Evaluating Curriculum alignment of English for Specific Purposes Bachelor of Arts Textbooks and the Relevant Official Curriculum Standards

Subject Areas : Education

R. رضوانی ¹ (استادیار و عضو هیأت علمی دانشگاه یاسوج، دانشکده‌ی: علوم انسانی، گروه زبان انگلیسی، یاسوج، ایران)
B. حق شناس ² (دانشجوی کارشناسی ارشد آموزش زبان انگلیسی، دانشکده‌ی : علوم انسانی، دانشگاه یاسوج، ایران)

Received: 2015-03-04 Accepted : 2015-03-04 Published : 2015-02-20

Keywords: Curriculum Alignment, Educational objectives, English for specific purposes, Curriculum standards, Porter’s alignment index,

Abstract :

This study examined the alignment of SAMT publication English for Specific Purposes (ESP) Bachelor of Arts textbooks and the relevant official curriculum standards in terms of Anderson and Krathwhol's (2001) cognitive taxonomy of educational objectives. To this aim, 21 ESP textbooks from among 64 textbooks for humanities were randomly selected, and together with their curriculum standards were content-analyzed employing a checklist developed drawing upon Anderson and Krathwhol's (2001) cognitive taxonomy of educational objectives. Porter's (2002) alignment index was also employed to assess the degree of alignment between the two curriculum components of interest in the current study. Data analysis suggested that 87.14% of the standards and 71.06% of the textbooks represented lower-order thinking skills (remembering, understanding, and applying) and only 12.8% and 28.9% of the standards and textbooks respectively accommodated higher-ordered thinking skills (analyzing, evaluating, and creating). In addition, not surprisingly, it was revealed that there was no significant alignment between the textbooks and their standards (0.41).