Capacity Building via a Textbook Project

Lena Borovikova, Russia

Elena Borovikova has been a teacher of English for 22 years, currently works in British Council Russia as ELT projects manager. She is interested in EL teacher training, multicultural education, YL ELT. Has written/co-written a number of articles on ELT, teaching young learners and textbook writing/publishing. Current interests are: author training, YL education. E-mail: lena.borovikova@britishcouncil.ru

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Introduction
The issue of material writing within the education reform
Impact from new generation textbooks
Authors’ development
Textbook publishing in Russia
Lessons we learnt
North Caucasus Education Initiative: ‘Tolerance through Languages’
Conclusion
References

Introduction

The history of ELT teaching/learning materials writing as well as ELT and textbook policy in many countries of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe used to be similar. In many cases, there was no access to authentic materials and native speakers; the leading teaching approach was grammar-translation method, textbooks were authored by famous academicians who very often had a very limited experience of teaching at school (if any at all), etc. When these countries entered a new stage of their historical development at the end of the last century, things started to change rapidly: the new names of textbook writers and the variety of materials appeared and new approaches started being used in a classroom,

Following the example of Romania, British Council in Russia initiated the textbook project aimed at training a new cohort of ELT textbook writers and creating a new series of new generation ELT coursebooks for a primary and secondary level. The impact from the project was enormous: new capacities have been built not only for ELT in Russia but for education in general. The ideas of the project have been further duplicated far beyond the borders of the CIS. In this article, several case studies will illustrate how new capacity was created for ELT and education in Russia via a textbook project.

The issue of material writing within the education reform

At this stage it would be difficult to notice which of the following three initiatives developed earlier, but the three essential elements of the ELT reform in Russia (i.e. material writing, examination and teacher training) have been supported in parallel via British Council projects in the course of time crossing with each other and maintaining one another. Initially, all three programmes were launched about the same time (in 1997-1999) as individual activities while pretty soon the cross-project synergy became evident:

• The best authors selected for the textbook project were school teachers trained within the new INSET programme.
• The newly trained exam item writers provided training on writing testing activities for young textbook authors.
• Teacher trainers from INSET and PESET were using textbooks from a new series and activities from them for training teachers within Material Evaluation Module, Classroom Management \Module, etc., at the same time, providing piloting and in-use evaluation for the needs of the textbook project.

The new two projects on e-learning materials for ELT and writing ‘Tolerance through languages’ course have grown as a replica to the textbook project lately. They brought a new focus for textbook project development: thus, writers who were additionally trained as trainer/teacher/material writer trainers within the textbook project became capable to be co-trainers and material editors for the new material publishing projects.

Impact from new generation textbooks

Most of the previously existing textbooks used in a classroom in Russia were based on a non-communicative grammar-translation approach, did not take students’ needs and age into account. The syllabus was not catering for the development of writing, reading, speaking, listening in balance. They made the teaching/learning process boring and uninspiring. As the result a school graduate could call the names of the English tenses and the letters of the alphabet or in the best case scenario, read an unknown word in the dictionary, but could hardly maintain a simple act of communication with a native-speaker or read an authentic text according to one’s interest.

Via the new series of textbooks, in ELT in schools communicative and competence-based approaches to have been introduced. With the new pedagogical ideas incorporated in the new coursebooks, learners and teachers received new stimuli for their development. Cross-cultural rather then mono-cultural perspective as well as cross-curricular links made the course contributing to critical thinking skills development, and preparing learners for civil responsibility and citizenship. As a follow-up, a number of various international projects on new generation textbooks were initiated by different publishing houses and international organisations. Russian education system got a precedent of professional textbook writer training both direct and “on-the-job”.

The concept of instructional/pedagogical design for material writing has been further developed and translated into the area of e-learning materials production for ELT. ELT textbook publishing in Russia received new standards in terms of copyright policy, authenticity, real English, modern design, etc.

Authors’ development

The participants of the project were enabled to as professional ELT textbook writers with specific competences such as: needs analysis, syllabus design, all level of materials design, etc. In terms of authors’ development, the success of the project can be easily illustrated in the language of figures and facts: 32 professional ELT writers form 10 cities in Russia have been trained and professionally developed.18 authors got their further professional development at the post-graduate certificate course of the University of Exeter as teacher/trainer and author trainers. All authors selected for the project were school teachers. After several years of the projects, many of them received career opportunities and demonstrated professional growth. The educational system got seven school/regional methodologists, two school deputy directors and school administrators, three ELT leaders in local EFL centres, four professional ELT material editors. 22 of them have been involved in new material writing projects beyond the textbook project. The list of textbooks created or being created by the newly trained authors during the last 8 years of the project include:

‘New Millennium English’ for grades 5-11;
‘Millie’ for grades 2-4,
‘English for Business’ - upper secondary level,
‘English for Science’ - upper secondary level;
‘Exam Drive’,
ICT-based Millie-NME for grade 5,
ICT-based YL starter
‘Tolerance through languages’ (for upper secondary school).

Textbook publishing in Russia

In 90s publishing business and market started growing in Russia. The monopoly of one publisher who produced all textbooks for education was ended. Meanwhile, the previous practice in ELT textbook publishing was based on the use of old fashioned or non-authentic materials. Copyright law was often violated. The real language and culture of the English-speaking world were represented in a less-than-adequate view. Due to the project of British Council, “for the first time in this area of publishing, the authors have made use of significant amount of authentic text and visual material in order to give Russian learners an up-to-date view of the target language and culture” (Bolitho, 2003) The project in Russia developed a new paradigm in ELT publication. One of the specific ideas of this particular project was to engage a Russian publishing house with a British one, who are willing to work in partnership and play an equally important role for the project. The Russian part was to study copyright policies and practices for getting permissions for copyright-protected materials as well as get a support from professional native –speaking ELT editors. While the British publisher got an international experience, learnt about local traditions in foreign language teaching, got a wider access to the Russian market. The textbook project contributed to the development of a new mode of publisher-author relationship, demonstrated the advantage for writing textbooks by teams of authors (not individual authors) trained from school practicing teachers, and showed how ‘on-the-job’ training and development can be organised. It also exemplified the importance of the pre-publishing piloting for getting feedback from teachers and learners and in-use evaluation of new textbooks.

The previous practice in textbook promotion used to be a direct textbook advertising which was a combination of activities connected with producing leaflets, publishing advertisements in professional journals and newspapers, and promotional sessions for teachers. New practice involves teacher and trainer training sessions and seminars. Such activities help to bring in the minds of teachers new educational and methodological concepts and approaches, help them to learn how to use modern techniques and technologies and make the teaching/learning process more effective and efficient.

The result of this collaboration is coursebook packages which meet high ELT publishing standards, are approved by the local education authorities and are officially recognised and recommended for the use in Russian schools. From year to year they are becoming more and more popular among teacher, students and parents, and their sales are growing more then 40 per cent every year.

Lessons we learnt

The Textbook project has taught us several important lessons:

• Teacher’s development in author’s capacity should start from considering a number of challenges (local context and traditions, careful needs analyses and baseline study, need for reflective period, inviting local educational authorities and experts on board, etc.)
• New concepts and new ideas develop slowly.
• Textbook project provides wide context and new opportunities for professional development.
• Learning to work in a team is essential for writer’s development.
• Change of participants’ roles in the course of the project is inevitable and helps to keep higher level of motivation.
• UK professional consultancy and expertise is required for an ELT project as a support

North Caucasus Education Initiative: ‘Tolerance through Languages’

Since 2006, British Council launched a new initiative which aimed at contributing to North Caucasus education improvement and assisting in raising cross-cultural awareness of both teachers and students of the multi-ethnic and ‘hot’ region in the south of Russia. As an essential part of this project supported by the federal and local ministries of education, it was decided to create a local cadre fully professionally equipped for developing teaching/learning educational materials. The idea of this sub-project was to create a syllabus and sample materials for the course ‘Tolerance through languages’ in English with a focus on a wide educational and cross-cultural dimension.

The model for this project was adopted from the textbook project and included most of its procedures and activities such as competition-based selection of authors who come out of practicing school teachers, training for material design in the UK, professional British consultancy, continuous ‘on-the-job’ training of authors, writing materials in authors’ teams, team-building exercises, pre-publishing piloting of materials in schools, getting teachers’ and learners’ feedback and recommendations on material improvement, etc.

This project happened to be quite specific and the lessons learnt from our long-term project were quite helpful especially in terms of local contexts.

The multicultural context of the region makes this initiative challenging enough. It can be illustrated by the ethnic map of only one republic in the Caucasus:

Dagestan, with the total population about 2,5 million people from the
Northeast Caucasian language group 67 %;
Avars – 28%, around 500,000
Dargins - 16%, around 300,000
Lezgins – 12%, over 200,000
Laks – 5%, around 100,000
Tabasarans – 4%, around 70,000
Rutuls – 1% . around 15,000
Aguls – 1%, around 15,000
Tsakurs – around 10,000
People from the Turkic languages – 19%
Kumyks – 13%, over 200,000
Nogays – 2%, around 35,000
Azeris – 4%, around 85,000
Tatars – less then 10,000
Russians- 9%, around 85,000
Chechens – 3%, around 65,000
Others – 2%, including: Ukrainians, Kurdish, Ossetians, Mountain Jews and
some other smaller groups

The participants for the project were selected from three Caucasian republics (Kabardino-Balkaria, North Ossetia and Ingushetia) and the city of Sochi (North Caucasus coast of the Black Sea). Only in Ossetia live 90 different nationalities and ethnic groups.

In such a multi-cultural context, there was a risk to be regarded as subversive by introducing narrow British or Russian context. The authors had to be trained to select materials on local contexts but of cross-cultural and international sounding. The English language was selected for the course as a mean of communication and a moderator although it hasn’t been supposed to be a proper ELT course. It has made another challenge for the project: the course should provide strong cross-curricular links especially with Humanities, Geography and Natural Studies. To have these cross-curricular links wisely implemented in the course, we joined a Russian expert in Social Studies to the management team who has been previously involved in various international Citizenship projects and is known as a specialist in conflict resolution.

As far as it was a short-term project and the material was to be written by inexperienced authors within a year and a half, and the budget of the project was not big enough, we thought out a scheme which involved participation of the material writers trained for the Textbook project in the capacity of co-authors, co-consultants and editors. Thus, their new skills received via PG Cert Trainer Development Course have been used. For the same reasons, we needed a UK consultants who used to be aware of the Russian specificity. So, our textbook project partners from College of St. Mark and St. John (Plymouth, England) provided consultancy and a 4-week training course on syllabus design in the UK. The consultant, Mike Scholey, who knows the context of the Russian education and is experienced in working within different international and multi-ethnic environment couldn’t have been a better choice.

We often are asked why the project is called ‘Tolerance through languages’, not ‘language’. The idea behind it is based on the following: one language implies one ’policy’ and makes the course be vulnerable with a risk to be regarded as imposing. More languages can state more positions and makes similarities be more visible. It helps to avoid stereotypes as well. Besides, multi-cultural by itself means multi-language.

The course is issue-based, one of its issues is ‘languages’ and ‘language diversity’. It discovers the problem of English as the language of the planet, language diversity in the particular region and in Russia in general, etc. Students are to deal with different language families and branches, language links, borrowings, international words, English proverbs, different variants of the English language in the world in order to explore the similarities of any language exiting in the world. One of the ideas to be discussed by students is that a multicultural society might need a common language. The course is thought-provoking and activity-based, it implies students’ research work as well.

The ‘Tolerance through Languages course’ aims and objectives are fairly constant in any international/geographical context and should be subsumed by universal aims of education. The course combines many curricular areas (humanities, languages, science, psychology) so that content with (information, concepts and meaning) with language. Other issues of the course are: “Regions and peoples”, “Cultural diversity”, “Me and others”, “Communication”, “Rights and Responsibilities”, “Environment: Local vs. Global”, “The future lies in your hands”, “Conflict resolution”.

The ‘Tolerance’ authors live in a region where a greater understanding of the world and how it works is of crucial and paramount importance. Teachers and students who piloted the sample units in their schools as well as their colleagues who are aware of this project have been showing a high interest in receiving this full course. The local Ministries of Education express their support and demonstrate their wish to introduce Tolerance in the curriculum for upper classes in their schools. After the materials were tried out in four regions in the Caucasus as well as in some Moscow and St. Petersburg schools, authors were assured that they are on right way Comments on the materials made by teachers were:

• “This course teaches students to be tolerant to other people, their languages, culture, customs and traditions.”
• “It teaches students to estimate their personality and helps in forming their character in having proper relations with those around them.”
• “The topics discussed provoke students to speak, as they consider them ‘urgent’.”
• “All the topics are interesting and relevant to the students’ needs.”
• “There is a lot of useful and interesting information for students’ general development.”
• “Research activities were most popular among students.”
• “Presentations skills activities students liked as well.”
• “‘Find out about yourself’ lesson we liked very much.”
• “The way the material is organised makes (the students) collaborate, share their opinions, themselves in different activities (drawing, guessing, speaking, arguing).”
• “Content and language support are great!!! Ps liked that and I did too.”
• “Everything was all right. Even history teachers in my school asked me to translate some materials from the course to introduce them in history lessons.”

Teachers also made several useful observations and suggestions for the authors to take up and the final version of the manuscript was improved according to their views. The piloted units were also tried out with 166 students altogether (58% boys; 42% girls). Most of them “liked the materials in general”. Comments about the materials made by students included:

• “... it was interesting to do research work in groups”
• “ … interesting to know about the origin of words.”
• “… though it was difficult the work possessed me and I was surprised by the result.”
• “I understood why English should be learnt.”
• “… I liked to use the resource pack for the additional information, learnt more about … neighbouring countries and … where they were situated.”
• “Material gives us a good opportunity to express own opinion …”
• “It helps to develop speaking and thinking in English.”
• “… unusual kinds of activities …”
• “… an ability to learn some facts about the region I live in …”

But my favourite notes are:

“… It taught us to be more attentive and friendly to the people around us ”
“…I’ve never thought about such notions as national identity, lifestyles, tolerance and language diversity.” And “I learnt how to control my anger…”

The course “Tolerance through languages is planned to be published by May 2009.

Conclusion

It may sound that textbook and follow up projects are a panacea . Of course, not, but they can make an enormous contribution to ELT and general education improvement. The major conclusions which can be made are:

• practicing school teachers are potential material developers;
• professional textbook writers and material developers should be trained and there are clear modern approaches on how such training can be organised;
• material writing is an essential component of education and teacher training;
• textbook project may serve a great stimulus for modern improvements in textbook publishing;
• author training concept can be universal and be applied in CLIL and many school subject areas and on various levels;
• ELT can serve a good basis for multicultural and cross-cultural education.

References

Bolitho, R. (2004) Training and development in textbook projects, NTF, Moscow

Bolitho R., Popovichi R. (2001) Personal and Professional Development through Writing Materials. Part E: Training in Materials Development. Chapter 35 - Personal and Professional Development through Writing: The Romanian Textbook Project

Scholey, M. (2007) Report on NCEI Tolerance Through Languages Project , Final Materials Writing Workshop (31 March – 4 April 2007) in Sochi. Consultancy Visit, Britisch Council, Moscow

Please check the Skills of Teacher Training course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Expert Teacher course at Pilgrims website.