Conversation With A Curricularist Project Cong-Kai Jin v2

EDCI 803: Curriculum Development
Summer I 2015: Final Project
Conversation with a Curricularist Project
A Quick Review of the Curriculum Platform for

Chinese Language Training Program at the
Defense Language Institute (DLI)
By
Cong-Kai Jin
Author bio:
Contact number: (831) 277-2505
Degree sought: M.S. in Curriculum and Instruction
Current occupation: Chinese Language Instructor
Teaching interest: Foreign Language (Mandarin Chinese) Instruction

Abstract:
This project is based on the information obtained through an informal conversational interview
with current Chinese language instructor and Assistant Professor of Defense Language Institute
(DLI) at Monterey, California, in order to understand DLIs curriculum platform in Chinese
language education. According to the interviewee, curriculum of DLIs Chinese language
programs takes a very traditional approach which heavily focused on subject-matter and the
needs of society (i.e., national security) as confirmed by DLIs official mission statement. DLIs
curriculum also featured with repeated tests and exams as evaluation of students performance.
Given DLIs focus on test-based proficiency performance, however, current DLI faculty
members are trying to integrate more student-centered considerations into the curriculum design
in order to inspire students genuine interests in language learning and make them delight in their
learning experience while attaining the goals of achieving high language proficiency
performance as is always expected in the curriculum design of DLI.

Introduction
As a foreign language instructor who teaches Mandarin Chinese to teenager and adult
students for ten years, I have always been thinking about how I could improve my instruction
and curriculum so my students could learn better and enjoy their learning evermore. Thanks to
the great opportunity of studying the course of EDCI 803-Curriculum Development, I learned
Deweys emphases on students experience and education such as the importance of adaptation
of materials to needs and capacities of individuals (Dewey, 1938, p. 47); the most important
attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning (Dewey, 1938, p. 48); and that
teacher should not assume the role of external boss or dictator but the role of leader of group
activities (Dewey, 1938, p. 59).
I also appreciate the dynamic history of American curriculum development. Marsh and
Willis (2007) depicted a big picture that the trajectory of American curriculum development is
actually a flow of shifting on focus and idea from subject matter to society and, eventually, to
individual development, shaping by various impacts of the entanglement of politics and major
historical events with significant military/economic implications on American leadership, experts
and general publics thinking on American curriculum development in history. Nonetheless, my
learning also comes with several questions in my mind: how should we evaluate a given
curriculum platform? Where is the right point to start with? I found Ralph Tyler, also known as
the Father of Curriculum Studies, provided a clear guidance in this regard: if we are to study
an educational program systematically and intelligently we must first be sure as to the
educational objectives aimed at (Tyler, 1949, p. 3).
It is my perception that the Defense Language Institute (DLI), located in Presidio of
Monterey, California, is a very unique educational institution. And I have always admired its

outstanding performance and reputation in foreign language training programs. In fact, DLI is
dubbed by many as the Language Capital of the World.
Given my short term goal of my professional career is to become a Chinese language
instructor in DLI, I believe I could benefit from interaction with current DLI faculty member and
learning some rudimentary information regarding the curriculum which DLI currently used for
instruction of Mandarin Chinese. I think, by conducting the interview, it will not only help me
integrate the knowledge I learned from this course with the practical language instruction, but
also strengthen and broaden my understanding and learning on curriculum development and
design which would be extremely useful in my future professional endeavors.
Conversation Process
This project is based on my experience conducting informal conversational interview
with Ms. Jenny Williams (pseudonym was used to protect the confidentiality of the interviewee),
who is a Mandarin Chinese language instructor and Assistant Professor of DLI at Monterey,
California, in several occasions in June, 2015, regarding her thoughts on the curriculum platform
of Chinese language instruction currently being used in DLI. All information Ms. Williams
disclosed during interview is her personal opinion and only for background reference, not in any
way being considered as the official position of the DLI or other federal government agencies.
With regard to the interviewees school context, in concurrence with Tylers statement
that the final analysis objectives are matters of choice, and they must therefore be the
considered value judgements of those responsible for the school. A comprehensive philosophy of
education is necessary to guide in making these judgements (Tyler, 1949, p. 4), according to the
statement on DLI official website, DLIs mission is to provide culturally based foreign language
education, training, evaluation and sustainment to enhance the security of the nation; its vision

is to deliver the worlds best culturally based foreign language education and training at the
point of need (Defense Language Institute, n.d.).
Findings
Definition of Curriculum
Asked of the definition of curriculum, Ms. Williams stated curriculum is a systematic and
feasible teaching plan with specific purposes and schedules. It is her understanding that
curriculum is designed by school based on previous experiences and prudent deliberations, in
order to help students achieve intended learning objectives, and to enable teachers to plan lessons
according so as to achieve the best instruction results: school teachers teach the content as well
as control the teaching progress according to the curriculum; reading curriculum beforehand
could also help students have a better understanding of what they could expect on the learning
content in advance.
Perspective on Curriculum
Ms. Williams believed that curriculum, besides its role as teaching plan, should also
include instructors guidance toward students; enhancing students' learning interest; inspiring
students to explore their learning; efforts to help students find their best learning strategies; and,
under the context of Chinese language instruction, strengthening the cultural awareness and
background knowledge. She emphasized that the curriculum should include not only the
activities in the classroom, but also the field trips, immersion studies, students self-studying,
learning assessment, student counseling, and group discussions. Ms. Williams statement reminds
me that no number of object-lessonscan afford even the shadow of a substitute for
acquaintance with the plants and animals of the farm and garden acquired through actual living
among them and caring for them (Dewey, 1899/2001. p. 8).

Experience of Developing a Curriculum

Ms. Williams said she has been responsible for several different curriculum designs,
including short-term summer courses and complete full-length (66 weeks) intensive Chinese
language training programs targeting adult learners. She assisted the implementation of
immersion studies in school, further planned and led immersion teaching plans, as well as
coordination and evaluations. She helped conduct comprehensive reviews and curriculum
improvements based on students feedbacks after the immersion studies, then tried out different
teaching strategies. She also trained other instructors in order to promote the continuing
development of immersion instruction.
Curriculum Planning and Development
According to Ms. Williams, the curriculum planning and development at DLI is a strict
top-down process: the concrete assessment and evaluation procedures are decided by interagency
broad based on the needs in government official business; then dean of the entire Chinese
language school worked with provost to decide teaching objectives accordingly in order to meet
or exceed the requirement of aforementioned assessment/evaluation; subordinate departmental
chairpersons followed these objectives to set up teaching guidelines and suggested teaching
strategies for different types of lesson; at the very bottom of the chain of command, group
leaders in each department assigned teachers to each lesson and class, collected appropriate
teaching materials, and provided each class the teaching content; and finally, it is individual
teachers responsibility to conduct the designed teaching programs in each class.
Per Ms. Williams description, the full length Chinese language training program
currently adopted in DLI is a 66-week long course: each instructor teaches six classes in average
daily covering lessons on textbook materials, grammar, listening, reading, speaking, and post-

lesson practice and tests. The goal is to complete one lesson every three days; conduct one midunit exam after every three completed lessons, then one unit exam after six lessons. All exams
include three parts (i.e., listening, reading and speaking) of tests.
If any part of the unit exam was graded lower than 74 points, the student will receive the
seventh class in every school day for special instruction. However, if a student failed three times
in a row with scores lower than 74 points at the same part of three consecutive unit exams, the
student will be dis-enrolled and expelled from school.
Moreover, DLI divides the 66-week Chinese language training course into three stages:
the first 24 weeks is the first stage where teacher takes lead in instruction/learning content; the
follow up 22 weeks is the second stage where teacher is in charge of the teaching content, and
students also take independent learning; the last 18 weeks is the third stage where teachers role
is basically assisting students independent learning and providing diversified authentic materials
for students learning, since most students in this stage already possess the independent learning
ability; and, finally, students will take the final exams in the last two weeks as the final
comprehensive evaluation of their speaking, listening, and reading proficiencies. Students who
pass the final proficiency tests will graduate with an associate degree.
Issues or Problems Involving Curriculum
While some people perceived curriculum simply the context of an instructor teaching
contents in class with students, other people argued that curriculum should inspire students to
study and learn independently. There is also issue regarding whether pre-determined curriculum
and syllabus should be adjusted to meet individual students condition. Ms. Williams
acknowledged these kind of issues reflect what Dewey argued: mankind likes to think in terms

of extreme opposites. It is given to formulating its beliefs in terms of Either-Ors, between which
it recognizes no intermediate possibilities (Dewey, 1938, p. 17).
Ms. Williams asserted, however, the greatest controversy regarding the language
instruction in DLI is whether teaching is for students to pass the test. Whether teachers
should be cramming students with content in order to pass the exams and to ignore students'
interest of learning. She believed that a good curriculum design must be effective in stimulating
students' interest of learning: although passing exams is the final goal, learning must be
supported by inherent learning interest so as to achieve the best learning results.
According to Ms. Williams, many students in DLI are assigned by the military to learn
Chinese in the first place, and many of them were not interested at all in learning abstruse
Chinese at the very beginning. Nevertheless, in the 66-week long of learning process, many
students began to have genuine interests in learning Chinese, and they became excellent linguists
experts in Chinese after graduation and served as important and professional translation officers.
Ms. Williams said, however, there are also some students who dislike learning Chinese
very much. Although these students managed to pass the first stage of training program by
memorizing all the cold hard information, some of them still faced the consequence of being
washed out at the end of second stage and was expelled from the school. Therefore, Ms.
Williams firmly believed that, whatever the course is, teachers must do whatever it takes to elicit
students intrinsic learning motivations, for students inherent interest is the most crucial factor in
maintaining their learning performance.
Ms. Williams words really connect me with my understanding that Dewey believed
teacher must appropriately select and organize the materials based on students previous learning
and living experience, and to formulate the conditions and environment suitable for students

interests and needs, because everything depends upon the quality of the experience (Dewey,
1938, p. 27). Therefore, its teachers responsibility to find and organize the right kind of
present experiences that live fruitfully and creatively in subsequent experiences (Dewey, 1938,
p. 28).
How do Changes in Curriculum Occur?
Ms. Williams uttered, in DLI, it is often the change of instructional objectives leads to the
change of curriculum. She said, for instance, all students studying Chinese at Defense Language
Institute must take the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) and Defense Language Proficiency Tests
(DLPT) before the end of their 66-week course. Just a few years ago, DLPT4 was replaced
by DLPT5: all exam materials were no longer read by teachers; test coverage was no longer
limited to the textbooks; question source now all came from authentic materials and daily
dialogues in the real world. Therefore, students can no longer pass the exam only by studying
their textbooks. They must also listen to and read a great amount of real-life materials, including
public broadcasting, TV interviews, various symposiums, and news programs, etc.
Under such circumstance, textbook-based curriculum design must therefore immediately
transform itself to the one which enables students to understand the real-life materials. In
addition to various real-life contents, acquaintance with different accents, various speaking
speeds and tones of the speaker, have also become part of the current curriculum. In order to help
students master the new realm of learning content, all faculty members of the Chinese School
immediately mobilized to collect real-life materials accordingly and reorganized the textbook so
as to accommodate the new teaching content. Instructors whose students performed well in
exams also share their teaching experience with other faculty members.

Ms. Williams argued, by copying the successful learning experiences and teaching
practices, all departments of the Chinese School of DLI followed the model set and adopted the
new curriculum design with an aim to ensure all students could successfully pass
the DLPT5 exams.
Curriculum Approach (Philosophy) Used
Ms. Williams stated that Defense Language Institute currently uses very high-strength
and intensive language training program, which is designed not only to help students to pass the
OPI and DLPT5 examinations, but also to equip students with necessary language proficiency in
Chinese in order to complete whatever their assigned tasks in the future. It seems to me that DLI
apparently adopts a very old-fashion and strict traditional education approach which heavily
focused on subject matter and the needs of society in its curriculum planning and development,
just like Marsh and Willis (2007) articulated as the three major focal points (i.e., subject matter,
society, and individual) of any given curriculum. Nevertheless, it seems to me that DLI also
provides flavor of a more student-centered learning environment in the third stage (i.e., the final
18 weeks) of its curriculum of language training program before the final exam.
Focal Points of Curriculum
Ms. Williams said the current focus of curriculum used by Chinese School in DLI is to
make students master Mandarin Chinese in listening and reading as well as have medium level of
speaking proficiency. She argued that, although the purpose of the entire training program is to
help students pass the OPI and DLPT5 exams so they could reach the language level required by
military, the instruction is still very much student-centered with an aim to stimulate students
interest in learning Chinese. Therefore, she believed it can be said that DLI strives to maintain an
10

appropriate equilibrium between three focal points of curriculum development, i.e., subject
matter, society, and individual.
Suggestions for Better Practice
Ms. Williams asserted learning should be a lifelong quest. However, she felt the current
curriculum design of DLI focused too much on exam results, thus forced some students to learn
the language only to pass the exam: they dont quite understand the learning content, nor do they
care about the historical and cultural implications behind the language. Although this kind of
curriculum might meet the requirement of passing exams, students would never really appreciate
their language learning experience. Hence, Ms. Williams believed the best curriculum
development should be able to achieve what Confucius said: they who know the truth are not
equal to those who love it, and they who love it are not equal to those who delight in it. In
other words, if a curriculum could make students enjoy the learning, it would be the most
successful curriculum design.
Conclusion
It is clear that DLI is not a school promoting liberal arts education, nor is it a school
taking progressive educational approach. It is not a regular college or university addressing
academic performance, but an educational institution focusing on proficiency performance. DLI
is a world renowned professional military training facility with clear objective to provide
culturally based foreign language education, training, evaluation and sustainment to enhance the
security of the nation as its mission statement. Under such context, it makes sense that the
current curriculum of DLI has a strong flavor of traditional approach and thus is s more subjectmatter and society needs based platform.
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I believe the purpose of school should be preparing our students for the future. However,
it does not mean that our schools, in a broader prospect, should be functioning like factories
producing standardized products and that we as instructors should assertively judge whether our
students will meet the requirements of future through our present lens of values. What can we do
to make our education system a better one?
It seems to me that student-centered approach is a very good solution and it is actually the
major working idea representing Deweys thinking in education and curriculum development.
Dewey placed the utmost importance and value on the role teacher played in his ideal model of
education for the purpose of getting the knowledge and the materials of subject-matter to meet
the interest and need of students. Dewey argued that as a teacherhe is concerned with the
subject-matter of the science as representing a given stage and phase of the development of
experience. His problem is that of inducing a vital and personal experiencing (Dewey,
1905/2001, p. 117), and that the value of the formulated wealth of knowledge that makes up the
course of study is that it may enable the educator to determine the environment of the child, and
thus by indirection to direct (Dewey, 1905/2001, p. 123).
Therefore, I believe we as educators should create more opportunities for students to
practice problem-solving and team-building skills whenever possible in our subject-matter
focused curriculum. However, the current American curriculum reform in general is still a
product-in-progress made by the compromises between federal/local politicians and legislators
and our school districts. Nonetheless, I wonder how teachers as professional educators could
play more active and vocal role in this regard so as to have more of their opinions and inputs
being considered in the shaping the future American curriculum.
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I believe the key in understanding American curriculum development is that

contemporary curricula have been created eclectically, through a variety of alternative
approaches, whether the people most involved in their creation have understand that fact or not
(Marsh & Willis, 2007, pp. 64-65), and anyone involved in contemporary curriculum planning
and development should be aware of that fact and of the possibilities of a well-reasoned
eclecticism in their own curriculum work (Marsh & Willis, 2007, p. 65). As for the current
curriculum used by DLI, given it is already an outstanding language training program, I believe
what can be done to better it off, at least, is that more ratio of the focus should be placed on
students, beside the well calibrated focus on subject matter and the needs of society, in the
equilibrium of curriculum.
As a foreign language instructor, I teach my students foreign language and the culture
context that language represents. I do not know whether my students consider that language and
the associated knowledge regarding the culture the must-have life skills or not, but I do believe
that learning how to communicate with other people who speak different language and probably
hold different set of values due to different cultural backgrounds could be very useful in their
future success in life.
Every student is different. We certainly could not make them all identical as the same
factory product by giving them identical school education. What we can do, as educators, is to
create an ideal environment so our students could enjoy their learning experience, and to equip
them with the most useful knowledge and skills so they can blossom in the future in the path of
their own well-informed choice.
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References:
Apple, M. (2014). Controlling the work of teachers. In Flinders, D. J. & Thornton, S. J. (Eds.),
The curriculum studies reader (4th ed.) (pp. 167-181). New York, NY: Routledge.
Dewey, J. (1938). Experience & Education. New York, NY: Macmillan.
Dewey, J. (2001). The school and society & the child and the curriculum. Mineola, NY: Dover.
Defense Language Institute: Mission and Vision. (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://www.dliflc.edu/mission-vission/
Eisner, E. (2002). The educational imagination: On the design and evaluations of school
programs (3rd ed.) (pp. 87-107). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Eisner, E. (2014). What does it mean to say a school is doing well? In Flinders, D. J. & Thornton,
S. J. (Eds.), The curriculum studies reader (4th ed.) (pp. 279-287). New York, NY:
Routledge.
Jackson, P. (2014). The daily grind. In Flinders, D. J. & Thornton, S. J. (Eds.), The curriculum
studies reader (4th ed.) (pp. 117-127). New York, NY: Routledge.
Marsh, C., & Willis, G. (2007). Curriculum history. In Curriculum: Alternative approaches,
ongoing issues (4th ed., pp. 23-67). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Noddings, N. (2014). Curriculum for the 21st century. In Flinders, D. J. & Thornton, S. J. (Eds.),
The curriculum studies reader (4th ed.) (pp. 399-405). New York, NY: Routledge.
Noddings, N. (2014). The false promise of the Paideia: A critical review of the Paideia proposal.
In Flinders, D. J. & Thornton, S. J. (Eds.), The curriculum studies reader (4th ed.) (pp.
187-194). New York, NY: Routledge.
Tyler, R. (1949). Basic principles of curriculum and instruction. Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago.
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Conversation With A Curricularist Project Cong-Kai Jin v2

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EDCI 803: Curriculum Development

Summer I 2015: Final Project