Teaching Staff

There are approximately 250 teaching staff members in the English departments across the six colleges with the majority being expatriate native and non-native speakers of English from various countries. Expatriate teachers are of various nationalities and are hired through recruitment agencies or through the Directorate of Colleges in the Ministry. There are also Omani teaching staff members who are directly recruited by the Ministry of Higher Education and are required to have the minimum of a Master degree in TESOL. Recruitment procedures for expatriate teaching staff are guided by Oman Academic Standards which require a Bachelor’s degree (in a relevant subject, Master’s degree in a relevant subject or a qualification in English Language Teaching (ELT) (e.g. CELTA, Trinity TEFL certificate) (QAAA, 2009). It is also required for expatriate teachers to have at least two years’ experience at the tertiary level. This leads to one of the main problems in the context of ELT at the colleges which is the high attrition rate of expatriate teachers. Pay-rates for CAS expatriate teachers are not competitive regionally and the professional development opportunities provided for expatriate teachers are

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very limited compared to Omani teaching staff members. To an extent, the Colleges of Applied Sciences are generally unable to attract the better-qualified and experienced teachers. English teachers are expected to teach an average of 16 hours every week except for (level, assessment and E-learning) coordinators whose teaching load is reduced to 10 hours per week. As for the expatriate teachers who are hired through recruitment agencies, their contracts are renewed annually. Expatriate teachers who are directly recruited by the ministry are given a two year contract which is renewed annually.

2.6.4 EAP Continuous Assessment and Final Assessment

There have been a number of issues with the implemented continuous assessment schemes in the EAP courses provided at the colleges. The EAP programme is currently implementing a continuous assessment which is designed to measure the students’ progress in performing the course work which requires the production of a written report and a presentation. Students are expected to get continuous feedback from teachers on their performance throughout the course. Before 2011, 50% of the marks of the students’ assessment were achieved through continuous assessment measures which were based on quiz regime which varied from level to level. Though there was some support, it became apparent that the quiz regime was not entirely satisfactory (a fact pointed out by an independent review of assessment in the English Programme, carried out by Reading University). According to this review of assessment, it was noted there was no clear relationship between the administered quizzes and the final exam. The quizzes were also uneven in terms of their quality and the quantity of the quizzes created other issues of adequate moderation and revision. The quiz regime failed to be an effective formative assessment measure. In 2011, a major transformation was made to continuous assessment in the design and standardization in all the EAP courses across the six colleges. All EAP courses currently expect students to work on a project related to their major involving

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secondary research and culminating in the production of two assessed outputs: a presentation and a written report (English Programme Self-Evaluation for Graduation Review, 2011).

With regards to the final examination which is administered at the end of the EAP courses, it is allocated 50% of students’ marks. In EAP courses for Year 1 and Year 2, the students undergo 3 hours of examination testing core-grammar, knowledge of the academic word list, listening, reading and writing skills, complemented with a speaking test in either paired-student format for Year 1 students or a solo-student format for Year 2 courses. The Final examination is based on a rigorous writing process based on detailed protocols and two basic phases of feedback as well as a stable exam-writing team.

Though standardizing the continuous assessment across the six colleges has been more effective in comparison to the previously implemented quiz regime, the current continuous assessment still poses some challenges to the teaching and learning process at the colleges. After three years of implementing the project- based continuous assessment scheme, this particular regime has proved to be problematic as well. EAP teachers have expressed concerns with the current continuous assessment suggesting they are not as effective because students proceed from one EAP course to another without any evidentiary improvement in their English language academic skills which is expected to assist them in their English medium studies. The main problem related to the current continuous assessment implemented in EAP courses at the colleges is the lack of differentiation and detailed specification between the project requirements of Year 1 and Year 2 courses. This has made both teachers and students view EAP continuous assessment as a repetitive cycle which does not seem to yield the expected academic improvement on the part of the students.

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2.7 The Alignment of Curriculum Development and Professional Development at the Colleges of Applied Sciences

The discussion about curriculum development in educational settings tends to relate directly to the issue of professional development. In the context of EAP curriculum development at the colleges, there are a number of issues which deserve careful investigation. One of the significant issues in this particular context is the overall top-down approach being adopted by the Ministry under which EAP teachers are expected to be implementers of the content of the textbooks and facilitators of the continuous assessment project. The only flexibility allowed for teachers is in the use of their pedagogical teaching methods inside the classroom. Although this sort of flexibility tends to be favored by teaching practitioners as it allows them more autonomy with their students, this same flexible approach has created some unexpected problems regarding continuous assessment. Unlike experienced teachers, less qualified and inexperienced teachers strictly commit to the project requirements which result in vast differences in the students’ project final marks due to the discrepancy which existed in the students’ learning experiences.

Another important issue worth mentioning here is the lack of an actual process of curriculum development in EAP courses at the colleges. One reason why such a process doesn’t exist is that the outsourced English language curriculum and assessment methods are regulated by the external provider and are not based on systematic needs analysis and they have little regard for the value attributed to teachers in curriculum development. Having a team of middle-managers or level coordinators which has been regarded by the English language administrators as a form of curriculum development represents a distorted conception of the ideal curriculum development process. This is because under the current structure in the English departments across the six colleges, only level coordinators and assessment coordinators are the ones involved in curriculum development initiatives. Level coordinators are responsible for supervising teachers, materials

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management and management of continuous assessment and they can submit their proposals about any curricular issues directly to the programme director. Assessment coordinators are expected to control the writing of final exam according to a particular exam format. In light of the previously stated depiction of the reality of EAP courses, teachers’ roles can be seen as limited to the implementation of their teaching duties isolated from making any valuable contribution in curriculum development in their context.

The discussion regarding curriculum development isn’t complete, but tends to relate to the quality of final assessment schemes since they are produced by inexperienced coordinators who haven’t received any training or qualification on writing exams. This particular problem invites the discussion about professional development opportunities which are very limited at the colleges and whenever they are made available, they generally target Omani teaching staff members who hold administrative posts such as HODs, level coordinators and assessment coordinators. With respect to the PHD scholarships which are distributed according to a plan approved annually for each college depending on the Ministry’s needs, these scholarships are also specified for Omani teachers who have been nominated for these opportunities. PhD scholarships which are distributed across the colleges can be seen as a long term investment which may help in the future of curriculum development, but do not assist in providing direct remedies for the various curricular issues confronted by EAP teachers in our colleges.

With regards to the area of professional development, there is no framework being used at CAS to regulate current practices of professional development. The absence of a clear strategy for professional development is not limited to the context of English language teaching but as pointed out by Al-Aufi (2014) professional development opportunities for teaching staff members at various academic departments are currently below expectations. In the English departments across the six CAS colleges, current professional development

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practices are being regulated and encouraged by HODs as part of their duties in their annul agenda. Based on my knowledge on the context of professional development at CAS Sohar, it appears that HODs negotiate and discuss the possibility of having a number of PD activities and some of these have been successful such as the mentoring scheme for new teachers as well as teachers led seminars throughout the academic semester. However, more needs to be done in this regard to motivate teachers to be engaged in professional development and to promote professional development as a culture which can contribute to the area of curriculum development at the colleges.

This study is targeted to underline the importance of creating an alignment between professional development opportunities and the various issues which have emerged at various aspects of the EAP curriculum. The current study is not limited to the investigation of EAP curriculum based issues but it also highlights the value of providing appropriate professional development opportunities for EAP teachers based on a careful assessment of existing curriculum challenges and teachers’ needs to better contribute to the process of EAP curriculum development at the Colleges of Applied Sciences.

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Chapter Three: Literature Review

3. 1 Introduction

The aim of this chapter is to provide a discussion about the theoretical and philosophical issues related to curriculum development. The first part of this chapter will introduce a discussion on how curriculum is defined and conceptualized by curricularists in the literature. This chapter will also shed the light on some ideologies and curriculum models which are central to the discussion related to curriculum development. In this chapter, a reference will be made to some of the important debates in the context of teaching English for Academic Purposes. The second part of the chapter will approach some of the foreign and local empirical studies which are targeted at the investigation of various curriculum issues related to the current study.