Page 163 - Getting of the fence

The relevance and usefulness of the Comprehensive Approach
adaptive planners capable of making good decisions over time” (Desimone &
Stukey, 2014, p. 13) the key question in internal validity, i.e. whether observed
changes can be attributed to the Comprehensive Approach, can only be answered
with caution. However, we were not so much interested in causal relationships
and effectiveness of the professional development programme. Instead, we were
interested in the evaluation of the relevance and usefulness of the Comprehensive
Approach in real-life teaching contexts where teachers have full ownership of their
EFL literature curriculum. That such a methodological decision also adds to the sustainability of PCK research can be argued through an evolutionary perspective
(consistent with Practicality Theory), because, “as with evolution of organisms,
practical solutions proceed by slight variations rather than completely new
sequences of actions, and these variants are selected because they are considered
an improvement over the previous sequence of action” (Janssen et al., 2015, p.
6). Having said this, according to Desimone’s (2009) conceptual framework for
studying the effects of professional development, professional development should
eventually lead to increased student learning (i.e. the Theory of Instruction).
Although we are of the opinion that our exploration of the Theory of Action
(i.e. the relevance and usefulness of the Comprehensive Approach according to
teachers) was essential in preceding any studies that focus on the improvement 6 of student learning, we would also like to argue that, however complicated, such
studies are necessary in PCK research.
To conclude, we would like to finish with several limitations and suggestions
for future research. Firstly, sustainable curriculum development should include several curriculum levels such as described by Goodlad (1979) and van den Akker (2006), especially from the perspective of curricular alignment (Biggs & Tang, 2007). Due to the scope of our research, we only focused on the lessons, which resulted in a limited view of the relevance and usefulness of the Comprehensive Approach. Secondly, sustainable curriculum reform is ideally truly longitudinal in order to find out whether outcomes persist over time (Desimone & Stukey, 2014). In our study, we were able to analyse the changes the eight teachers perceived regarding EFL literature teaching after one year of working with the Comprehensive Approach, but not whether these changes persisted or faded away and the reasons why. Finally, instrumentality and cost are influenced by “important and underappreciated” conditions that are outside a teacher’s control, such as class size, planning time, school infrastructure, and “reform clutter” (Kennedy, 2010, p. 593). In measuring any effect in PCK research, these key mediating and
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