Abstract
This paper reports on a study that examines how a school teacher, a university researcher, and a professional textbook writer interact when they collaborate in designing materials for English language teaching. Data were collected from interviews with the participants and audio recordings of their interaction in collaborative design supplemented with drafts of the designed materials. The findings showed that the three participants placed different emphases on the design of the teaching materials due to their individual principles, values, and approaches towards English language learning and teaching and materials design. Their values and beliefs were found to inform their practices in collaborative materials design and thus influenced the processes of interaction and negotiation. The study contributes to our understanding of the personalized and diversified principles and beliefs of the stakeholders regarding the development of teaching materials, and suggests that textbook writers and their publishers need to pay more heed to the parties for whom they are producing their materials.
Keywords
Introduction
Harwood (2014) argues that it is important to investigate textbooks at the levels of content, consumption, and production. Content analyses of English language teaching (ELT) textbooks have revealed many insightful findings with respect to the existing problems of textbooks and potential room for improvement, such as inadequacy in meeting the needs of local communities (Gray, 2010) and the underrepresentation of culture and pragmatics (Ren and Han, 2016). However, analyses of content lack data representing the perspectives of textbook writers, publishers, and users, including teachers and students. Indeed, it is often necessary for teachers to adapt textbooks and supplement textbooks with other materials to cater to their learners’ needs. In this situation, teachers evaluate and adapt the materials to better relate to their context by adding, deleting, modifying, simplifying, or reordering (McDonough et al., 2013). Three principles, in particular, underpin the adaptation process: personalizing (to enhance the relevance of content to students’ needs and interests), individualizing (to attend to the learning styles of both individual students and the class as a whole), and localizing (to consider the international nature of English teaching textbooks and acknowledge the particularities of specific teaching contexts) (McDonough et al., 2013). Teachers’ adaptation or development of teaching materials reflects their personal practical knowledge and emphasizes adjusting textbooks to match the local classroom context (Shawer, 2010). To date, research on textbook consumption and production has received limited attention, and little research has been conducted to explore what teachers want from textbooks (Masuhara, 2011). As Harwood (2014: 10) commented: “although content analysis is excellent at determining what is present or absent in textbooks, it is much less good at determining why this content looks the way it does” (emphases in original). Therefore, more empirical investigations into textbook design and adaptation are warranted.
As far as studies of the production of materials are concerned, the majority of them focus on the conflicts between researchers and teachers and between writers and commercial publishers. Teachers may not be interested in and thus do not implement the academic findings and ideas that university researchers recommend to them. For example, Nassaji (2012) surveyed English language teachers in Canada and Turkey and found that most teachers believed research failed to provide applicable suggestions for teaching and that their actual teaching experiences rather than scholarly findings constituted most of their pedagogical knowledge. The teachers’ refusal to engage in or read about academic pedagogic research could be attributed to time pressures, insufficient institutional support, the difficulties of academic articles, and lack of interest (Hu et al., 2019; Nassaji, 2012; Pan et al., 2014). Therefore, it is not surprising that there have been many calls to reduce the gaps between applied linguistics research and textbook development (Harwood, 2014; Tomlinson, 2011). On the other hand, conflicts also exist between researchers and publishers. Burton's (2012) survey reminds us that applied linguists and publishers approach textbooks from fundamentally different perspectives: applied linguists focus on academic research and publishers on the market. As Prowse (2011) claimed, the market “sets the parameters within which the writer operates” (p. 161). No matter how unsatisfactory an applied linguist may find a textbook, it seems that a publisher's “only incentive for real change is demand from the market” (Burton, 2012: 97). In contrast, there are certain publishing constraints placed upon textbook writers, who need to strike a balance between the authenticity of the materials and the pedagogical effectiveness of the textbook (Harwood, 2014). As Biemer (1992) notes, whereas university researchers often consider textbook writing to be a low-status activity and point out the problems of textbooks, criticizing textbooks is much easier than producing one of high quality.
The lines of communication among writers, teachers, publishers, and materials/textbook researchers subsequently need to be enhanced (Harwood, 2014, 2021). Researchers need to be encouraged to take part in materials development and conduct research in this field. Teachers also need to be involved in writing materials, so they can provide insights into what they want from the materials and can continue to develop a better awareness of how materials are written and how they can use them more effectively in classrooms as a result of their involvement in the process of materials development (Tomlinson, 2012). This paper reports on a study that examines how a school teacher, a university researcher, and a professional textbook writer interact when they collaborate in designing materials for the ELT classroom. This case study aims to shed light on the materials writing process of a collaborative group consisting of a teacher, a researcher, and a commercial textbook publisher.
Materials Development
Tomlinson (2010, 2011) maintains that materials development should be driven by learning and teaching principles rather than by ad hoc imperatives or by textbook writers imitating previous successful textbooks. Tomlinson (2011) proposes 16 principles for materials development that derive from second language acquisition (SLA) research, of which six are emphasized in Tomlinson (2010). Firstly, it is a pre-requisite for learners to have exposure to authentic use of English. In this sense, texts and learning activities should stimulate students to think, feel, and experience the actual situations where the target language is typically used (Tomlinson, 2008). Secondly, learners’ attention should be focused on noticing authentic linguistic features to facilitate their awareness of how the foreign language is used in specific situations with appropriacy, accuracy, and effect. Therefore, activities for analytical noticing should be incorporated into coursebook materials. Thirdly, materials should provide learners with opportunities to use the target features in communication. Teaching materials and activities should create an enabling environment in which learners can determine the “content, strategies, and expressions” of interaction rather than simply practice language use as prescribed by teachers or textbooks (Tomlinson, 2011: 15). Fourthly, materials should provide opportunities for outcome feedback. Learners’ use of the target language should be evaluated against the purpose of language use (e.g. asking for help) so that students can learn from the feedback regarding the communicative effectiveness of their language use. Fifthly, materials should arouse students’ curiosity and attention. After all, textbooks function as facilitators for learners’ self-investment in learning “by providing them with choices of focus and activity, by giving them topic control and by engaging them in learner-centred discovery activities” (Tomlinson, 2011: 12). Finally, materials should stimulate learners’ intellectual and emotional involvement. Activities that can be easily achieved require little cognitive processing, thereby leading to ephemeral and shallow learning. It is important that teaching materials elicit mental and affective processing to better engage students in learning.
These principles notwithstanding, the literature on how authors typically write ELT materials (e.g. Johnson, 2003; Prowse, 2011; Tomlinson, 2010) indicates that many experienced textbook writers rely on their intuitions about what works for their objectives rather than follow learning principles. For example, surveying published global textbooks, Tomlinson (2010) revealed that the common approach to developing ELT materials adhered to the presentation–practice–production (PPP) format that teachers were familiar with. He claimed that this format of PPP, not matching the theories and knowledge of SLA, was unlikely to facilitate learners’ language acquisition and development.
Although detailed analyses of authors’ writing are needed in the literature of materials development, there still exists a paucity of studies on materials development (Harwood, 2021). A few studies have explored this issue, mostly focusing on the writer's expertise to solve a variety of challenges (e.g. Atkinson, 2021a, 2022). For example, Atkinson (2021a) examined how two experienced ELT textbook writers reconciled opposite interests during writing from textbook writers, project partners, publishers, teachers, and students to guide their textbook writing. In a more recent study analyzing data collected by concurrent verbal reports, interviews, diary records, and field notes, Atkinson (2022) investigated how an expert ELT textbook writer engaged creativity to solve the problems of publication constraints during ongoing textbook writing at both the process and product levels. The findings revealed that the expert writer incorporated cross-curricular materials into the textbook, paid special attention to the appropriateness of the topics, carefully reviewed the content to avoid censorship of taboo topics, and improved the usability of the textbook.
Several studies have also investigated different aspects of expertise in materials development. For example, Atkinson (2021b) examined how two expert ELT textbook writers developed coursebooks and found that they employed their ELT experience during writing episodes. That is, the expert writers were able to transfer from other domains of ELT to the expertise domain of ELT textbook writing. However, little research has directly included different stakeholders in ELT materials development.
Different stakeholders, such as teachers, curriculum developers, publishers, university lecturers, and researchers, in materials design and adaptation may hold different, even contrasting, beliefs and values, and their expertise also varies a great deal. Therefore, the field needs more collaboration among them to develop quality materials (Harwood, 2021; Tomlinson, 2011). Since conflicting interests exist among them (as discussed in the introduction), teachers, researchers, and publishers all need to compromise (Bell and Gower, 2011). It is thus insightful to investigate how they differ and how they compromise to reach consensus when designing materials in a collaborative manner. This case study aims to shed light on the materials writing process of a collaborative group consisting of a teacher, a researcher, and a textbook writer from a publisher. It is designed to investigate the following research questions:
To what extent do the teacher, the researcher, and the textbook writer value different principles and adopt different approaches when designing teaching materials? How do they interact and collaborate when some of their approaches and principles are at odds?
Methodology
Participants
The study was conducted in Beijing, China. The participants in this study were a school teacher, a university researcher, and a professional textbook writer. The school teacher, Ms. Zhao (pseudonym) had 25 years of teaching experience in junior high schools and had been awarded the Excellence of Teaching award many times at all of the school, district, and city levels, an award for school teachers in recognition of their excellent teaching practices. She was invited to participate in this study because she had rich experience of using eight different textbook series (by five different publishers ranging from the late 1990s to the present time) in her teaching career as an in-service teacher. This can well reflect the teacher perspective.
The university researcher, Professor Fan (pseudonym), a full professor at a normal university – that is, a university dedicated to teacher education – specialized in SLA and ELT curriculum and pedagogy. He also published extensively in the field of teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) and coordinated numerous programs for pre-service and in-service teacher education and training. He actively participated via talks and lectures in discussions regarding materials design as well as how teachers should more effectively utilize textbooks to promote students’ learning. Because he seemed to be familiar with topics related to materials development, we invited him to take part in the current study.
The professional textbook writer, Ms. Luo (pseudonym), worked as a senior editor as well as materials developer in the ELT textbook department of a large state-owned press that publishes textbooks for primary and secondary schools. Specifically, in her daily work, Ms. Luo selected and edited texts, and further developed them into listening and reading texts accompanied by activities for ELT textbooks. She was thus specialized in the production and publication of ELT materials and could potentially inform the researchers of a publisher perspective as she participated in the study.
Task
The three participants were invited to design materials for a reading lesson to be taught to seventh-grade junior high school students, which is the first year of junior high school in most parts of China. Given the limited amount of time participants were able to participate in the study, we decided it would be appropriate to opt for materials that were of a modest level of difficulty and complexity. Such materials were associated with materials suitable for seventh-grade students rather than students in a higher level class. It should also be noted that reading instruction takes up the largest proportion of teaching time in the English curriculum for junior and senior high schools in China, which is why we asked the participants to collaborate on a reading lesson. The topic of this lesson should focus on emergency events. We believed this theme would be interesting for the target students. Furthermore, it is among the must-teach list of topics in the National English Curriculum Standards (2012). Specific scenarios can be based on road accidents, natural disasters, pregnant women unexpectedly going into labor, etc. In any of those scenarios, there exists the need for the use of language that describes possibilities. Therefore, the target language function is expressing and discussing possibilities using first conditionals. For junior high school students in China, this grammar item requires somewhat more cognitive processing as it includes two clauses with different tense use. First conditionals can thus compel the research participants to design activities that encompass more complex learning or teaching processes. Learners who use the materials will be able to get exposure to such language as “if she is not sent to hospital at once, she will have to give birth to the baby on the bus” and “if you do not stay in the basement, you will get hurt during the tornado.” Regarding the structure of the materials, the participants were asked to use a reading passage as the main source of input for the learners, and the reading passage must include one or more emergency events that are pragmatically suitable for use of first conditionals to describe possibilities. Apart from these guidelines, the participants were not given any other requirements for materials design.
The participants, as a work group, were asked to collaborate in preparing a reading passage on this topic and designing concrete classroom activities for the purpose of enabling students’ learning of the target function. When they were assigned the task, they had a week for individual preparation until they met again to develop the materials together (the collaborative stage). The individual preparation stage was designed to give the participants opportunities to select texts they thought appropriate for the lesson. The participants were told to “select, individually, a passage on an emergency event that can be further adapted as a textbook passage suitable for 7th-grade students, in terms of comprehensibility, readability, and moral suitability.” While we could have asked the participants to begin their collaborative work with a text selected by the researchers, this would have prevented the researchers from inquiring into the standards and processes of participants’ text selection.
Data Collection
In order to collect data regarding the participants’ thinking processes and group interaction throughout the task, we conducted two interviews with each of them, one during their individual preparation prior to the collaborative stage and the other after the collaborative task was completed, for a total of six interviews. Based on Xu (2010), the interviews focused on their valued principles of materials development and actual approaches taken in the collaborative task, including the rationale behind them. Below are a few examples of questions we asked the participants during the pre-collaboration interviews: What is the very first thing that comes to your mind when you are asked to design the materials for such a lesson?
Which step do you think is the most difficult or challenging? Why?
What are the most important principles for materials development?
In the post-collaboration interviews, we tried to contextualize questions for each participant in response to their different engagements during the collaboration. For example, we asked the participants why they responded to others in certain ways in situations of disagreement, as well as why they insisted on their opinion or compromised.
We also audio-recorded their interaction in the collaborative stage, the transcript of which enabled analysis of their interaction in greater detail. The materials they designed, that is, the product of this collaborative task, served as another source of data. In this study, it was not possible to use the think-aloud method because the participants were engaged in interactive conversations as they collaborated on the materials design task.
Data Analysis
We analyzed the dataset following the strategy proposed by Miles and Huberman (1994), that is, data collection, reduction, displays, and conclusions. Specifically, we read through all the data a few times and they were sorted into a few major themes (including principles and values, text choosing, objective setting, activity designing, and materials writing) for further analysis. Examples of specific codes for each of the themes are shown below. • Principles and values: learnability, teachability, diverse forms of activities, assessment for learning …
• Text choosing: accurate language, length of sentences …
• Objective setting: learning processes, learning outcome, long-term development …
• Activity designing: feasible, activity sequence …
• Materials writing: originality of language, adapting the language …
When we reduced the dataset to a more manageable volume by focusing only on the excerpts most relevant to the themes, we more closely examined the interaction between the participants in different stages of collaboration as represented by the major themes.
Findings
In this section, we first showcase the principles and approaches valued and advocated by each of the participants and then delineate how they interacted in the collaborative stage.
Individual Principles and Approaches
When asked about their general conception of teaching materials, all three participants agreed that materials played a crucial role in promoting learning. The teacher also emphasized the pivotal role of materials in teaching, while the professor and the professional writer placed more emphasis on curriculum development. Regarding specific principles of materials development, all the participants emphasized the textual features of the reading passage, as shown in the following interview extracts: There shouldn’t be too many new words, because we can’t deal with too many of them in one lesson … When they [new words] are unavoidable, they should scatter across the text rather than concentrate in one place. (The teacher, Ms. Zhao)
Most importantly, the whole text should read smoothly … There should be no language mistakes, as we need to ensure that the input is perfectly correct. (The researcher, Professor Fan)
The quotations above suggested that the participants focused on the language while selecting teaching materials, and language accuracy seemed to be the most important criterion for ideal materials. Interestingly, none of them mentioned the content of the passage; for example, that it should be interesting to the students to arouse their attention and enhance their emotional involvement (Tomlinson, 2011).
They also placed individual emphases on the features of activities to be designed as another important facet of materials development: The best activities are those that can be used and implemented in classroom … Some tricky activities look fancy and seemingly interesting, but they simply cannot be put into practice. You just cannot implement them … Students’ performance in an activity should be observable and thus assessable. (The teacher, Ms. Zhao)
The materials need to guarantee that all necessary scaffolding be provided … The scaffolding represented in the various activities should be presented in the right sequence that concurs with the sequence of students’ learning … All materials should be presented in the correct order. (The researcher, Professor Fan)
The materials should provide a complete demonstration of the first conditional … All forms of first conditionals should appear within the text and activities … The activities should cover all important words and phrases for students to learn, as long as these items are related to the theme and topic of this section of materials. (The textbook writer, Ms. Luo)
The above extracts show the diversified emphases on the ideal activities to be designed for the textbook. The teacher was concerned about the operationalizability of the activities in a real classroom – the activities should be easy to implement and, equally importantly, should support effective classroom assessment. The researcher insisted that the arrangement of activities should strictly follow the learners’ learning agenda or route, and the activities should scaffold the complete loop of learning, that is, no step, major or minor, should be missing. The textbook writer emphasized the inclusion of all types of first conditionals in the reading passage and the activities, as well as full coverage of key vocabulary items related to the topic and function.
Stages of Collaborative Materials Development
Choosing a Reading Passage: “We Can Give It a Go so Long as the Text Looks Fine”
In the session when the participants met for a face-to-face discussion, they quickly agreed upon a reading passage Ms. Luo (the writer) had selected, which told a story of an avoided accident owing to the bravery and quick, sensible decision of a man who saved another's life. All the participants were satisfied with it given its textual features: the language was accurate and all important target language items were included. The textbook writer commented, “first conditionals are right in place in this story,” and Professor Fan announced, “We can give it a go so long as the text looks fine.”
Setting Learning Objectives: Learning First Versus Teaching First
The teacher (Ms. Zhao) and the researcher (Professor Fan) had a debate about the way objectives should be presented. Such a debate may reflect the disagreement about who should be considered the primary users of textbooks. Professor Fan contended that the learning objectives should be described in terms of what the students “can do” after learning the materials. For example, he insisted: We are using the objectives to guide learning, and then teaching … Without a clear learning goal, how does teaching come about?
For this reason, Professor Fan suggested the following objective, as this was consistent with his thoughts about focusing on students’ learning process: [Objective statement by Professor Fan] Students should notice the situations where first conditionals can be used and learn how to use them appropriately to talk about possibilities.
However, Ms. Zhao insisted that the objectives should be concretized to reflect the specific tasks of the teaching processes/steps. She said: I’m not truly worried about what students can do in the end. They will be able to do that if we intend in the right way and teach in the right way … What truly hampers this [i.e. intending and teaching in the right way] is the way teaching objectives are represented and clarified in the textbook.
In other words, the teacher was not so much concerned about what students would be able to do by using the language by the end of the class as about how teachers were able to identify and understand the teaching objectives intended by textbook writers. This finding may indicate that learning objectives in textbooks should be made transparent for teachers. Hence, Ms. Zhao suggested the following objective: [Objective statement by Ms. Zhao] Teachers should help students understand the rule of first conditionals in terms of both their meaning and form, and then help them use them correctly.
After several rounds of discussions, the participants agreed to include both learning and teaching objectives explicitly stated above each activity, making both objectives transparent to students and teachers, as shown in this extract from the developed materials: [Objectives statement as agreed by all] In this section, you will focus on the rule of first conditionals for both function and form [a point emphasized by the teacher]; that is, you will learn about when you can use first conditionals and use them in a grammatically correct way [a point emphasized by the professor].
Designing Activities: Representing All Learning Steps Versus Making These Flexible for Teachers
A debate in the stage of designing activities also occurred between the teacher, Ms. Zhao, and the researcher, Professor Fan. Similar to his contention in the objective-setting stage, Professor Fan emphasized learning design, that is, activities should be designed in accordance with the learning process. He said: Activities should be very carefully designed to support learning needs at various stages of the entire learning process. There should be no gaps between activities. The students are not able to bridge the gaps by themselves … For instance, when we have just presented the activities that focus on the meaning of first conditionals and the form of them respectively, we need to bring in one activity that integrates both meaning and form before we present the fourth activity for real language use.
This contention may well explain why Professor Fan produced a series of activities intended to help students notice, understand, and explore, which reflected the detailed learning process: Activity 1: Show one sentence in the reading text that contains the first conditional, and ask the students to find the other. (To promote students’ noticing of this grammar item.)
Activity 2: Ask the students to paraphrase or translate the two first conditional sentences. (To make sure that they understand the meaning.)
Activity 3: Show the students the difference between the if-clause and the result clause. (To introduce key concepts.)
Activity 4: Direct students’ attention to the use of tense in the if-clauses and the result clauses. (To help students discover the rule related to form.)
Ms. Zhao, in contrast, was more concerned about implementation issues. For example, activities included in the material should fit into the time frame of a lesson, but too many activities, however much they represented the entire learning process, would cause difficulty on the teachers’ part in getting the lesson completed within the limited lesson time. She argued: Many teachers have the inclination to go over all these activities in classroom, and then they can feel secure. This is a huge burden for both teachers and students.
Therefore, Ms. Zhao suggested the following activities: Activity 1: Show the two sentences in the reading text that contain the first conditionals, and ask the students what they mean. (To help students re-notice the grammar in the post-reading stage.)
Activity 2: Show the rule, that is, the main clause plus an if-clause. (To teach the form.)
Activity 3: Ask students to make up more sentences using this grammar. (To promote practice and drill.)
They discussed the issue for quite a while and it was Ms. Zhao who broke the stalemate by agreeing to include all activities in the materials (for example, the activities that focus on the meaning, form, the integration of both, and real language use), but Ms. Zhao was insistent that it should be up to the teacher to prioritize them and choose which ones to implement in class.
Interestingly, Ms. Luo (the textbook writer) took no part in the discussion at this point, nor did she contribute to the negotiation. When she was asked in the post-collaboration interview about the reason why she remained silent, she explained that since she did not have practical teaching experience, she was not quite sure how activities should be arranged and presented to suit the real needs of teaching and learning in the classroom.
Writing up the Material: Can Language be Adapted?
In the writing up stage, Professor Fan preferred using the original reading passage. He said in the face-to-face discussion: “I don’t think we should modify the language, because any modification would affect the originally intended message.” Nonetheless, Ms. Luo (the textbook writer) insisted on an adapted version to conform with education authorities’ requirements that difficult words and structures should be avoided. For example, the original text read “a sick man collapsed.” The textbook writer insisted that “collapsed” should be replaced by “fell down” because the former was not on the vocabulary list provided in the curriculum. As can be seen in the Appendix, as many as six original words and phrases were changed into vocabulary items that were included in the vocabulary list, which showed the textbook writer's preoccupation with conforming to Ministry of Education requirements.
In addition, Ms. Luo insisted that activities should appear in diverse forms (e.g. sentence matching, blank filling, etc.), because her “editor-in-chief always emphasizes that lack of diversity makes the textbook boring both in itself and in teaching.” However, Ms. Zhao (the teacher) insisted that they should appear in easy-to-use forms (e.g. blank filling being the only ideal form for vocabulary consolidation), with diversity being a rather minor issue. In the end, Ms. Luo's proposals in these two regards prevailed, that is, necessary textual adaptation and diversity in activity formats.
Discussion and Implications
This study investigated how a school teacher, a university researcher and a professional textbook writer designed materials for a reading lesson for secondary students. It was observed that the participants placed different emphases on the design of the reading lesson due to their individual principles, values, and approaches towards English language learning and teaching and materials design. Their values and beliefs were observed to inform their practices in collaborative materials design and thus influenced the processes of interaction and negotiation. As shown in the findings, because Professor Fan's research interests included SLA, he emphasized student language learning in the selection and design of materials. As an experienced frontline secondary English teacher, Ms. Zhao tended to focus on actual teaching procedures and on the implementation of activities in classrooms while developing teaching materials and activities. Ms. Luo, as a senior editor and materials developer, highlighted the importance of the “completeness” and “diversity” of the materials in that they should include all key words and grammatical structures and various types of activities and tasks. The findings further indicated that the stakeholders’ professional knowledge, beliefs about English learning and teaching, experiences, and identity in English language education may have shaped their individual principles and practices pertaining to materials design and development (Burton, 2012; Harwood, 2014; Nassaji, 2012; Shawer, 2010).
While research has produced a set of possible principles and criteria for language learning materials development and evaluation (Tomlinson, 2010, 2012), this study contributes to research on materials production by uncovering the values and priorities communicated during materials development and the interactions among different stakeholders in materials development (Harwood, 2014, 2021; Johnson, 2003; Tomlinson, 2012). In the present study, the participants experienced tensions in the collaboration process, which were revealed at different stages of materials development. Their collaboration and interaction evolved through tensions in their principles and values and interactions with external stakeholders and systems, such as school management, classroom schedules, student needs, and educational authorities’ requirements (Opfer and Pedder, 2011). By responding to the tensions through debates and joint efforts, the participants managed to engage in integrated collaborative activities and produce materials for student learning. This finding suggests that it is important for different stakeholders in materials design to be tolerant of and reflective about the problems in their collaborative practices, and to compromise and overcome the problems, in order to maintain a positive and robust collaboration system (Bell and Gower, 2011; Kuusisaari, 2014).
This study has several pedagogical implications. Firstly, it highlights the significance of involving different stakeholders, including frontline teachers, university researchers, and materials writers, in the process of designing effective teaching materials given the different knowledge bases each party brings to the table (Harwood, 2014, 2021; Tomlinson, 2010, 2012). Traditionally, materials design and development have relied on needs analysis, which may incorporate opinions from teachers and students. However, a more complete picture may emerge when textbook publication staff, researchers, and textbook users are directly involved in the design processes. Dialogic negotiation could be established among textbook writers, university researchers, schoolteachers, and even students via regular meetings and public forums for the collaborative design of teaching materials. Through regular exchanges of ideas and negotiation of meaning, creative ideas together with conflicts and debates may become a powerful impetus for the development of materials that could provide various ways of acquiring a language (Tomlinson, 2012).
In addition, professional-development workshops, courses, and seminars on materials development could be organized for materials writers, university researchers, school teachers, and pre-service teachers to enhance their knowledge of the principles and procedures of materials development that are most likely to facilitate language acquisition and to raise their awareness of the importance of collaboration in designing teaching materials and activities. They may also be encouraged and guided to use knowledge, skills, and strategies derived from their education and experiences to challenge the principles of materials design and overcome barriers and conflicts during collaboration. As collaboration during materials design and development is a recursive system that evolves through tension and debates, stakeholders in the community should adopt a tolerant and open attitude towards the potential conflicts among their different beliefs and principles (Bell and Gower, 2011). They should learn to welcome and reflect on the conflicts and develop appropriate measures to resolve them.
Conclusion
This study tracked the collaborative practice of a school teacher, a university researcher, and a professional textbook writer as they designed teaching materials for an English reading lesson. Although there were only three participants in this case study, which made it difficult to generalize the findings to a wider population, the study contributes to our understanding of the nature of collaboration among stakeholders in materials development and their personalized and diversified principles and beliefs regarding the design of teaching materials. This study focused on designing materials for one lesson; future research may examine the collaboration and interaction of school teachers, university researchers, and textbook writers in designing a series of English textbooks. Future research could also take a longitudinal approach and collect multiple sources of data, including drafts of textbooks and semi-structured interviews, to investigate how collaborative practices shape textbook development.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Project of Discipline Innovation and Advancement (PODIA) – Foreign Language Education Studies at Beijing Foreign Studies University (grant number 2020SYLZDXM011), and by “Research on the Innovation of Foreign Language Education in China” (grant number: 22JJD740011), a major project of Key Research Institutes of Humanities and Social Sciences under the Ministry of Education.
