Analysis of Pakistan’s National Curriculum for English: A Learner-Centered Ideology Perspective

Abstract

Curriculum is said to be the blueprint that lays down not only educational goals but also the ways to attain those goals. The blueprint is highly ideologically influenced and this is reflected in the goals set by the developers of the curriculum. The National Curriculum for English published in Pakistan in 2006 is considered an updated document with contribution from all key stakeholders; however, the
literature on curriculum studies lacks any study that has been carried out to understand its ideological nature. Hence, the purpose of this study is to analyze the National English Curriculum from a learner-centered ideological perspective. Use qualitative methods to close reading of the document was done to carefully find useful excerpts of the text and label according to the purpose of the study. The results show that the curriculum follows the learner-centered ideology in terms of subject matter, content knowledge, teaching process and the role of students and teachers. However, in terms of assessment, it follows a traditional approach. The study concluded that the assessment part of the curriculum needs to follow a more formative and innovative assessment approach to make the document more learnercentric in nature. Moreover, the study puts forward a few recommendations with respect to the training of teachers, the provision of guidance strategies for teachers, and the allocation of more proportions for formative assessments.