture, flooded local state communities with agricultural innovations under the Farm Bureau. The success of this system, McKeon argues, lay in a number of factors including the dominant role of agriculture as local industry, the enthusiasm and commitment of the farmers who contributed to the salaries of the agents, the subsequent use of subject-area specialist agents who assumed the task of interpreting research findings in their fields, and the collective role of all participants in the research/transfer process in the production of utilizable knowledge as well as its diffusion for adoption by farmers. Rogers (1995) reports that the agricultural extension service described above was the world’s most successful change agency, a position
supported by McKeon (1998) who dismisses the argument against the top-down nature of this innovation diffusion process on the basis of its success.
Yet the argument for its adoption into educational innovation diffusion remains problematic. Farmers deal with crops, teachers with humans, thus the interface between farmers and the ‘recipients’ of their activity on the one hand and that between teachers and the ‘recipients’ of their activity on the other cannot be explained in the same way. Thinking beings cannot be expected to respond to prescribed stimuli in the same way as plants will and it is this fundamental difference between the object of the farmer’s job and that of the teacher’s job that makes the difference between how both groups of professionals perceive innovation. Even the perceived success of the defunct National Diffusion Network (NDN) of the U.S. Department of Education (see McKeon, 1998; and Sashkin & Ergermeier, 1993) which followed the agricultural diffusion model relying on state facilitators to disseminate information and technical assistance to locally developed curricula and programmes only worked for teachers “who wanted to adopt a particular proven program” (McKeon 1998, p. 496). Besides, the fact that these teachers adopted curricula from the NDN does not imply it was successful in their classes, nor are we provided with this information. What is more, adoption by teachers cannot necessarily be attributed to its being best practice since it can be argued that any curriculum document that provided guidelines to teachers who, hitherto, had worked in a system that had no clear curriculum guidelines as is the case with these teachers, would have been accepted by teachers who badly needed a focus.
The arguments above point to the very problematic nature of the concept of best practice itself. Smith & Sutton (1999) situate the concept within the quality discourse and
modernist ideas that have dominated the healthcare system. This dominant discourse, they argue, delegitimizes and
“…discourages alternative ways of thinking and acting and reacts to these alternatives as though they are irrational, non-scientific and therefore irrelevant to today’s world. Consequently, the dominant discourse becomes embedded into our everyday thinking and acting and becomes a taken for granted reality that shapes the way we come to see the world. Contemporary thoughts and ideas seek to reinforce this dominant discourse, thus perpetuating its existence and maintaining its dominance and power (p. 101)
Through a process of benchmarking, professionals’ performances and practices are measured against leaders’ thus ignoring, as it were, the multiplicity of ideas and practices as well as the variations in society, in pursuit of a global, and all embracing ‘best’ practice. But as Edge and Richards (1998) have argued “characterising individual accounts of practice as best undermines the status of particular understanding by holding out the prospect of general application” (p. 570). Besides, success in one organization does not entail success in another (Smith & Sutton 1999, p.102) in the same way as success in one classroom does not entail success in another classroom, and we may add that in a profession as complex as teaching, success in one lesson does not mean success in another lesson delivered even by the same teacher. In the area of ELT, Edge and Richards (1998) see the importation of the concept of best practice as representing a dangerous distortion of its professional significance and conclude that “in a world where teacher educators struggle every day with the complexities and conundrums of the educative process, the talismanic power of sanctified product represents a threat to our developmental well-being” (p. 570). The point to make here however, is that the danger of importing this concept into the field of ELT lies less at the level of principles than in the routine enactment of these principles. Acting according to principles cannot be seen as defective in itself unless there is evidence that a teacher’s actions do not emanate
from his/her sense of plausibility (Prabhu, 1990). So, a teacher who acts out (which could be in many different ways) the principles that [1] pupils need timely feedback if they are not to lose their way (given in one of a number of ways) [2] that pupils need adequate exposure to data before being challenged and [3] that pupils need time to come to grips with things (wait time after questions, reflection time, repetition of the same element over a series of lessons) could be led to realise these principles in a number of different ways according to need and circumstances, but they would all count as good practice because they are led by a sense of 'plausibility'.
But the experience is that, in a context like Cameroon, the slavish adherence, on the part of pedagogic authorities with little experience of current classroom reality, to innovations ‘donated’ into the educational system by funding bodies has led to the assessment of teachers, by pedagogic inspectors, with checklists on processes they do not understand (cf. Edge & Richards, 1998, p. 571). As such, many teachers are compelled to adopt, even without conviction, an approved routine of practices which, while satisfying the demands of the educational authorities and policy makers, does not address the needs of their particular classrooms. In this sense therefore, applying best practice in ELT invokes a sense of having attained an end point, a pinnacle of performance beyond which nothing else is achievable and as such delegitimizes the continuation of research and the demand for research by scholars and practitioners in our field. It sustains the false hegemony of particular pedagogic practices thus undermining the ecological and cultural realities of the vast and diverse ELT world. Establishing a set of practices as ‘best’ limits practitioners’ possibilities and therefore discourages flexibility and creativity which are essential factors for a developmental, context- sensitive and ecologically-oriented approach to teaching. What is more, the best practice
discourse reinforces the power differential (Pennycook, 1989) that is at the root of teacher resistance to innovation and as such perpetuates the disconnections we have discussed above, between policy and practice. Smith and Sutton (1999) suggest that
Language that incorporates the use of the term ‘better practice’ is more indicative of reality as it indicates a practice that is progressive and dynamic. It indicates that practice is continually evolving and improving rather than having reached a pinnacle of performance (p. 103).
While it is true that practice, including pedagogic practice, has to be placed within a continuum, qualifying a particular practice as ‘better’ implies a comparison of two practices and begs the very questions that ‘best’ practice has not answered, namely, from whose perspective and for what purpose is one practice better than another? How is power exercised and experienced and whose interests are being served in adopting better practice (Smith & Sutton 1999, p. 103)? Besides, it can also be argued that like best practice, promoting ‘better practice’ gives teachers the impression of a teaching practice, external to their experiences ‘rather than being the individually determined best-next- step for each teacher’ (Edge & Richards 1998, p. 571).
2.7. Teaching English in difficult circumstances: can there be a ‘best practice’?