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Developing standards-based Chinese curricula in international schools: a gap analysis for Eagle American School

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Developing standards-based Chinese curricula in international schools: a gap analysis for Eagle American School

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Developing Standards-Based Chinese Curriculum in International Schools:
A Gap Analysis for Eagle American School
by
Shuna Sun

Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California
A dissertation submitted to the faculty
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Education

May 2022

iii

© Copyright by Shuna Sun 2022
All Rights Reserved

iv

The Committee for Shuna Sun certifies the approval of this Dissertation

Ekaterina Moore
Darline Robles
Lawrence Picus, Committee Chair

Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California
2022

iv
Abstract
International schools are independent of the governance of the ministry of education of the host
countries. Despite the fact that it is a great advantage to design curricula as the schools and
teachers wish, there appears also a need for guidelines, standards, and benchmarks for
curriculum design. At Eagle American School (EAS), the Preschool–12 Chinese curricula were
teacher developed and school based. This study sought to understand the Chinese teachers’
perceptions about developing a standards-based Chinese curriculum as a World Language
Program at EAS. This research was structured using Clark and Estes’ (2008) KMO (knowledge,
motivation, and organization) framework, and were guided by the two following research
questions:
1. What is the current status of the Chinese teachers’ knowledge, motivation, and
organizational resources with regards to developing a standards-based curriculum?
2. What are the recommendations for organizational practice to create a standards-based
Chinese curriculum at EAS?
Data for this study were collected from a sample of nineteen Chinese teachers from elementary,
middle, and high school at EAS. By analysing the data generated from focus groups, semi-
structured interviews, and written responses to research questions, there appeared knowledge
gaps, especially declarative and procedural knowledge, motivational gaps in terms of self-
efficacy, expectancy-value, and equity. There were also organizational barriers in terms of
cultural setting and cultural model. Recommendations were made according to the analysis of the
gaps. And an implementation plan and evaluations were suggested using Kirkpatrick and
Kirkpatrick’s (2010) new world model.

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Keywords: Chinese curriculum development, standards-based, international schools,
Chinese teachers, KMO.

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Acknowledgements
It has been a rigorous learning journey for me in the past 2 years, not only in the
educational leadership domain, but also on the personal growth level. I would not have arrived
here without the strong support and encouragement from my school and school community,
cohort, and professors. I am deeply indebted to them and would like to acknowledge them with
my heartfelt gratitude.
First and foremost, I would like to thank my school, and in particular, the Superintendent,
JD. Tom Boasberg and Deputy Superintendent, Dr. Jennifer Sparrow. Without their
encouragement and support, I could not have come this far and without the school’s scholarship I
would not have had the means to participate in this study.
Second, I am very grateful to all my professors, my dissertation committee and those who
participated in my study. My dissertation committee chair, Dr. Lawrence Picus, and members,
Dr. Darlene Robles and Dr. Ekaterina Moore, gave me valuable guidance, detailed comments
and suggestions, resources, and the tools that I needed to complete this dissertation. The experts
in the Chinese teaching field offered me with their valuable insights and experiences towards the
topic studied. The Chinese teachers who participated in this study shared their views and
opinions which contributed enormously to my study and made it firmly grounded in solid
practice. They are not only the participants to my study but also my school community, who
have provided me with enormous and continuous care and love. Xie Xie (Thank You in
Chinese)!
Third, I would like to thank my cohort and friends, especially Ying Chu, Christine
Henning, Christine Demetre, Gynelle Gaskell, Jee Young Kim, Monica Gonzalez, Jennifer
Norman, Brendan Riley, Amy Wood, Francesca Cecchi, Andrew Miller, Darnell Fine, Katie

vii
McMullen, Shabari Karumbaya, David Knuffke, Tim Trainer, Wendy Windust, Adrian Price,
Jason Windust, Kris Munden, Yuru Liu, and Dan Skimin. They came to my rescue when I met
health issues and carried me with them whenever I felt discouraged or faced obstacles. I love
hearing their sharing in the class and collaborating for assignments. Their help and support made
this journey possible, delightful, and enjoyable.
Finally, I want to thank my family and especially my sister, Donghua Sun. In order to
support me during this pandemic and health crisis period, she gave up her job and life in China
and came to take care of me in a foreign country. No words can express my gratitude to her.

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Table of Contents
Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iv
Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ vi
List of Tables .................................................................................................................................. x
List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ xi
List of Abbreviations .................................................................................................................... xii
Chapter One: Overview of the Study .............................................................................................. 1
Statement of the Problem of Practice.................................................................................. 2
Organizational Context and Mission .................................................................................. 3
Organizational Performance Goal....................................................................................... 5
Related Literature................................................................................................................ 6
Importance of the Study ...................................................................................................... 7
Purpose of the Study and Research Questions .................................................................. 10
Methodological Framework .............................................................................................. 11
Limitations, Delimitations, and Assumptions ................................................................... 12
Organization of the Study ................................................................................................. 13
Chapter Two: Review of the Literature ........................................................................................ 15
Influences on the Problem of Practice .............................................................................. 16
Stakeholders’ Knowledge, Motivation, and Organizational Influences ....................................... 25
Expert Reviews ................................................................................................................. 50
Chapter Three: Methodology ........................................................................................................ 60
Restatement of the Purpose of the Study and Research Questions ................................... 60
Conceptual Framework ..................................................................................................... 61
Chapter Four: Findings ................................................................................................................. 76
Participating Stakeholders ................................................................................................ 77

ix
Determination of Assets and Needs .................................................................................. 78
Research Question 1: Influences ....................................................................................... 78
Summary ......................................................................................................................... 104
Chapter Five: Recommendations Implementation and Evaluation ............................................ 106
Research Question 2: Recommendations........................................................................ 106
Implementation ............................................................................................................... 117
Evaluation ....................................................................................................................... 125
Future Research .............................................................................................................. 129
Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 131
References ................................................................................................................................... 132
Appendix B: Information Sheet .................................................................................................. 147
Appendix C: Interview Protocol for Chinese Teachers at EAS .................................................. 148

x
List of Tables
Table 1: Organizational Mission, Organizational Performance Goal, and Stakeholders’
Goals
9
Table 2: “Generic” Plan for A Unit of Study 42
Table 3: Framing A Culturally Responsive Framework 43
Table 4: Summary of Assumed Needs of Teachers 58
Table 5: Summary of Assumed Influences and Method of Assessment 66
Table 6: Participants Information 77
Table 7: Assessment of Declarative, Procedural, and Metacognitive Knowledge
Influences
80
Table 8: Assessment, Measurement, and Validation of Assumed Knowledge and Skills
Influences
90
Table 9: Assumed and Validated Motivational Causes 93
Table 10: Assessment, Measurement, and Validation of Assumed Motivational
Influences
96
Table 11: Assessment of the Assumed Organizational Causes 99
Table 12: Assessment, Measurement, and Validation of Assumed Organizational Causes 103
Table 13: Summary for Recommendations: Need for Knowledge, Motivation and
Organizational Influences
114
Table 14: Recommendations and Implementation Plan 121
Table 15: Summary of the Goals, Outcomes, and Methods According to the Evaluation
Levels
128

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List of Figures
Figure 1: Gap analysis flow by Clark and Estes (2008) 62

xii
List of Abbreviations
EAS: Eagle American School
ES: Elementary school
MS: Middle school
HS: High school
KMO: Knowledge, motivation, and organization
NN: Near Native
ACTFL: American Council of Teaching Foreign Language
WL: World language
PLC: Professional learning community
1

Chapter One: Overview of the Study
With China’s rapidly growing economic power, the world’s attention has been placed on
the learning of Chinese language within the past few decades. Chinese Language courses right
now are offered not only in the western countries such as the United States and the United
Kingdom, but also in other parts of the world. Since the turn of the 21st century, China has
become the second-largest economy in the world and Chinese has become one of the world
language courses in both the K–12 school system and higher education in the United States. In
2010 Chinese speakers had become the second-largest non-English speakers in the United States,
only after Spanish (Asia Society, 2015; Sung, 1967; Xiao, 2016). In the United Kingdom,
Chinese appeared as an enrichment program around 20 years ago and was only offered in a few
community schools. Today almost all universities offer some kind of Chinese language courses,
and more and more secondary and primary schools have started, or plan to start, to offer Chinese
courses as part of their curriculum (Zhang & Li, 2010; Zhu, 2017).
Similar trends have been observed in international schools, such as Hong Kong
International School, Canadian International School, and Eagle American School (EAS). EAS is
a pseudonym in order to protect the identity of the school studied. EAS started to offer Chinese
as a two-day program 20 years ago. Chinese was regarded as a less important subject and all
students were studying Chinese together regardless of their Chinese language proficiency, if any.
Along with the rapid rise of China as a global economic power, the school community became
more diversified and the interest and demands in learning Chinese have increased significantly.
In 2011, EAS started to transform the two-day Chinese program into a daily 30–45 minutes
course at elementary school, and increased the frequency and instructional time at middle and
2

high school. In 2017, EAS started a trial with a Chinese Immersion Program in two Kindergarten
classrooms.
With the expansion of the Chinese program, the challenges come not only in the training
of Chinese teachers’ instructional practices but also developing appropriate Chinese curriculum.
These challenges are particularly vital in international schools because Chinese teachers need to
understand the context of international schools before they can align their expertise and
experiences with the requirements of international students' learning. The reality is that many
Chinese teachers come from China, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and other
Chinese-speaking places and their own educational and prior teaching experiences are text-
based. In order to integrate these teachers into the international school context, enormous on-job
training is required to switch fixed learning mindset, teaching philosophies, instructional
strategies, and curriculum development into an appropriate one suitable for a diversified student
population with an international perspective. Besides, International schools are independent of
the governance of the ministry of education of the host countries. Despite the fact that it is a
great advantage to design curricula as the schools and teachers wish, there appears also a need
for guidance, standards, and benchmarks for curriculum development. This dissertation focuses
on analyzing the teacher-developed and school-based Chinese as a World Language Program
curriculum at Eagle American School.
Statement of the Problem of Practice
Mehta (2013) defined a problem as a particular way of understanding a complex reality
Chinese has been offered from preschool (3 years old) all the way up to 12th grade as a World
Language Program at Eagle American School since 2011. Individual Chinese teachers from
different grade levels created their curricula from scratch without clear guidelines, standards, or
3

benchmarks, thus the challenges come in terms of curriculum alignment, unclear grade-level
expectations of students’ skills and knowledge, teachers’ struggle in researching and creating
teaching materials, and teachers’ anxiety regarding curriculum. This is far from EAS’ priority of
standards-based approaches and there is a pressing need to improve the Chinese language
curriculum.
Organizational Context and Mission
Eagle American School was established in 1956 to serve the American community in
Southeast Asia. Sixty-five years later, EAS has become one of the world’s leading international
schools serving over 4,000 students of expatriate families in Southeast Asia from the United
States and 66 different countries. EAS is committed to its mission of “inspiring each and every
student to become a global citizen through a rigorous world-class American educational
experience” and its vision of “an educational leader cultivating exceptional thinkers and creating
their own future.” EAS is a high-performing world-class international school with extraordinary
academic results and EAS offers more Advanced Placement (AP) courses and exams than any
other schools outside of the United States.
EAS is a non-profit day school serving the expatriate communities in Southeast Asia,
with student demographics of 54% from the United States and 46% from other nations. The
tuition fee ranges from $32,000 at Early Learning Center to $46,000 at High School. And the
students are aged from 3 to 18 years old and their families are either predominantly wealthy and
or hold high-level positions in multinational corporations in Southeast Asia. English is the
instructional language at EAS but the students’ language situations are complicated. Although
the majority of the students speak English as their first language, there are students whose
mother tongues are other languages. If the parents speak the same language which is not English,
4

English is their second language. If the parents speak different languages which is neither
English, the students’ mother tongue could be two languages and English is their third language.
And there are also parents who speak English or another preferred language, which is their
second language, at home in order to enhance their children’s language learning. Thus, the
Chinese as a World Language Program at EAS could be a second, third, or fourth language for
students according to their home language status. There are also students who come from a
Chinese speaking background and these students are grouped in the Near Native curriculum
track at EAS, which is not the focus of this study. The Chinese as a World Language curriculum
studied in this paper is the one designed for L2 students, or second language learners.
In the journey toward excellence, EAS identified three strategic focuses: a culture of
excellence, a culture of extraordinary care, and a culture of possibilities. And EAS boasts five
priorities of professional learning communities, standards0based approaches, high-impact
instructional approaches, extraordinary care, and systems supporting learning. EAS strives to
change education from the inside out and nurtures future leaders with values such as compassion,
honesty, fairness, respect, and responsibility.
Along with the rising of China’s economic power, the culture of possibilities ventured
EAS into the expansion of the Chinese program: the original two-day Chinese program was
transformed into a daily world language program at elementary school and more Chinese
learning time was scheduled at middle and high schools in 2011. A Chinese immersion program
was also started in two kindergarten classrooms in 2017 in order to offer students more options
in their pursuit of Chinese language learning. The immersion program is steadily progressing
with two classes from each grade level and now there are ten immersion classes from
kindergarten to fourth grade at the elementary school. The focus of this study is the Chinese
5

curriculum as a World Language (WL) program at EAS rather than the Chinese immersion
program and the problems studied revolve around the design of a standards-based Chinese
curriculum.
Organizational Performance Goal
Working towards becoming a world educational leader, EAS strives to provide
exemplary American educational experiences and sets standards-based practices as one of its
strategic focuses. EAS is an American school and subjects like English and Mathematics follow
the Common Core standards, but not the subject of Chinese. In light of the current status of the
school-based and teacher-developed Chinese curriculum, the EAS administrators decided to set a
new goal of developing standards-based Chinese curricula in the next 3 years. By 2024, there
will be sound Chinese curricula that is developed with clear standards, benchmarks, guidelines,
assessments, and teaching materials and resources. As there are three divisions with 35 Chinese
teachers across the whole school, it takes steps to achieve this goal. A three-step approach is
established: in Year 2021–2022, the new World Language Director will analyze the gaps of
developing a standards-based curriculum at EAS. In Year 2022–2023, the school will provide
necessary training to all Chinese teachers in order to bridge the gaps. In the meanwhile, the
school shall also provide sufficient funds and resources to hire curriculum experts and specialists
who can lead the training. In Year 2023–2024, the Chinese teachers will redevelop their curricula
into standards-based ones. The Chinese teachers will collect data of students' learning outcomes,
compare to the current assessment data collected by teachers over the years, and evaluate the
standards-based curricula in order to determine its consistency, validity and credibility. The
ultimate goal of developing standards-based curricula is to maximize students' learning in a
consistent and scientific manner.
6

Related Literature
For the purpose of this study, a preliminary literature review is done to provide
background information from research and theories. Clark and Estes (2008) suggested that there
are three most important causes of performance gaps:
1. The knowledge and skills of the people concerned (in this case, the Chinese teachers)
2. Their motivation to achieve the goal; and
3. Organizational obstacles that may prevent the goal of higher performance from being
achieved.
This literature review primarily focuses on three main areas: knowledge, motivation and
organizational barriers. The assumed teachers’ knowledge in curriculum development include
their understanding of curriculum development process, curriculum focus, standards, learning
and learners’ styles, teachers’ roles, and their subscribed language acquisition theories. The
assumed teachers’ motivation is explored from the literature of self-efficacy, expectancy-value,
and equity theory. For the assumed organizational barrier, the focus is the literature of cultural
models and cultural settings in order to identify the hurdles that delay the teachers from
achieving their goal of developing a standards-based Chinese curriculum.
In light of the lack of standards at EAS, world language standards are explored in the
literature review including ACTFL World-readiness standards for language learning, ACTFL
Chinese language standards, ACTFL content standards and Proficiency guidelines, and WIDA
ELD standards. Tyler (2013) proposes four fundamental questions which formulate a basic
structure in developing curriculum and plan of instruction which will be discussed in detail in
Chapter Two. However, many criticize Tyler's approach as a factory-like workflow process
simplifying the complexities of curriculum development (Ellis and Fouts, 1997; Pinar et al.,
7

1995). Nicholls and Nicholls (2020) discuss the curriculum development process, which echoes
Macalister and Nation (2019)’s language curriculum design process. Macalister and Nation
(2019)’s discussion of teachers’ knowledge reflect Tyler’s (2013) remarks on the psychology of
learning. Giving only these as examples, even though more could be cited. A more detailed
review will be presented in Chapter Two of this study.
The literature review begins with an introduction of China’s influence on the offering of
Chinese language programs in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Singapore, and
international schools. Next, the literature revolves around theories and research on the
knowledge of curriculum development, motivational theories of self-efficacy, expectancy, and
equity, and organizational barriers in terms of cultural models and cultural settings. In addition,
views and points from three Chinese experts with international schools’ experiences were cited
in order to strengthen the literature review. In the end, a table summary in Table 4 is done to
highlight the literature and research reviewed regarding the problems of practice in relation to the
standards-based curriculum development of Chinese language as a World Language Program at a
non-profit day school serving the expatriate communities in Southeast Asia.
Importance of the Study
From the preliminary research of the literature review on the curriculum development,
there is not much about designing a Chinese curriculum in the international school setting.
Although the American Council of Teaching Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Proficiency
Guidelines (2012) and Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) offer references to teachers when they
decide on the students’ proficiency levels, the teachers either are not aware of the detailed
content standards or are not sure how to unpack them for Chinese curriculum development in
international schools. Thus, the findings of this study are important to contribute to the literature
8

and serve as a call for more research in the field of standards-based Chinese curriculum
development in the context of international schools. In order to achieve EAS’ mission and vision
of being a world educational leader and provide standards-based practices, it is an urgent task to
evaluate the current Chinese teachers’ curriculum design in relation to the performance goal of
developing standards-based Chinese curricula for a variety of reasons.
The study will not only show a clear picture to the administrators and policy makers at
EAS as to what is now, what is needed, what could be done, and how to improve the Chinese
program in terms of curriculum development, but also assist the Chinese teachers to better
understand the challenges they face, reflect upon their beliefs, perceptions and usual practices,
and obtain an opportunity to voice out their problems, concerns, and hopes. Besides, this
research can serve as a Chinese curriculum reference to other international schools which are of
similar context as EAS offering Chinese as a world language program.
It is important to note that evaluating the teachers’ performance of curriculum
development is a must in identifying the gap between the current status and the goal of
developing a standards-based curriculum. If the teachers are not equipped with necessary
curriculum related knowledge such as language acquisition theories, clear understanding of the
relationship between curriculum and instruction, curriculum framework, standards and
benchmarks, and thorough understanding of learning and learner’s styles, they might not feel
confident to redesign their curriculum and be demotivated. If the organization does not provide
support and resources such as sufficient time and appropriate training, the goal might become
mission impossible and the teachers’ morale could be low. Without evaluation and analysis,
blind support could easily lead to wasting the organization’s resources. Research in
organizational behaviors suggest that fair evaluation of performance may affect employee’s
9

organizational commitment and trust (Lau et al., 2008, Lau and Sholihin, 2005). Furthermore,
studies in organizational justice find that organizational commitment is also affected by
distributive fairness and job satisfaction (Colquitt et al., 2001; Greenberg, 1994; Lowe and
Vodanovich, 1995; McFarlin and Sweeney, 1992). Therefore, a performance evaluation is
essential in order to measure the gap and provide support needed for the purpose of realizing the
goal. Table 1 shows organizational vision, mission, performance goal and stakeholders’ goals.
In the process of achieving the goal of developing standards-based Chinese curricula,
three stakeholder groups are involved contributing to the goal: Chinese teachers, Word Language
Director, and the leadership team. Without strong support from the school administrators, or the
leadership and guidance of a WL director, it is in doubt whether the 35 Chinese teachers could
create well-aligned and standards-based Chinese curricula. This study focuses only on the
stakeholder group of Chinese teachers and discusses their particular performance goal. The
reason why this group is selected is not only because of the researcher’s interest in Chinese
curriculum design, but also that these teachers are the ones who have developed the current

Table 1
Organizational Mission, Organizational Performance Goal, and Stakeholders’ Goals
Organizational mission
Eagle American School is committed to inspiring each and every student to become a global
citizen through a rigorous world-class American educational experience.
Organizational performance goal
By 2024, EAS Chinese teachers will have established a standards-based Chinese Curriculum.
Chinese teachers’ goal
By June 2024, the Chinese
teachers from three
divisions at EAS will
complete the development
of standards-based Chinese
curricula.
WL director’s goal
By December 2021, the WL
Director will furnish a plan
to address the Chinese
curriculum concern, and
provide continuous support
in this topic till June 2024.
Administrators' goal
By June 2022, sufficient
funds, trainings, and
resources will be allocated
to support the Chinese
curriculum development.
10

Chinese curricula. With their knowledge about the students and their Chinese learning,
experience in teaching, and expertise in curriculum and instruction, the recreation of standards-
based Chinese curricula is achievable. This goal is aligned with the organization’s mission of
becoming a world-educational leader and providing exemplary learning experiences to the
students. Goals help define the organization’s purpose and accomplishing them help with the
measurement of the organization’s progress. However, without proper investigation and analysis
of the problem of practice, a goal could turn out to be unrealistic and efforts and organizational
resources could be wasted. Goal theory suggests that supporting performance in the context of
measurable, specific, and appropriately challenging goals can develop high self-efficacy and
enhance learning and performance (APA, 2015; Mayer, 2011; Schunk, 2020).
Purpose of the Study and Research Questions
The purpose of this study is to evaluate EAS’ performance related to the goal of
developing standards-based Chinese curricula and the analysis will focus on areas of knowledge
and skills, motivation, and organizational issues. While a complete performance evaluation
would focus on all stakeholders, for practical purposes, the stakeholders to be focused on in this
analysis are teachers of Chinese as a World Language program. The following questions will
guide the study through understanding the EAS Chinese teachers’ perspectives of their
knowledge in curriculum development, their motivation in designing curriculum, their perceived
challenges, and the support they need in their views.
• What is the current status of the Chinese teachers’ knowledge, motivation, and
organizational resources with regards to developing standards-based curricula?
• What are the recommendations for organizational practice to create standards-based
Chinese curricula at EAS?
11

Methodological Framework
Concept mapping was originally developed by Joseph Novak (Novak & Gowin, 1984)
for clarifying theories and concepts. A conceptual framework is a roadmap that consists of two
things: concepts and the relationships among these. Clark and Estes (2008) developed a gap
analysis conceptual framework with systematic and analytical eight steps. This gap analysis
framework is designed to find the organizational goals, identify the gap between the current
status of performance and the identified goals, look for the root causes of the gap, come out with
solutions, implement the action plan, and evaluate it. The evaluation becomes the starting point
of another cycle of this process. This study uses Clark & Estes (2008)’s gap analysis process to
guide the entire structure and procedures.
According to Clark and Estes (2008), the factors impacting performance include
motivation, knowledge, and organizational barriers. Knowledge refers to people’s necessary
knowledge and skills in order to achieve a performance goal. Motivation refers to the driving
force that leads us to pursue some things and avoid others. Organizational barriers point to the
policy, procedure, or process that impedes the stakeholder from achieving the goal.
A mixed method of data gathering and analysis is conducted to evaluate the Chinese
teachers’ current performance in relation to their performance goal in the areas of knowledge,
motivation and organizational resources. And their current performance is validated by using
focus groups and interviews as well as literature reviews. Research-based solutions shall be
recommended and evaluated in a comprehensive manner. This is a qualitative study, focusing on
the shared experience by Chinese teachers (Lochmiller & Lester, 2017) that included semi-
structured interviews, focus groups, and written responses.
12

Clark and Estes’s (2008) gap analysis model suggests that change might happen when the
root causes are identified and an action plan is created, implemented, and evaluated. Kirkpatrick
& Kirkpatrick (2009) insist that the end is the beginning and values must be created before it can
be demonstrated. With these principles in hand, it is assumed that a gap analysis is a good tool to
improve the Chinese curriculum development at EAS.
Limitations, Delimitations, and Assumptions
As this study is only focused on the small sample of nineteen Chinese teachers from three
divisional schools at Eagle American School, its generalizability is limited and applies to EAS
only. It does not explore the perceptions and experiences of Spanish and French teachers at EAS,
which makes the findings less useful for the entire World Language (WL) Department. Besides,
people’s perceptions evolve as the context changes. To date there have been two former WL
directors at EAS who shaped and influenced the daily Chinese program and a new one got on
board in 2021. The previous two WL directors' requirements towards teachers, and the theories
and beliefs they held may not align with that of the third director, which may further impact and
alter the Chinese teachers’ educational philosophies and practices and result in their changed
perceptions, beliefs, and practices. Thus, the participants might experience changed views and
insights towards the Chinese curriculum development in the next few years.
Threats to validity may include potential biases of interviewing only a limited number of
EAS Chinese teachers. Also, despite assurance of anonymity, participants may be concerned
with being identified considering the small sample size of this study. One more limitation is that
this research compares the Curriculum development against the backdrop of my perceived
knowledge on curriculum development. My perceptions, knowledge, and screens may be biased
due to my own epistemology and positionality as a Chinese teacher born in China with over 20
years’ teaching experience in international schools in Southeast Asia. Despite that, Maxwell
13

(2013) argues that since the “researcher is part of the world that he or she studies—it is a
powerful and inescapable influence” (p. 125) and the integrity of the researcher in qualitative
studies that matters the most. More reflections about the methodology and the author’s
positionality and epistemology will be presented in Chapter Three.
Organization of the Study
This dissertation is organized into five chapters. The first chapter introduced the problem
of practice, organizational context, and background information of the identified problem. The
second chapter outlines a literature review on the topics of knowledge in curriculum
development, motivation, and organizational barriers. The methodology is presented in Chapter
Three, which includes a discussion of the participants, data collection, and analysis of the data.
In the fourth chapter the data is assessed and the findings are reported. Chapter Five provides a
research-based solution to address the perceived gap, a recommendation is proposed for
implementation, and an evaluation plan is included as well.

14

Definitions of Terms
The following terms are defined as follows:
Curriculum refers to a syllabus, a course of study, or the learning experience designed by
the teachers.
Gap analysis refers to comparing the current performance with the desired performance.
International School refers to a school that is independent of the governance of the host
country and offers an international curriculum of its choice, such as International Baccalaureate
and Advanced Placement.
Instructional strategies refer to the approaches or techniques that the teachers use to
teach in the classroom.
Knowledge refers to the state of being familiar with something or aware of its existence,
usually resulting from experience or study. It also refers to the range of one’s understanding or
information.
Motivation refers to the driving force behind people’s behaviors that lead people to
pursue some things and avoid others.
Organizational barriers refer to the hindrances in the flow of information among the
employees that might result in a failure of an organization which may include rules and policies,
organizational resources distribution, complex cultural issues, organizational structure or
positions, organizational change, etc.
15

Chapter Two: Review of the Literature
Much of the literature on curriculum development is on English language and Teaching
English as a Second Language (TESOL) and few answer questions about creating a standards-
based Chinese curriculum for international schools. What are the benchmarks and standards for a
Chinese curriculum at international schools? Given the complexity of the student population in
international schools, how can the teachers and schools best support the students’ Chinese study
through curriculum development? The purpose of this study is to evaluate Eagle American
School’ performance related to the goal of developing standards-based Chinese curricula and the
analysis will focus on areas of knowledge and skills, motivation, and organizational issues at
EAS. The research questions focus on the perceived Chinese teacher’s knowledge and skills,
motivation, and organizational factors hindering the teachers’ motivation and performance in
achieving the goal.
In order to support the purpose of this study, this literature review provides background
information from research and theories for this gap analysis. This literature review primarily
focuses on three main areas: knowledge, motivation, and organizational barriers (KMO). Clark
and Estes (2008) suggested that there are three most important causes of performance gaps:
1. The knowledge and skills of the people concerned (in this case, the teachers)
2. Their motivation to achieve the goal; and
3. Organizational obstacles that may prevent the goal of higher performance from being
achieved.
This review of the literature begins with an introduction of China’s influence on the
offering of Chinese language programs in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and
Singapore. Next, the literature revolves around theories and research on the four forms of
16

knowledge, three motivation theories of self-efficacy, expectancy-value, and equity, and two
organizational theories of cultural model and cultural settings. After that, a review of the points
and views from three Chinese language experts from international schools are presented. In the
end, a summary is done to highlight the literature reviewed for this research.
Influences on the Problem of Practice
The assumed influences on this problem of practice include China’s rising economic
impact on the offering of Chinese language programs, Chinese teachers’ knowledge and skills in
developing a standards-based Chinese curriculum, their motivation in designing a new
curriculum, and the perceived organizational influences that hinders the teachers from achieving
their performance goal. In this study, the identified goal, as mentioned in chapter one, is to
develop a standards-based Chinese curriculum that is appropriate for students at Eagle American
School.
A Historical Overview of China’s Rising Impact Upon the Offering of Chinese Language
Programs in the Global Context
Recent years have witnessed China’s rapid economic growth and substantial influence in
Asia and around the world. Having emerged as a global actor, China has impacted every region
and every major issue area including security, infrastructure, and economic statecraft (Brookings,
China Project, 2019; Christensen, 2014). With China’s steady and rapidly growing economic
performance, playing a more important role on the global stage, and exhibiting more say in
international politics, the debate on China’s accomplishment as threats and or challenge became
prevalent, especially since the 2008 financial crisis (Christensen, 2014; Shambaugh, 2013; Zhao
and Huang, 2010). Subsequently, China’s rise in wealth, diplomatic influence, and military
power resulted in an increasing need for learning the Chinese language all over the world.
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Following the development of China’s growing global presence, Chinese language
courses all over the world have also witnessed a period from fun and enrichment programs to a
school subject as a formal curriculum. This overview describes the historical development of
Chinese language as a foreign language in the United Kingdom (UK.), the United States (US.),
Australia, and Singapore in the past 20 years. The 20 years’ history of Chinese language
offerings turns out to see similar trends in these four countries.
Chinese Language Learning in the United Kingdom
About 20 years ago few schools offered a Chinese language course in the United
Kingdom. At that time Chinese was confined to some community schools for a few Chinese
children at weekends and a small number of other schools and universities. However, the
situation started to change quickly over the past 10 years when Chinese was recognized as one of
the modern languages by the UK. government. In September 2014 the UK. government
introduced compulsory language teaching at Key Stage 2 (equivalent to 2nd grade in U.S.
educational system), which presents an exciting opportunity for Chinese language learning
(Alcantara Communications, 2014).
With an increasing interest in the Chinese Language and Culture, more and more
elementary schools started to develop Chinese language courses and there is a movement shifting
Chinese language program from “enrichment course” to “mainstream subject”. Chinese learning
and teaching have entered an unprecedented and rapid development period across England.
Today almost all universities offer some kind of Chinese language courses, and more and more
secondary and primary schools have started, or plan to start, to offer Chinese courses as part of
their curriculum (Zhang & Li, 2010; Zhu, 2017). However, this new movement also presents a
challenge to find the supply of Chinese teachers with Qualified Teacher Status ( QTS), training
18

opportunities, resources, curriculum, and assessment systems for this most widely taught
language (Alcantara Communications, 2014; Zhu, 2017; UK Department of Education, 2021).
Chinese Language Learning in the United States
Chinese immigrants to the United States have a history of 150 years. In the late 1950s,
Chinese became one of the languages studied in the Eastern Asian Languages by Yale and
Harvard Universities. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, China has become the second-
largest economy in the world and Chinese has become one of the world language courses in both
the school system and higher education. By 2010 Chinese speakers had become the second-
largest non-English speakers in the United States, only after Spanish. (Sung, 1967; Xiao, 2016;
Asia Society, 2015).
Despite criticism and controversies in the growth of Chinese learning, the Chinese
language course is highly preferred and rapidly expanding in the United States, especially in the
past 15 years. American Council of Teaching Foreign Language (ACTFL)’s student enrollment
survey (2017) reports an increase of students’ enrolment in the Chinese language from 59,850
(0.76% of the U.S. total) in 2007–2008 to 227,083 (2.13% of the U.S. total) in 2016–2017. But
again, same as the United Kingdom, the challenges appear in terms of a supply of qualified
Chinese teachers, developing appropriate curriculum, resources, and standardized assessment.
Chinese Language Learning in Australia
Significant Chinese immigration to Australia started in the 1850s as part of the gold rush.
Following a few political moves such as the passing of anti-Chinese immigration laws, White
Australia Policy (WAP), and the Colombo Plan, a large number of Chinese migrated to
Australia. At present, the largest source of immigrants come from mainland China and Chinese is
the second-most spoken language after English.
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Chinese has been taught in Australian schools since the 1950s and a report was published
in 1970 urging the teaching of Asian languages and literacy. There came a rapid growth in
Chinese language learning in 1980 when China started the policy of economic reform
(Australian Curriculum, 2021). From the 1990s to 2008, Australia had allocated considerable
funds to advance language teaching (Orton, 2016). In 2015 the Australian Curriculum for
Languages: Chinese (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA],
2015) was published to address the increasing needs of Chinese language learning which details
a minimum of 350 hours of study in primary and secondary years.
Having been taught as an additional language in Australia in the last 40 years, Chinese
has the smallest number of students out of the six most taught languages, which include
Mandarin Chinese, French, German, Spanish, Russian, and Arabic, despite being widespread in
the past two decades (Orton, 2016). The trend observes that schools are now catering to
increasingly varied cohorts of Chinese language learners, including overseas-born Chinese
speakers. The population of Chinese teachers has also changed with more numbers of teachers
coming from China, which is also observed in Singapore, the United States and the United
Kingdom.
Same as the U.S. and U.K., the challenges exist in terms of underdeveloped Chinese
curriculum, pedagogy and resources. The factors why Australian students are reluctant to enroll
in Chinese include the impossibility to achieve good exam results due to the overwhelming
number of students with Chinese background, and the more time it takes to master Chinese
compared to other languages for English L1 (first language) students. The U.S. Department of
State groups languages based on the difficulty of learning for English L1 speakers and Mandarin
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and Cantonese are considered as Level IV languages together with Japanese, Arabic, and
Korean.
Chinese Language Learning in Singapore
Singapore is a multi-racial and multi-cultural state country with ethnic Chinese
constituting 74.2% of the total population (Statistics Singapore, 2020; Worldmeter, 2021).
Although Singapore has four official languages: English, Chinese, Malay, and Tamil, English is
the dominant language of government, education, and workplace. In Singapore Mandarin is a
common language among the Chinese community, and the teaching of Chinese in public schools
is fully governed by the Ministry of Education (Goh, 2020). The Chinese curriculum is
developed by MOE Specialists, which also provides full sets of textbooks, exercise books,
supplementary materials and resources. Chinese is a compulsory academic subject for ethnic
Chinese students from primary up to secondary or pre-university level, a span of 10 to 12 years.
The emphasis of language learning in government schools is placed on the transmission of
Chinese culture and traditional values rather than on the mastery of linguistic skills (Goh, 2020).
Growing up in Chinese settings in Singapore, the students may have basic conversational
skills although they may not be able to read or write Chinese. For the first generation of Chinese
migrating to Singapore, they spoke Chinese only, which means, Chinese was their L1 language.
Along with the changes of their education and economic status, the second generation started to
speak Chinese and English with Chinese as the dominant language at home. The third generation
was also bilingual but the dominant language could be either English or their preferred language,
for example, Chinese dialects such as Cantonese or Hokkien. Now it is the fourth generation, the
students may be bilingual but the dominant language at home is English, or English only, which
means, Chinese is between heritage and L2 (second language) depending on the language the
21

parents and grandparents speak at home (Goh, 2020). The students switched to English as the
dominant language regardless of their home language thus the Chinese language spoken may be
incomplete in terms of grammar and vocabulary, and the Chinese vocabulary could be mixed
with Mandarin Chinese and various dialects, which makes the Singapore Chinese sounds
different from Chinese spoken in China. Research has indicated that it is a more effective
approach to treat the learner’s pre acquired basic language skills as a resource instead of an
obstacle (Butzmann & Caldwell, 2009; Cook, 2010). However, the reality shows that in the
presence of English as a school instructional language as well as the dominant language, and the
absence of a foundation in Chinese vocabulary, the Chinese teaching practices and methods may
not be effective to this unique group of students in Singapore. There is a pressing need to train
Chinese teachers with new pedagogical models and innovative practices specifically targeting
this student body (Goh, 2020).
Chinese Language Learning at Eagle American School
The context of this study is EAS, a large international school located in Southeast Asia.
Twenty years ago, along with the development of China’s economy, quite a few international
schools started to offer Chinese courses as a two-day course for their students, such as Eagle
American School (EAS), Canadian International School (CIS), and Hong Kong International
School (HKIS). The Chinese program was regarded as an unimportant subject and all students
were studying Chinese together regardless of their Chinese language proficiency, if any. Chinese
was offered twice a week and the teachers complained that the students could not remember
anything after a holiday due to the lack of repetition and instructional frequency. At that time
there were only sixteen Chinese teachers serving the almost 4,000 student population from
Preschool–12 at EAS. The Chinese curricula of different grade levels were developed by
22

individual teachers for their own classes, and there was no one in charge of the overall Chinese
program, which resulted in unclear expectations of student knowledge and skills, individual
teachers’ understandings shaping their own classroom curriculum and instructions, and teachers
of higher grade level blaming those of lower grade level for teaching too much or too little.
With the rapid rise of China as a global economic power, the interest and demands in
learning Chinese from a more diversified school community have increased significantly. In
2011, EAS started to transform the original two day, or to be exact, two 30–40 minutes periods
per week, Chinese program into a daily 35–45 minutes course at elementary school, and increase
the frequency and instructional time at middle school and high school. Besides, a Chinese
Language Director was hired to oversee the whole Preschool to 12 Chinese program and more
Chinese teachers were hired to implement the daily program. In 2016, EAS started a Chinese
Immersion program in kindergarten with two classes. Currently there are ten Chinese immersion
classes from kindergarten to fourth grade. On top of that there are 35 Chinese teachers for the
Chinese as World Language Program serving the over 4,000 students at EAS.
To date there have been two Chinese language directors at EAS and the third one joined
in the 20212022 school year. Over the years the first Chinese Director (at that time, the position
title was Chinese Director instead of WL Director) placed emphasis on curriculum alignment and
introduced new instructional practices, such as offering professional development training on
Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS), focusing on teaching the
listening and speaking proficiency at elementary school, enhancing the Chinese teachers’
understanding of importance of language input, nurturing the students’ joy in learning, and
exploring ways to build the students’ confidence and success in Chinese learning. Dr. Krashen
(2019) suggested that language acquisition does not require extensive use of conscious
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grammatical rules, and does not require tedious drill. His Input hypothesis is only concerned with
“acquisition” in a natural setting where he or she receives second language “comprehensible
input” instead of “learning” the language. And Dr. Krashen suggested that natural
communicative input is the key to designing a curriculum that ensures each learner will receive
some “i+1” input that is appropriate for the learner’s current competence. The first Chinese
Director at EAS emphasized Dr. Krashen’s language acquisition theory of input and focused on
oral proficiency instead of grammar. However, it seemed that the second director did not agree
with either of these theories and practices and suggested that the elementary teachers go back to
the traditional way of teaching, which resulted in another round of confusion. Traditionally,
foreign language teaching practices focused on four skills: listening, speaking, reading and
writing. However, having been immersed in focusing on oral proficiency, acquisition in a natural
order, TPRS, stories and building students’ joy and success in the classroom for a few years, the
teachers could not define the “traditional way of teaching” approaches any more. Although the
second WL Director proposed a new biliteracy practice in the final year of her tenure, without
guiding language learning theories, clear standards and benchmarks, the teachers were puzzled
by these changes.
The Chinese teachers were introduced to different language acquisition understandings
and implemented various instructional strategies over the past 10 years. Despite that the
curriculum still remains as one challenging area for teachers because they need to devote a lot of
time in creating teaching materials and working as Professional Learning Community (PLC)
groups to share their practice, analyze data, handle the administrative work, and learn about
schoolwide ideological and new pedagogical training during their prep time, which leaves less
time to design their classroom instructions. The elementary teachers have worked closely
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together as PLC groups in the past 10 years, which promotes a great deal of collaboration and
collegiality. Although ACTFL OPI and oral proficiency standards were studied by the teachers
and applied in high school, there are still no content standards or benchmarks of the Chinese
curriculum clearly applied at EAS and the need for a spiral curriculum with clear standards and
benchmarks is pressing.
Crystal (1997) proposes that in order to become an international language, a language
must have a power-base, be it political, military, or economic. History has observed such
language examples such as English, Greek, Latin, traditional Chinese, and Spanish. Following
China’s emergent economic and political power, Chinese is believed to be a potential candidate
to obtain the status of a global language alongside English (Goh, 2020). From the observations of
the above, the common challenges with Chinese language learning lie in the curriculum
development, teacher training of pedagogical models and instructional practices, and sufficient
support from all stakeholders.
Conceptual Framework
According to Clark & Estes (2008), the factors impacting performance include
motivation, knowledge, and organizational barriers. Knowledge refers to people’s necessary
knowledge and skills in order to achieve a performance goal. Motivation refers to the driving
force that leads us to pursue some things and avoid others. Organizational barriers point to the
policy, procedure, or process that impedes the stakeholder from achieving the goal. This
problem-solving process is based on: (1) understanding stakeholder goals with regard to the
organizational goal, and (2) identifying assumed performance influences in the areas of
knowledge, motivation and organization based on general theory, context-specific literature and
an existing understanding of the organization. In order to investigate the gap between the
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expected performance goal in terms of standards-based Chinese curriculum development at EAS,
Clark and Estes’s (2008) framework is applied to investigate the teachers’ knowledge and skills
in creating curriculum, their motivation in working on it, and organizational barriers from
achieving the performance goal. These three factors influence each other which may result in the
performance gap.
Clark and Estes’s (2008) gap analysis model suggests that change might take place when
a goal is set, a gap is discovered, the root causes are identified and an action plan is developed,
implemented, and evaluated. Kirkpatrick and Kirkpatrick (2009) insist that the end is the
beginning and values must be created before they can be demonstrated. With these principles in
hand, a gap analysis is a good tool to improve the Chinese curriculum at EAS. The following
reviews assumed stakeholders’ knowledge, motivation, and organizational influences in detail.
Stakeholders’ Knowledge, Motivation, and Organizational Influences
As part of a thorough knowledge analysis, it is important to clarify specific causes of the
performance gap by considering personal knowledge, learning, motivation, and organizational
barriers theory through a review of the literature. Krathwohl (2002) identified four major types
of knowledge: declarative, conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive. Declarative knowledge
includes factual and conceptual knowledge. Factual knowledge encompasses the ability to
recognize and recall basic facts and details pertaining to a given topic whereas conceptual
knowledge pertains to knowledge of categories, relationships or principles. Procedural
knowledge assesses how to do subject specific skills and techniques, and metacognition involves
awareness of one’s own cognition coupled with awareness of cognition in general (Krathwohl,
2002).
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Assumed Chinese Teachers’ Knowledge and Skills
The objective of the knowledge analysis is to explore the assumed causes that may be the
origin of the knowledge gap related to this problem. Rueda (2011) warned researchers that:
“Acting on assumed causes when they are in fact incorrect only compounds the problem (p. 78).”
Therefore, principle-based recommendations are presented only once as the assumed causes of
the performance gap are validated. For Chinese teachers, it is assumed that they must be
equipped with the necessary knowledge of curriculum development, curriculum standards and
benchmarks, be confident that they are capable of redesigning a standards-based curriculum,
understand their performance goal, and align their educational philosophies and professional
practices with that of the school and their colleagues.
It is important for Chinese curriculum developers to take note of the time needed to
develop Chinese language proficiency. Data observed by the School of Language Studies of
Foreign Service Institute (FSI), a training agency of the U.S. Department of State, specifically
indicated the length of time for learning a foreign language based on the reflections of their 70
years of experience. The amount of time it takes to learn another language and culture is linked
to the linguistic and cultural similarities and differences among the languages and cultures a
student already knows. FSI established categories of language based on the time it takes for
native speakers of English to develop proficiency in target languages and cultures. When it takes
600–750 class hours for a first category language learner, such as French and Spanish which are
more similar to English, to achieve proficiency, it takes 2,200 class hours for a fourth category
language learner, such as Chinese, Arabic, and Japanese, to achieve proficiency. However, it is
worth noting that these data obtained from FSI is based on adult learners typically of 40 years
old with an aptitude for formal language study, and have previous knowledge of several world
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languages. They study in small classes of no more than six students and their study time consists
of 25 hours of class per week with three to four hours per day of guided self-study. This session
spells out the assumed knowledge that Chinese teachers must possess in order to develop
standards-based Chinese curriculum at EAS.
Assumed Declarative Factual Knowledge Influences
Some argue that some human mental functions come in the similar organization and the
organization reflects its emergence from simpler systems (Broadbent, 1989; Squire & Knowlton,
1995). Psychology research finds that declarative knowledge refers to facts and events stored in
the mind and it is not conscious until it is retrieved by cues such as questions. Tulving (1985)
posited that expression of declarative knowledge requires directed attention as opposed to the
expression of skills, which is automatic. In the context of Chinese curriculum development, the
assumed factual knowledge cause in this problem is that effective Chinese teachers need to know
not only Chinese subject knowledge, their own educational philosophies, learning and language
acquisition theories, but also the standards of the curriculum. The assumed conceptual
knowledge is that great Chinese teachers know and understand the importance of a rigorous
standards-based Chinese curriculum, curriculum standards, the interactions of their philosophies,
curriculum development knowledge, and its relationship to students’ achievement.
In order to develop an appropriate Chinese curriculum, curriculum developers must be
equipped with necessary knowledge and skills so that the curriculum meets the needs of the
students’ learning. Oakes et al. (2018) suggested that curriculum and instruction reflect the deep
philosophical commitment that touches every aspect of society and philosophies and ways of
knowing connect to the school policies and structures. Ralph Tyler (2013) used the educational
philosophies as a screen for curriculum development. Here the review begins with a discussion
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of WL standards, the four classical educational philosophies, and followed by Tyler’s (2013)
four principles of curriculum development.
Assumed Understanding of Standards. Since the mid 1990s, a new wave of
educational reform has begun with the focus on accountability and the attention of curriculum
development has shifted to higher and world-class standards. There is a belief that all students
are capable of meeting high standards, which is the basis of the proposal of Standards-based
education (SBE). This movement swept many countries, such as the United States (1980s),
Germany (2005) and Sweden (1994) in the late 20th century and early 21st century. Despite that
there have been many criticisms and controversy about SBE, for example, criticism towards the
accountability and complexity of standards, Ravitch (1995, 2000) suggested that standards can
improve achievement by clearly defining what is to be taught, what kind of performance is
expected, and which are necessary for equality of opportunity.
In the United States, in order to unify the 50 sets of state standards, the Council of Chief
State School Officers (CCSSO) and the National Governors Association’s Centre for Best
Practices organized the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI). In March 2010, a draft
set of standards in mathematics and English language arts was released by CCSSI for public
comments. ACTFL (2021) offers a set of standards with 5Cs for World Languages:
Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities. Beyond the summary
of the World Readiness Standards, there are detailed descriptions for each standard. However,
according to the ACTFL report (2008), A Decade of Foreign Language Standards: Influence,
Impact, and Future Directions, there is a clear tendency that Communication and Cultures are
embraced as the primary mission and the standards being assessed tend to be communication
only. Megnan (2007) argues that the sequential ordering of the five Cs is limiting our view of
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how language learning occurs and thereby perhaps falsely directing the instructional priorities.
She proposed that the hierarchy of 5Cs should be abandoned and allow Culture and Communities
to take precedence over Communications. Everson (2009) discusses the importance of standards
and explores the content standards in details under 5Cs for Chinese language teaching.
World Language Standards for California Public Schools (2019) and WL Framework
(2020) offer detailed standards under the 3Cs: Communication, Culture, and Connections, which
are described using proficiency levels: Novice, Intermediate, Advanced, and Superior. Under the
standards of Communication, there are seven sub-standards for each proficiency level. Under the
standards of Cultures, there are four subcategories and under that of Connections, there are two
for each proficiency level. These standards are clearly laid out with specific goals for the four
proficiency levels and establish a path for students to become multilingual and multicultural
citizens and illustrate a shift of ways students may access the WL standards from “then” to
“now” in order to create a more effective learning environment as early as elementary in the WL
language classrooms.
WIDA ELD standards framework (2020) reflects the belief that multicultural learners are
best served when they learn content and language together in linguistically and culturally
sustaining ways. WIDA’s definition of multicultural learners refers to English language learners
(ELLs), dual language learners ((DLLs), newcomers, students with interrupted formal schooling
(SIFE), long-term English learners (L-TELs), English learners with disabilities, gifted and
talented English learners, heritage language learners, students with English as an additional
language (EAL), and students who speak varieties of, English or indigenous languages, which
has similarities to the context of student population learning Chinese as a World Language
Program in international schools. The WIDA ELD standards offered four big ideas for language
30

development, namely, equity of opportunity and access, integration of content and language,
collaboration among stakeholders, and functional approach to language development. WIDA
ELD standards framework consists of four components: five WIDA ELD standards statements,
key language uses, language expectations, and proficiency level descriptors. Although they are
set for English language learners, these big ideas and components may serve as a reference to
Chinese curriculum development for international schools.
Nevertheless, the school leader’s understanding of standards shapes the direction of
curriculum development. This review finds that various World Language standards have been
developed other than ACTFL standards. In light of the situation at EAS that there are no clearly
stated Chinese curriculum standards, it is assumed that successful teachers must agree as a team
to a new set of standards generated on the basis of research and have an agreement among
themselves.
Assumed Understanding of the Four Educational Philosophies. What is worth
knowing? Who has the right and how do one decide what is true knowledge? What is worth
passing down to the next generation? Schubert (1996) explained four curriculum perspectives in
the curriculum history: intellectual traditionalist, social behaviorist, experientialist, and
reconstructionist. There are four different educational philosophies guiding curriculum
development: Perennialism, essentialism, progressivism, and reconstructionism (Hutchins, 2000;
McNeil, 1990). Educational philosophies are directed towards the analysis and clarification of
educational problems and issues, and the understanding of this helps clarify where one stands
with educational philosophies. As a successful Chinese teacher, one must be particularly and
consciously clear about which school of philosophy that she holds, which school of thoughts that
31

impacts her curriculum development and classroom instructions. Knowledge about the Chinese
teachers’ philosophies may help explain their anxiety in curriculum development.
Robert M. Hutchins and Perennialism. Robert M. Hutchins was deemed as one of the
most highly esteemed American educators. Hutchins (2000, 1943) believed that teaching
everyone to think, and think thoughtfully and critically was the ultimate goal of democratic
education and he was regarded as the representative of perennialism. Perennialists believed that
one should teach the things that are of everlasting importance to all individuals everywhere and
teaching implies knowledge as truth. When the Chinese curriculum developers are from the
school of perennialism, they may agree with a set of knowledge principles that is worth passing
down and these principles form a knowledge base for the language learning.
William Bagley and Essentialism. William Bagley was a thought leader of essentialism.
Represented by Bagley (1941), essentialism strives to ensure that a common core knowledge
exists and all students should be taught in a systematic and disciplined way. Essentialists stress
the “essential” knowledge and skills that people should have rather than a set of external truths
(Bagley, 1941). The perennialism and essentialism belong to the traditional school of thoughts
and the difference between them is that essentialism is fact-based while perennialism tends to be
principle-based (Bagley, 1941; Bicer, 2013; Seizer, 2011). When the Chinese curriculum
designers are from the school of essentialism, they may desire for a structure of the curriculum
and form a common core knowledge of the whole curriculum.
William Kilpatrick and Progressivism. Kilpatrick (1942) set forth the tenets for
progressivism suggesting that education should focus on the whole person and students learn
best what they practice and live. Dewey (2012) argued a child-centered approach that curriculum
should be relevant to children’s lives, learning by doing is crucial to children’s educational
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success, and there is no need to fix upon a fixed body of knowledge. The purpose of education,
in the view of progressivists, is to give the individuals the necessary skills and tools with which
to interact with his or her environment. When the curriculum developers are from the school of
progressivism, they may be more interested in a flexible curriculum development approach
instead of having fixed curriculum content.
Theodore Brameld and Reconstructionism. Theodore Brameld (2007) is an advocate for
reconstructionism. Social reconstructionism emphasizes addressing social questions and quest to
create a better society and democracy. Although the society has been moved from agrarian and
rural to highly technical and information-oriented, there is a serious cultural lag in our ability to
adapt to a technological society. Reconstructionist educators focus on a curriculum that
highlights social reform as the aim of education. White et al. (2010) argued to create a new
societal order using technology and human compassion. Both progressivism and
reconstructionism belong to the contemporary school of thought. When the curriculum
developers are from the school of reconstructionism, they may be interested in making creative
changes to the curriculum and incorporate new ways to present their curriculum using new
technologies.
Assumed Understanding of Tyler’s Rational: Basic Principles of Curriculum and
Instruction. Ralph Tyler was one of Dewey’s students and was associated with the progressivist
school. Tyler (2013) conceived four principles of curriculum and instruction, which laid the
foundation for curriculum development, and these tenets were coined as the Tyler Rationale.
Tyler’s classic text contained four questions that must be answered when developing a
curriculum:
1. What educational purposes should the school seek to attain?
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2. What educational experiences can be provided that are likely to attain these purposes?
3. How can these educational experiences be effectively organized?
4. How can we determine whether these purposes are being attained? (Tyler, 2013, p.1)
Although Tyler’s model is used by many curriculum leaders, some criticized it as a
linear, factory-like, and means-end workflow model simplifying the complexities of curriculum
development (Ellis and Fouts, 1997; Marsh and Willis, 2007, p. 72; Pinar et al., 1995, p. 148–49;
Slattery, 2006, p. 52–53). Kliebard (1970) even criticized that Tyler’s use of the educational
philosophy screen was value neutral, “trivial and almost vacuous” (p. 266). However, Hunkins
and Hammill (1994) observed that Tyler’s model was still dominant in schools across the United
States despite much criticism. Wraga (2017) found that Tyler’s model was remarkable in its
historical context for its approach to curriculum development as a problem-solving process, and
conception of education as experience. In the author’s opinion, Tyler’s rationale serves as a clear
guideline and framework in Chinese curriculum development.
Assumed Understanding of Learning theories, Language Acquisition Theories, and
Learner. In order to develop a curriculum that is appropriate for the students, one must be
equipped with an assumed understanding of learning theories, language acquisition theories,
learners and learning styles. The science of learning is the research-based study of how learning
works and how people learn. The assumption goes that research and theories on language
learning should be used as a guidance for curriculum design in order for learners to benefit from
the development of knowledge gained from research. There is a body of research available which
can be used as reference to curriculum developers (Brown, 1993; Jones, 1993; Macalister and
Nation, 2019; Ellis, 2005; Macalister, 2016b; Richards, 2017; Tomlinson, 2003).
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Learning Theories. The assumed influences include Chinese teachers’ understanding of
learning theories, such as the learning curve, dual channel, and active processing. Herman
Ebbinghaus (1885) was concerned with factors that influence how much you know. His learning
curve showed that the amount you know depends on the amount of practice you put in one
learning the material, and the forgetting curve shows that the amount you know depends on the
time since learning. These are important information for curriculum developers in order to
determine the intervals of repetition for language acquisition. Mayer (2011) summarized three
principles from the science of learning: dual channels, limited capacity, and active processing.
Dual channels suggest that people have separate channels for processing verbal and visual
materials. Limited capacity means that people can propose only a small amount of material in
each channel at any one time. Active processing suggests that meaningful learning occurs when
learners engage in appropriate cognitive processing during learning (Mayer, 2010, p. 30).
Learning theories cover a wide range of topics and for the purpose of this dissertation, these
above-mentioned theories and principles are the assumed basic learning theories that the
successful Chinese teachers must know in their curriculum design.
Language Acquisition Theories. Theories and research impact on the design of
curriculum and instructions interactively, for example, Ray and Seely’s Teaching Proficiency
Through Reading and Story-telling (TPRS) (1997) and Stephen Krashen’s (1988, 2002, 2013,
2019) hypothesis of input, acquisition, and learning influence the design of Chinese curriculum.
The California’s 2012 English language development (ELD) standards was informed by multiple
theories and a large body of research pertaining to the linguistic and academic education of
English learners. These theories support the learners to think about their thinking (metacognitive
knowledge) and language use (metalinguistic knowledge) so as to apply specific cognitive
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strategies, such as inferring what the text means by examining textual evidence, and linguistic
practices, e.g., intentionally selecting specific words or phrases to persuade others. Torlakson
(2012) mentioned that not all students come to school knowing how to engage in these
interactive processes with other students. It is important to provide structures and supporting
opportunities to develop interactive ways of interacting meaningfully, such as providing
temporary support of scaffolding. The metaphor of scaffolding draws from Vygotsky’s (1978)
notion of the “zone of proximal development (ZPD)”, which adjusts to the students’
developmental needs and supports students on how to do something with support today that they
will be able to do independently in the future. In the curriculum development, Chinese teachers
may particularly explore the use of scaffolding embedded in the curriculum.
Schleppegrell (2012) examined the importance of academic vocabulary in new ways, and
suggested that the teacher who understands the ways language shifts as children move from one
context to another can provide specific guidance to children on academic language use, preparing
them in valuable ways to engage successfully in activities across content areas. He suggested that
“register variation” depends on what is happening (the content), who the communicators are, and
what their relationship is, e.g., peer to peer, expert to peer, and how the message is conveyed,
such as written, spoken, or presentation. Her theory may provide guidance to Chinese teachers
who create the set of content vocabulary in their curriculum design.
Krashen’s second language acquisition (SLA) theories received a lot of criticism and over
the years and he reconceptualized these theories. Krashen (1988) claimed that learners with high
motivation, self-confidence, a good self-image, and a low level of anxiety may achieve more
successful language acquisition. In his view, grammar can only be learned when the students are
interested in the subject and target language is used in the classroom. Ray and Seely’s (1997)
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goal was to develop students’ speaking proficiency and understanding of the new language. They
suggested that contextualized, repetitive, and varied comprehensible input that keeps learners
interested and engaged and a great majority of class time should be devoted to providing
interesting comprehensible input. According to his input hypothesis, Krashen (2019) suggests
that natural communicative input is the key to designing a syllabus ensuring that each learner
will receive ‘i+1’ input that is appropriate for his/her current state of linguistic competence.
Krashen and Ray and Seely’s theories had heavily influenced the instruction and curriculum
development from 2012 to 2015 at EAS. During the tenure of Dr. Sunny Chung, the first World
Language Director at EAS, the Chinese curricula from Preschool to fifth grade were redeveloped
in the format of stories and the teachers used TPRS strategies to do the comprehension check,
focused on the input leaning heavily towards Krashen and Ray and Seely’s theories. This is an
example of how the instructional theories affected the curriculum design. On that account, the
successful Chinese teachers are assumed to be knowledgeable about language acquisition
theories discussed above in order to design a standards-based curriculum.
Learners and Learning Styles. The American Psychological Association developed a set
of learner-centered principles that grouped into four categories: cognitive and metacognitive
factors, motivational and affective factors, developmental and social factors, and individual
differences (APA, 1997; Table 8.7). These factors are important factors that teachers should bear
in mind. Besides, curriculum developers should consider the influences from teachers,
classrooms, and schools when designing curriculum, such as effective learning environments,
classroom management, teacher-student interactions, transitions in schooling, and
developmentally appropriate instruction (Schunk 2020).
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In addition, curriculum designers should also understand the learners’ cognitive
development and learning styles. What are the students’ cognitive developmental stages? Are
they cognitively and developmentally ready for the curriculum and the instructions designed by
their teachers? Dunn and Honigfeld (2013) suggest that styles are deduced from one’s preferred
ways of organizing and processing information on different tasks, for example, young children
are primarily field dependent and sensitive to social environments so learning materials with
social content are more suitable for young learners. Accordingly, the successful Chinese teachers
are assumed to consider learners and their learning styles in order to develop a pertinent
curriculum suitable for the target audience.
Assumed Conceptual Knowledge Influences
Conceptual knowledge refers to the interrelationship of the basic elements within a larger
structure that enable them to function together. The process of learning requires the
understanding of what the knowledge is and how they are related and connected. As a Chinese
curriculum developer, the assumed conceptual knowledge of developing a curriculum includes
one’s understanding of her own educational theories, how her understanding of learning theories
and learners impact her instructional practice and curriculum design, and how her practice affects
the student's learning.
Curriculum Developers. Who should develop the curriculum and who has the authority
to decide and define what goals, values, knowledge, and skills that are important to be passed
down to the future generations? In this rapidly changing digital world when the knowledge and
skills of today’s curriculum could not catch up with the needs and wants of tomorrow’s world, it
is crucial to look into the parties who are developing the current curriculum. Hass (1961)
suggested that all interested citizens, parents, learners, and scholars from many disciplines
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should be encouraged to work with teachers, principals, curriculum leaders, state department of
education, and federal education agency personnel in the curriculum planning. Nicholls and
Nicholls (2018) offered wide first hand experiences in helping teachers confront the challenges
in curriculum development in their study. At Eagle American School, the Preschool–12 Chinese
curricula have been developed by teachers of different grade levels, which is truly a school-based
curriculum.
The trend in international schools is that the teachers are required not only to be able to
deliver the curriculum, but also to design curriculum, create teaching materials that are
appropriate for their students. The teacher’s roles include not only curriculum developer,
classroom instructor but also mentor, change agents, a team player, and collaborator
(Kumaravadivelu, 2012). There are quite a few empirical studies conducted to examine various
aspects of school based curriculum development in terms of teacher’s roles (Bezzina, 1991;
Elliot, 1997; Keys, 2000), student’s roles (Brooker and Macdonald, 1999; Mac an Ghaill, 1992),
community involvement (May, 1992; Ramsey et al, 1993), and processes (Cocklin et al, 1995;
Marsh et al, 1990; Willis, 1997). And these findings suggest that successful enactment of
teachers’ professional roles seems to engage in various complex interactions with learners, peers,
administrators and community. Hence the successful Chinese teachers are assumed to understand
and agree to their roles of curriculum developer, teacher, collaborator, and communicator.
Assumed Procedural knowledge influences
Procedural knowledge refers to the knowledge guiding both physical activities such as
swimming and cycling, and cognitive activities such as speaking in public or playing chess.
These skills are hard to express verbally but can be indicated by means of performance
(Broadbent, 1989; Squire and Knowlton, 1995; Tulving, 1985). A curriculum shapes the world
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today and tomorrow, which is also impacted by social forces such as economic development,
politics, society, demographics, and technology. Incorporating an unknown future into the
curriculum is the key question that curriculum leaders ask. Parkay et al. (2014) proposes three
levels of social forces that influence curriculum development: school culture, local community,
national and international forces. These complex levels require curriculum designers to be aware
of the latest international developments in economy, politics, and technology, keep up to date
with the national issues, and understand the needs and wants of the local community. At EAS the
social forces come from school culture, local community, and international trends. The following
describes the assumed procedural knowledge from the curriculum development process,
curriculum focus, and curriculum framework.
Curriculum Development Process. Bobbitt (1924) suggested that curriculum
development is a straightforward process. According to Bobbitt, one need only apply curriculum
theory and research, and a curriculum should be developed scientifically. These comments
reflected the traditional school of educational philosophies and have been criticized by many
from the contemporary school of thoughts. There are a wide range of factors to consider when
designing a curriculum. Macalister and Nation (2020) suggested a curriculum design model
consisting of three major influences, which includes detailed processes. The three influences
include principles, environment needs involving practical and theoretical considerations that will
impact the actual process of curriculum development. The detailed process includes goals,
content and sequencing, format and presentation, and monitoring and assessment. Therefore, the
successful Chinese teachers are assumed to have the knowledge of the curriculum process.
Nicholls and Nicholls (2018) pointed out that curriculum itself is a dynamic process and
one of the most important roles of the teacher is to make decisions about a whole range of
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factors. Parkay et al. (2014) suggested the following factors that curriculum leaders should
consider at this stage of curriculum development process:
● The desired balance between the acquisition of content and mastery of process
● Sequencing of content
● Students’ prior knowledge
● Identifying methods for assessing student learning
● Short-term versus long-term performance
● Quality versus quantity (p.301)
Curriculum Focus. Parkay (2013) proposed a model of two dimensions of curriculum
planning: Macro Level and Micro level. The macro level is a policy level and decisions about the
content of the curriculum apply to large groups of students. The micro level is a situation-
specific level and curriculum decisions made that apply to groups of students in a particular
school or classroom. In this sense all teachers are micro-level curriculum developers who make
numerous decisions about the curriculum experiences their students receive every day.
Parkay et al. (2014) raised the concerns of curriculum emphasis: should it be given to the
requirements of the subject area or to the needs of the students? Does the curriculum focus on the
present or the future? These are important questions that curriculum leaders should review and
make decisions at the macro and micro levels. One challenge is that in order to keep students
engaged, one must make the subject material relevant and timely, for example, current events,
students’ personal experiences, real-world scenarios or case studies. Parkay et al.’s (2014)
concerns echo the premise of Macalister and Nation’s (2020) environment analysis and
discovering needs. According to Tessmer (1990), environment analysis involves looking at the
factors that will have a strong impact on decisions about goals of the course, what to include, and
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how to teach and assess it. And these factors are embedded in the learners, the teachers, and the
teaching and learning situation. Therefore, the successful Chinese teachers are assumed to be
knowledgeable about curriculum focus.
Curriculum Frameworks. Generally speaking, a curriculum framework is a document
published by a state educational agency providing guidelines, recommended instructional and
assessment strategies, suggested resources, and models for school leaders and teachers to use as
they develop curricula that are aligned with the national and state standards (Parkay et al., 2014).
Parkay et al. (2014) presented a generic plan for developing a unit of study including
introduction, objectives, content of the unit, methods and activities, and teaching materials. See
Table 2 for a generic plan for developing a unit of study proposed by Parkay et al. (2014).
Macalister and Nation (2020) insist that there are several advantages of having a set
format for lessons: the lessons are easier for teachers to make because each one does not have to
be planned separately; the course is easier to monitor, check, and evaluate; the lessons are easier
to learn as the learners can predict what will take place and get familiar with the learning
procedures soon. The curriculum design is not a linear process and the lessons may need
adjustment and updates. With a framework this can be easily done, monitored, and presented.
Consequently, the successful Chinese teachers are assumed to have the knowledge of curriculum
framework. Table 3 is a culturally relevant curriculum framework provided by Dr. Kaplan from
USC in the doctorate course of Curriculum Leadership.

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Table 2
“Generic” Plan for a Unit of Study
Teacher Grade level: Subject:
Unit topic: Length of time:
Introduction:
1. What is the nature and scope of the unit?
2. How will the unit benefit students?
3. Briefly, what skills, concepts, issues and activities will the unit address?
Objectives:
1. What do I expect students to be able to do?
2. What changes in students’ behavior do I wish to see?
3. What should each be able to do to demonstrate mastery of each objective in the unit?
Content of unit:
1. What topics will I cover in my teaching? When will I teach those topics?
2. Skills, topics, subtopics, concepts, issues, information, and so on, covered in the unit
3. List of activities and time for each (e.g., 1 week, 2 class sessions).
Methods and activities
1. How am I going to teach the unit?
2. What methods will I use (e.g., large-group discussions, cooperative learning groups,
discovery learning, mastery learning etc.)?
3. In what activities will students participate (e.g., preparing oral and/or written reports,
working in small committees, going on field trips, playing educational games, listening
to guest speakers, etc.)?
Teaching materials and/or resources
1. What materials and/or resources will I need to teach the unit?
2. What materials will students need?
3. What textbooks, software, or reference materials will be used?
Assessment of student learning
1. How will I measure and evaluate students’ progress or achievement?
2. How will I know if I have achieved the objectives for the unit?
3. What assessments will I use to measure students’ learning (quizzes, tests, observation
of classroom behavior, portfolios, projects, performances, etc.)?

Note. From Curriculum Leadership: Reading for Developing Quality Educational Programs, by
Parkay, Anctil and Hass (2014), Pearson Education.
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Table 3
Framing A Culturally Responsive Framework
Focus
Goals/standards

Objective(s) Thinking skills Content Resources Products
Keys Words Phrases Universal
concepts/themes
Principles,
Laws/theories
Interdisciplinary
connections
Disciplines Disciplines Disciplines Disciplines
Classics
Arts, literature,
music

Independent study
options

Assessment
Instructional strategies

Note. From Professor Kaplan’s In-class Material, University of Southern California, 2020

Assumed Metacognitive Knowledge Influences
When procedural knowledge refers to knowing what, conceptual knowledge is knowing
why, and procedural knowledge is knowing how, metacognitive knowledge is a reflective
process that selects, evaluates, revises, and abandons cognitive tasks. Metacognitive strategies
refer to a person’s knowledge about how to improve his or her learning. In this sense the
assumed metacognitive knowledge points to a reflection upon the curriculum implementation
and evaluation.
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Curriculum Implementation and Evaluation. Once a curriculum is developed, it is
crucial to ascertain how it is implemented and whether the learning objectives in the curriculum
are obtained. In addition, it is necessary to stress that curriculum development is an ongoing
process and a curriculum is a live document that should be evaluated, updated, and improved on
a regular basis. Tyler (2013) suggests that with re-planning, redevelopment and reappraisal, it is
possible to continuously improve the curriculum over the years. It is assumed that great Chinese
teachers understand and reflect upon their curriculum implementation and evaluation on a
continuous basis.
Curriculum and instructions are inseparable in order for the students to achieve the
desired learning outcomes. Parkay et al. (2014) holds that in the implementation stage of a
curriculum, assessment data should be used for formative purposes rather than to judge the
success or failure of the curriculum. Many believe that the students’ progress towards the
objectives are the main criterion for determining the success of the curriculum. Underlying
assessments it is assumed that the curriculum is ‘right’ and if students do badly in tests and
examinations, it is because something is wrong with the students (Nicholls and Nicholls, 2018).
Tyler (2013) believes that the assessment results do not indicate whether a curriculum is ‘right’.
There is also a belief that curriculum can be improved when a set of pre-decided desired
educational outcomes and criteria is set in order for teachers to select content, design activities,
and decide on the teaching strategies, procedure, evaluation, and further curriculum planning
(Macalister and Nation, 2019; Tyler, 2013). Hence it is assumed that successful teachers
understand the importance of curriculum implementation and evaluation, reflect upon their own
practice, revisit, and revise the curriculum in a continuous manner.
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An Overview of the EAS Chinese Curriculum. At EAS the Chinese curriculum is
being developed, updated, and revised every year by the Chinese language teachers and there is
also a curriculum cycle which takes place every 3 years. However, there are no curriculum
standards or benchmarks for different proficiency and of grade levels available to teachers other
than the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines 2012, which resulted in unclear expectations of
students’ knowledge and skills of different levels, teachers’ confusion about curriculum
requirements, and a lack of agreement and coherence in terms of curriculum. The teachers may
understand the different levels of language proficiency and be familiar with the 5Cs of the
ACTFL standards, however, they have no access to detailed standards to different language
proficiency levels. Some teachers work together as a team and share the same sets of curriculum
materials, such as the K–2 Chinese teachers, and some share only a unit theme and the details are
filled and designed in by individual teachers according to their own understanding of the unit
study and the assessment of the learner’s needs. At High School, the teachers use ACTFL Oral
Proficiency Interview (OPI) to guide the curriculum design, but OPI is a 15–30 minutes
conversation between a tester and a student, which is designed to determine oral proficiency
instead of being used as a curriculum standard for college students and adults.
Assumed Motivational Causes
Motivation refers to the driving force behind behavior that leads people to pursue some
things and avoid others (Westen et al, 2006). In measuring how motivated the Chinese teachers
are to devote their time and energy to develop a standards-based curriculum on top of their busy
daily instructional schedule in the classroom, three motivational theories are reviewed in this
session: expectancy-value theory, self-efficacy and equity theory.

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Expectancy-Value Theory
The cognitive perspective of psychology asserts that people are motivated to perform
behaviors that they value and that they believe they can attain. Research using this theory
suggests that maximum job performance occurs only under certain conditions (Locke, 1991a,
1991b; Smith, 1989). Cognitive approaches to motivation often focus on goals —desired
outcomes established through social setting, such as getting good marks or making a good
impression at a party (Bandura, 1988a, 1994, 1997; Cantor, 1994). Expectancy is a belief that if
you work hard and you will be able to achieve the goal set by your supervisor, which involves
three factors: efforts (can I reach the target if I work hard?), performance (will hitting the target
lead to reward?), and reward (do I find the reward desirable?). Expectancy-value theory asserts
that motivation is a joint function of the value people place on an outcome and the extent to
which they believe they can attain it (Westen et al, 2006). Connecting values to work goals
enhances teacher’s commitment and the utility value. In this case it is assumed that successful
Chinese teachers are able to recognize the value in designing standards-based Chinese
curriculum and believe they can do it.
Self-Efficacy Theory
In addition, effective Chinese teachers have high levels of self-efficacy which is another
assumed influence on their motivation (Bandura, 1994). Self-efficacy is the belief that one is
capable of achieving a specific goal. Teachers need to be confident in their ability to be expert
and knowledgeable practitioners thus it is assumed that teachers believe that they have the
capability to develop a standards-based Chinese curriculum. Motivation is an internal state that
initiates and maintains goal directed behavior, which is personal, activating, energizing and
directed (Mayer, 2011). The self-efficacy is a self-construct which suggests that individuals with
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high self-efficacy may be more willing to choose the task and be more persistent with the task
they choose because they have the confidence that they are capable of accomplishing the task.
Psychologists have identified four major sources of self-efficacy beliefs (Pajares and Schunk,
2001, 2002): prior experience of mastering tasks, watching others mastering tasks, messages or
persuasion from others, and emotions related to stress and discomfort. In this paper, Chinese
teachers’ self-efficacy is examined along the lines of these four sources.
Equity Theory
Adams’ (1963, 1965) equity theory posits that people’s motivation could be affected
when they compare the level of reward (input) they receive to their own sense of contribution
(output). At the core of this theory lies the concept of equity and fairness, as well as the
importance of comparison to others. In another way, the individuals want the rewards that others
receive for their work to be similar to the rewards that they themselves receive for the same level
of contribution. Equity theorists posit that a set of conditions labeled “inequity” results in tension
or distress which, in turn, the person experiencing it will be moved to reduce (Adams, 1963,
1965, 1968; Walster et al., 1973). Hence the individuals’ motivation depends on the extent he or
she feels being treated fairly in terms of rewards compared to others. Expectancy-value theory
and equity theory focus on the “Hows” of motivation. By understanding the psychological and
behavioral process that humans follow, it is possible to understand the actions, interactions, and
contexts that motivate individuals’ behaviors. At Eagle American School, the hiring practice
distinguishes teachers from overseas-hired to locally-hired. The overseas-hired teachers receive a
much greater salary and benefits compared to the locally-hired. It remains a myth whether these
two groups of teachers are equally motivated to do exactly the same work at school thus it is
assumed that the Chinese teachers are motivated to develop a standards-based Chinese
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curriculum regardless of their salary and benefit package. This paper will examine the Chinese
teachers’ motivation in redesigning a standards-based curriculum in the lens of equity theory.
Assumed Organizational Barriers
The assumed organizational influences include resources, policies, processes, and
procedure, as well as culture. Clark and Estes (2008) insisted that organizational processes
should be defined with material resources because the absence of these could result in non-
achieved performance goals. In addition, Gallimore and Goldenberg (2001) point out that
cultural models and cultural settings influence the achievement of organizational performance
goals: “Cultural models are so familiar that are often invisible and unnoticed by those who hold
them” (p.47). The organization needs to make sure that the teachers know what the goal is and
they have the necessary resources to achieve the goal. The assumed causes related to the cultural
model in this problem of practice is that although the teachers are heavily loaded with daily
instructions and professional learnings the organization still allocates curriculum time and
resources to redesign a standards-based Chinese curriculum.
Cultural settings are defined as occurring “whenever two or more people come together,
over time, to accomplish something” (Sarason, 1972). The assumed cause related to cultural
settings is that the leadership attaches importance to the subject of Chinese and the Chinese
teachers have sufficient knowledge and training to develop a standards-based Chinese
curriculum in a Professional Learning Community (PLC) setting. Professional development
needs to be in place to ensure teachers understand the importance of redesigning the curriculum,
equip them with necessary knowledge and skills, and feedback about their performance with
respect to the goal.

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Professional Learning Communities at Eagle American School
An effective organizational construct in many schools for breaking down organizational
barriers and creating systems for collaborative practice and problem solving is professional
learning communities (DuFour et al., 2005). In PLCs, the teachers work in collaborative teams,
discuss students’ learning, work out units of study, develop assessments, and analyze data
collected. In a bigger picture, PLC is also an opportunity for organizing professional
development and is believed to be most effective when teachers “build effective curriculum-
based lessons and units together which they routinely refine together based on common
assessment data” (Hiebert and Stigler, 2017; Schmoker, 2009). PLCs have been in place at EAS
for the past 10 years. However, the influence of PLC settings varies at elementary, middle and
high school levels. At elementary school, PLCs have contributed a great deal to designing the
Chinese curriculum and organizing divisional level units of study. At middle school and high
school, PLCs are organized differently which may not be fully established as a mature process,
and the collaborative levels amongst Chinese teachers vary as well.
One of the problems is that the perceived benefits of PLC could not be realized when
teachers simply meet and work together without organizational support such as scheduling
appropriate team time and providing funding, training, and leadership. Recent research has
focused on the difference between PLCs that are high performing and PLCs that are not
performing (Wiliam, 2007). Williams et al. (2008) argues that organizational characteristics such
as culture, leadership, capacity-building, and operational characteristics, such as professional
development, data collection, and systemic trust, have a critical impact on successful
implementation of PLC (Williams et al., 2008). Under the leadership of current administrators at
the elementary school of EAS, the process of PLCs is functioning very well, which contributes to
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the highly efficient teamwork and collaboration in terms of sharing teaching practices, analyzing
data, and working on the curriculum. In middle and high school, PLCs are still a process in
progress and more needs to be done to secure this process as a cultural setting.
Expert Reviews
During the review of the literature, not many relevant references have been found with
regard to the standards-based Chinese curriculum development in the context of international
schools. In order to strengthen the literature review, three well-known Chinese language experts
were approached to hear about their experiences and opinions in terms of Chinese curriculum.
These three experts have gone through a similar path in international schools: they started as
Chinese teachers for different grade levels and eventually grew to leadership positions such as
World Language Director, Chinese Principal and Chinese Consultant. They know the
international school context very well and have witnessed, initiated, and led the development and
expansion of Chinese language education from a minor specialty subject to a daily and or even
bilingual and immersion program course. It can be said that their leadership impacted the
development of Chinese programs and contributed immensely to the Chinese language education
in international schools. Pseudonyms are used in order to protect these Chinese experts’
identities.
Dr. Alex Chung
Dr. Alex Chung retired 5 years ago with 16 years of experience in international schools in
the Asia-Pacific Region. He had worked at four different international schools and held the
positions of Chinese teacher, World Language Director, and Chinese Consultant. His biggest
takeaway from his experience is that as a leader, one must keep current, learn, and grow together
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with the Chinese teachers. Curriculum to him is a complex word which includes vision, mission,
goal, standards, assessment, and concrete teaching.
Curriculum Framework
According to Dr. Chung, a textbook is one type of resource instead of a curriculum.
Curriculum development must involve teachers because they are in the front line and they know
their students the best. The understanding by design (UbD) (Wiggins and McTighe, 2011)
framework is a good tool to develop Chinese curricula. The UbD offers a planning process and
structure to guide curriculum, assessment, and instruction.
Language Acquisition Theory
Dr. Chung specifically mentioned Dr. Krashen’s (1982) language acquisition theory,
which requires the teachers to purposefully create a natural learning environment so that the
students can acquire language skills in a way similar to how a baby learns the mother tongue.
The key is that the Chinese language can be acquired in a natural setting instead of being learned.
Learning here points to the specific language rules, grammar, and structure. It takes a lot of input
of language before the students can produce the language at the initial learning stage. Teaching
proficiency through reading and storytelling (TPRS) (Ray and Seely, 2010) is a good way to
create such a natural learning environment for students to acquire the Chinese language. In Dr.
Chung’s view, the teachers must design the curriculum considering the students’ age, living
environment, things they are interested in and care about, and inspire them to produce the
language in a natural way.
Chinese Teachers’ Knowledge in Curriculum Development
The teachers make their teaching plan every day and they do not need much extra
training to develop a curriculum as long as their knowledge, concepts, and understanding are
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elevated. Their knowledge, concepts, and understanding here refer to the curriculum vision,
mission, standards, learning outcome, resources, learning activities, and agreeable statements.
During his tenure Dr. Chung borrowed OPI as the standards for different proficiency levels. He
believes that listening and speaking should be developed first then followed by reading and
writing. And Literacy must be developed in a natural way in the early years considering the facts
that the children learn to draw first prior to writing. He argues that standards must be specific and
concrete in every class and assessment must be clear considering students’ capabilities in all
areas.
Organizational Support
Dr. Chung believes that organizational support from the leadership is crucial to the
development of Chinese language programs. The support includes three parts: strong leadership,
money, and hiring practices. The senior management team at her schools gave her a lot of
support, guidance, and mentorship when he worked as a Director of the World Language
Department. He gave an example that previously in his school there was a policy stipulating that
Chinese teachers could only be recruited locally. But the local human resources are so limited
that he had to resort to requesting the Superintendent and senior management team to modify this
policy and hire more qualified Chinese teachers from mainland China. Dr. Chung stresses that it
is very important for schools to strive to keep the talents and retain the excellent teachers.
Dr. Lilian Wang
Dr. Wang has been working at international schools for over 20 years and she held
positions as Head of Chinese Program, Chinese Consultant, and Chinese Principal over the last
10 years. She has worked in three international schools and is known as a leading expert in
Chinese resource development. She started to create Chinese resources such as songs and stories
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back in 2002 when there were no available resources for Chinese teaching in international
schools. Till today, she has developed quite a few series of Chinese readers for literacy, stories
books, e-books, animated songs and many international schools all over the world use her
resources in their Chinese education.
Curriculum Framework and Resources
Dr. Wang started the resource development journey because of her own experience in
Chinese Teaching. As there were not many usable resources and standards specifically designed
for international schools, every day she had to spend a lot of time and energy designing and
photocopying worksheets and materials for her students, which made her feel very busy,
burdened and concerned. She believes it is very important that the teachers use their time
thinking about how to teach instead of what to teach and her resources provide a framework for
curriculum development. Dr. Wang uses the metaphor of a tree to describe her concept of a
curriculum. For any Chinese curriculum, there should be a whole system and there must be a
main structure which is like a tree trunk. With this main trunk in hand, the teachers could add in
branches, leaves, and flowers with their own resource creation personalized for their students and
the students add fruits of their learning on the tree. At her school the resources she developed
serve as the main trunk of the curriculum system and the teachers design some extra materials
according to their own students’ different needs. As a language consultant and curriculum leader,
she provided a curriculum outline with resources specifically created according to this outline
and the rest were done by the teachers.
Chinese Curriculum Standards
Dr. Wang indicates that the curriculum outline she developed is the main must-learn
requirements for the students. Over the years this outline has been edited, upgraded and modified
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along with the changes of the student population as well as the lifted proficiency levels. The
teachers in her school may teach their students according to their specific needs and alter the
resources matched to the curriculum outline from content, pace, and depth. The curriculum
outline she developed is the basic structure of the curriculum and she has aligned them from
kindergarten to fifth grade. The curricular for Middle School and High School is based on the IB
Chinese courses.
Chinese Assessment
One feature in Dr. Wang’s school is to use external tests to validate the students’ learning
other than the internal assessment by the teachers. In the elementary school they use Youth
Chinese (YCT) developed by HSK Centre, “an international standardized Chinese language test
which is directed at examining non-native primary and secondary school students’ ability to
apply Chinese language in their studies and daily lives” (HSK, 2021). At her school, the students
from first, third and fifth grade take the YCT test and the students from the bilingual program
also take this test. For the bilingual students YCT is a yearly test and these students also take the
ACTFL Assessment of Performance towards Proficiency in Languages (AAPPL) test. For
Middle School and High School, the students take the IB courses and the assessments are
designed by IB courses. Dr. Wang points out one concern that the topics in IB courses are very
big such as environment and pollution, which is far from the students’ life and daily
communication. Most of the times the students know how to talk about pollution but they are not
able to order food proficiently in restaurants.
Organizational Support
Dr. Wang mentions that it is impossible for teachers to develop a curriculum without
strong organizational support. The teachers are very busy teaching Chinese five or six hours
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every day and on top of that they have other duties such as supervising the students’ recess and
lunch, meetings, training and other administrative activities. There should be a curriculum lead in
assisting doing this curriculum development.
Initially she was hired as a Chinese Consultant to develop the Chinese curriculum for the
entire school. After 1 year the school hired her as the Head of Chinese and expanded the Chinese
program from a Foreign Language Program to two programs: Chinese as a Foreign Language
Program and Chinese as a Bilingual Program. Now she has four full-time Chinese curriculum
leaders in charge of the curriculum development for the entire school. Without sufficient support
from the Headmaster and management team, none of the program development could be
achieved.
So today at her school, the Chinese resources are well developed, the assessment papers
are designed, the homework is created, and the teachers have ready-to-use resources in hand. The
main focus of the Chinese teachers is to think about how to teach and how to differentiate and
personalize their students’ learning.
Dr. Wendy Xia
Same as Dr. Chung and Dr Wang, Dr. Xia started her Chinese educational career when
Chinese language education was relatively a new thing over 20 years ago. At that time a lot of
international schools worried about the Chinese curriculum as there was not much research on
the field of international schools. Today she is heading a Chinese team teaching around 3,000
students as the Director of Chinese Studies. She shared her experiences in searching for best
resources, focusing on the teachers’ professional development, emphasizing Chinese culture, and
exploring the best practices for Chinese teachers.

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Chinese Curriculum Framework
Dr. Xia worked in two International Baccalaureate (IB) international schools and there
were fixed curriculum frameworks for IB courses, such as Primary Years Program (PYP),
Middle Years Program (MYP), and Diploma Program (DP). There are also exit goals for each
different phase. One problem with the IB curriculum framework is that the students with novice
and intermediate low proficiency levels are not able to engage in a concept level theme-driven
communication, a concern shared by Dr. Wang as well. When Dr. Xia started in an American
School, she found that the American standards give teachers more flexibility focusing on the
language progression and Chinese itself has the integrity of being one subject.
Chinese Curriculum Standards
Initially her school adopted a set of Canadian standards for Chinese curriculum with the
assistance from a language consultant because Canada has a long history in developing language
standards. Later they decided to use ACTFL can-do statements as their benchmarks and World-
Readiness Standards as their curriculum standard. As half of the student population is in near-
native proficiency level, they adopted American Common Core Standards for this group of
students focusing on literacy such as reading and writing. Dr. Xia insists that standards need to
be specific instead of being too general or too much, and easy enough for teachers to refer to,
which echoes the common critiques towards the standards.
Chinese Curriculum Alignment
At Dr. Xia’s school, the Chinese teachers develop curriculum resources in teams and
decide on the resources appropriate for their students’ age and proficiency levels. They have
curriculum days and collaborate with teachers within and across divisions looking at curriculum
alignment, data, and the ACTFL Assessment of Performance towards Proficiency in Languages
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(AAPPL) tests etc. Their curriculum is language function driven rather than resource driven. The
teachers of higher-grade levels would pass down a set of placement rubrics to the lower grade
level teachers to ensure the students reach the placement standards and are placed in the
appropriate classes. The teachers engage in a lot of collaborative and professional discussions in
order to strengthen their curricula.
Language Acquisition Theory
Dr. Xia believes that the language acquisition theories, curriculum development and
instructional practices are intertwined, interconnected, and inseparable. Teachers need to know
about things and theories outside of their classrooms, what is going on within this field, analyze,
criticize, and decide on the best practices appropriate to their students, and help the students find
success and joy in learning. They design their curriculum from where their students are and think
about how to take them to the next level.
Knowledge Necessary for Chinese Curriculum Development
Dr. Xia believes that the knowledge of curriculum development is one part of the job in
international schools. By being in international schools and knowing things there, teachers have
the knowledge by default. Knowledge is not static and by doing, being open and curious,
teachers acquire new knowledge along the way. Continuous professional development enables
teachers to learn new things, explore best practices, and make learning as a habit.
Organizational Support
In Dr. Xia's eyes, it is important for leadership to reflect upon the performance and
support the teachers with allocated time to see what works best in the classroom, such as visiting
classrooms and having safe dialogues. Culture is such an important piece that the teachers need
to be in a culture that they firmly believe in, need to feel valued, and be culturally competent,
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which echoes the theory of motivation, cultural settings and cultural models. Dr. Xia advocates
that Chinese leaders may think about providing opportunities to integrate Chinese with other
subject areas and homerooms so that the students have the opportunities to connect Chinese to
their learning in various ways.
Summary
This chapter outlines and explores the key areas that impact Chinese teachers to achieve
their goal of developing a standard-based Chinese curriculum through literature review. A
summary of sources found in the literature regarding the assumed needs that inhibit teachers
from achieving their performance goals is provided in Table 4. In Chapter Three, a discussion of
methodology applied to carry out this gap analysis is presented based upon the related literature
as well as personal knowledge about EAS.

Table 4
Summary of Assumed Needs of Teachers
Assumed needs for successful teacher Literature reviewed
Knowledge (declarative)
Successful teachers are clear of their own
educational philosophies, language acquisition
theories and learning theories. They know the
standards of Chinese curriculum and know the
learners and their learning styles.
Hass, 1961; Nicholls & Nicholls, 2018;
Kumaravadivelu, 2012; Bezzina, 1991;
Elliot, 1997; Keys, 2000), student’s roles
(Brooker & Macdonald, 1999; Mac an
Ghaill, 1992; May, 1992; Ramsey et al,
1993; Cocklin et al, 1995; Marsh et al,
1990; Willis, 1997
Knowledge (procedural)
Successful teachers are knowledgeable of
curriculum development processes, curriculum
focus, as well as curriculum framework.
Squire & Knowlton, 1995; Broadbent,
1989; Tulving, 1985; Parkay et al, 2014;
Bobbitt, 1924; Macalister & Nation,
2020; Parkay, 2013; Macalister &
Nation, 2020; Tessmer, 1990; Kaplan,
2020; Nicholls & Nicholls, 2018
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Assumed needs for successful teacher Literature reviewed
Knowledge (metacognitive)
Successful teachers understand that a curriculum
needs to be implemented, evaluated, revised,
and updated in order to achieve the desired
learning outcomes. They know how their
behavior impacts the students’ learning.
Tyler, 2013; Parkay et al, 2014; Macalister
& Nation, 2019; Nicholls & Nicholls
(2020); Nicholls & Nicholls, 2018
Motivation (self-efficacy)
Successful teachers are confident with their
knowledge of developing a standards-based
curriculum
Westen et al, 2006; Bandura, 1994;
Mayer, 2011; Pajares & Schunk, 2001,
2002;
Motivation (expectancy value)
Successful teachers recognize the value of
designing a standards-based curriculum and
believe they are capable of designing one.
Bandura, 1994, 1997; Cantor, 1990;
Locke, 1991; Smith; 1989 Westen et al,
2006;
Motivation (equity)
Successful teachers believe that they are treated
fairly compared to similar others in terms of
input and output.
Adams, 1963, 1965, 1968; Walster et al.,
1973
Organizational barriers (cultural models)
Successful teachers believe that they have
sufficient resources to collaborate and redesign
the curriculum.
Clark & Estes, 2008; Gallimore &
Goldenberg, 2001; Sarason, 1972
Organizational barriers (cultural settings)
Successful teachers believe that they are provided
with appropriate professional training in the
area of curriculum design.
DuFour et al, 2005; Hiebert & Stigler,
2017; Schmoker, 2009; William, 2007

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Chapter Three: Methodology
This chapter discusses the methods deployed in conducting this qualitative study that
evaluate EAS’s performance related to the goal of developing standards-based Chinese curricula
by examining the teachers’ knowledge, motivation and organizational barriers. This chapter
begins with restating the purpose of this study and research questions, and then followed by a
further discussion of conceptual framework. After that, the assessment of performance influences
is discussed in the terms of knowledge assessment, motivational assessment, and organizational
assessment. In addition, this chapter includes a description of research design, including a
summary of the participants involved, the data collection procedures, and the instruments utilized
in the process. The final section of the chapter concludes with a discussion about trustworthiness
of the data, ethics, role of the researchers, limitations, and delimitations.
Restatement of the Purpose of the Study and Research Questions
The purpose of this study is to evaluate EAS’s performance related to the goal of
developing a standards-based Chinese curriculum. The analysis focuses on areas of knowledge
and skills, motivation, and organizational barriers. While a complete performance evaluation
would focus on all stakeholders, for practical purposes, the stakeholders to be focused on in this
analysis are teachers of Chinese as the World Language program at EAS. The following
questions guide the study through understanding the EAS Chinese teachers’ perspectives of their
knowledge in curriculum development, their motivation in designing curriculum, their perceived
challenges, and the support they need in their views.
● What is the current status of the Chinese teachers’ knowledge, motivation, and
organizational resources with regard to developing standards-based curricula?
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● What are the recommendations for organizational practice to create standards-based
Chinese curricula at EAS?
Conceptual Framework
Lockmiller and Lester (2017) posit that a phenomenology study can be used to describe
one or more individuals’ experiences of a phenomenon through in-depth interviews. As the
purpose of this study is to evaluate EAS’ performance by understanding, describing, and
exploring the teachers’ knowledge, motivation, and organizational influences in order to address
the gap between the current situation and the performance goal, qualitative research is an
appropriate methodology to conduct this research. Clark and Estes (2008) developed a gap
analysis framework to investigate the root causes between the current performance and the
identified performance goal. According to Clark and Estes (2008), the factors impacting
performance include motivation, knowledge, and organizational barriers. There are eight steps in
Clark and Estes’ (2008) framework as shown in Figure 1.

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Figure 1
Gap Analysis Flow by Estes and Clarks (2008)

Note. From Turning Research into Results: A Guide to Selecting the Right Performance
Solutions, by Clark, R. E., and Estes, F. (2008). CEP Press.

Clark and Estes (2008) suggested that the first step of gap analysis is to define the broad
organizational goals that drive the organization. Although the goals must be stated in broad
terms, it is necessary to be adequately specific to guide the organization’s daily functioning. In
the second step, stakeholders’ goals are developed which relate directly to the organizational
goal. In the third step, stakeholders’ goals are explored by analyzing the gap in performance
while considering the change necessary to achieve the organizational and stakeholders’ goals.
The assumed factors that contribute to the performance gap are knowledge, motivation, and
organizational barriers. When the root causes of the gaps are validated in the fifth step, step six
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identifies the possible solutions. In step seven, the solutions are implemented and step eight
enables solution evaluation.
In order to examine the gap between the expected performance in terms of standards-
based Chinese curriculum development in this dissertation, Clark & Estes’s (2008) framework is
utilized to examine the teachers’ knowledge and skills in creating curriculum, their motivation,
and organizational barriers from achieving the performance goal. It is assumed that when the
teachers have enough knowledge and skills to develop a standards-based curriculum, they may
have high self-efficacy to do it, or in another way, they may be motivated to do it. If they
perceive it as an important task and they believe they can do it in order to enhance students’
learning and achieve the organizational goal, they will be motivated to develop the curriculum. It
is also assumed that if the teachers are treated fairly with respect and recognized for their
contributions, they may be motivated to develop the standards-based curriculum. Organizational
barriers to achieving the performance goals can be categorized into leadership, resources, and
support. With highly qualified leaders and visionary leadership guidance, sufficient resources
such as time and money, enough support such as leaders’ attaching importance to the subject of
Chinese language and arranging appropriate professional development, the teachers might be
able to develop the necessary knowledge and skills and in turn, gain more motivation to achieve
the performance goals.
Clark and Estes’ (2008) gap analysis model suggests that change might take place when a
goal is set, a gap is discovered, the root causes are identified and an action plan is created,
implemented, and evaluated. Kirkpatrick and Kirkpatrick (2009) insist that the end is the
beginning and values must be created before they can be demonstrated. With these principles in
hand, a gap analysis is a good tool to improve the Chinese curriculum development at EAS.
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Assessment of Performance Influences
Knowledge Assessment
The literature review in Chapter Two revealed three possible knowledge influences as
indicated in Table 4. The first influence is declarative knowledge including factual and
conceptual knowledge— the teachers are clear of their teaching philosophies, language
acquisition theories, learning and learners’ styles, and standards and benchmarks. These
influences will be assessed through interview questions in Appendix 3 asking participants about
their understanding of these concepts as well as the importance and relationship of these
concepts.
The second assumed influence is procedural knowledge—the teachers are knowledgeable
of curriculum development processes, curriculum focus, as well as a curriculum framework. To
validate this influence, the interview questions focus on how to use curriculum framework,
focus, and curriculum development process to structure and assist in developing a standards-
based Chinese curriculum.
The third possible influence is metacognitive knowledge—the teachers understand that a
curriculum needs to be implemented, evaluated, revised and updated in order to achieve the
desired learning outcomes and they know how their reflections and behaviors impact the
students’ learning. These are studied through interview questions examining their reflections
upon curriculum development, implementation, and evaluation.
Motivational Assessment
Three motivational influences were identified in the review of literature: the theories of
self-efficacy, expectancy-value, and equity. The assumed self-efficacy influence is that
successful teachers are confident with their knowledge of developing a standards-based
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curriculum. This was examined through interviews with participants regarding their level of
confidence in this area.
The possible expectancy-value influence is that the teachers recognize the value of
designing a standards-based curriculum and believe they are capable of designing one. This was
measured through interview questions focusing on the teachers’ perceptions of their own
knowledge as well as their value belief in terms of developing a standards-based curriculum. An
example of an interview question is: How capable would you feel if someone asks you to
redesign the Chinese curriculum into a standards-based curriculum? In what way do you believe
it is necessary to design a standards-based curriculum?
The third assumed equity influence is that teachers believe they are treated fairly
compared to similar others in terms of input and output. This will be explored through interview
questions asking about the participants’ perceptions of equity. Due to the unique culture of
different hiring practices in international schools, the Chinese teachers are hired under two
significantly different salary and benefits packages, even though they do exactly the same work.
It is important to know whether this hiring practice impacts the teachers’ motivation in
developing a standards-based curriculum.
Organizational Assessment
The literature review in the second chapter exhibits two possible organizational
influences: the organizational barrier of cultural models and cultural setting. The assumed
influence of the cultural model is that teachers believe that they have sufficient material
resources, such as time and money, to collaborate and redesign the curriculum. This influence
was assessed through interview questions such as: “What challenges do you face in terms of
developing a standards-based curriculum, if any? And What support do you need in order to
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develop a standards-based curriculum?” The assumed cause related to cultural settings is that the
leadership attaches importance to the subject of Chinese and the Chinese teachers have sufficient
knowledge and training to develop a standards-based Chinese curriculum in a PLC setting.
Assessment of this influence was through interview questions about whether teachers believe
that the school administrators have a clear vision and ability to lead the Chinese curriculum
development and what extra knowledge they need to know in order to redesign the curriculum. A
summary of the assumed influences and assessment strategies provided in Table 5.

Table 5
Summary of Assumed Influences and Method of Assessment
Assumed influences Method of assessment
Knowledge (declarative)
Successful teachers are clear of their own
educational philosophies, language
acquisition theories, and learning theories.
They know the standards of the Chinese
curriculum and know the learners and
their learning styles.
Interview, focus groups and written responses:
Teachers answer questions about their
understanding of teaching philosophies,
language acquisition theories, learning
theories, learners, and learner styles.

Interview, focus groups and written responses:
Teachers answer questions about the
relationship and importance of these
concepts.
Knowledge (procedural)
Successful teachers are knowledgeable of
curriculum development processes,
curriculum focus, as well as a curriculum
framework.
Interview, focus groups and written responses:
Teachers answer questions describing their
understanding of their philosophies, the
curriculum process, their opinions on
curriculum focus, and their perceptions of a
curriculum framework.
Knowledge (metacognitive)
Successful teachers understand that a
curriculum needs to be implemented,
evaluated, revised, and updated in order to
achieve the desired learning outcomes.
Interview, focus groups and written responses:
Teachers answer questions about their
knowledge of curriculum implementation
and evaluation, as well as their comments on
the quality of the current curriculum at EAS.
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They know how their awareness of their
cognitive processes and strategies impacts
the students’ learning.
Motivation (self-efficacy)
Successful teachers are confident with their
knowledge of developing a standards-
based curriculum
Interview, focus groups and written responses:
Teachers answer questions about their
confidence in redesigning the Chinese
curriculum to a standards-based curriculum.
Motivation (expectancy value)
Successful teachers recognize the value of
designing a standards-based curriculum
and believe they are capable of designing
one.
Interview, focus groups and written responses:
Teachers answer questions related to their
perceived value in redesigning the
curriculum and their own capabilities in
doing it.
Motivation (equity)
Successful teachers believe that they are
treated fairly compared to similar others
in terms of input and output.
Interview, focus groups and written responses:
Teachers answer questions regarding their
sense of equity in terms of salary and benefit
and how this impacts their motivation and
behavior in developing a standards-based
curriculum.
Organizational barriers (cultural models)
Successful teachers believe that they have
sufficient resources to collaborate and
redesign the curriculum.
Interview, focus groups and written responses:
Teachers answer questions with regards to
their perception where there is sufficient
support for their curriculum development in
terms of time, money, and resources.
Organizational barriers (cultural settings)
Successful teachers believe that they are
provided with capable leadership and
appropriate professional training in the
area of curriculum design.
Interview, focus groups and written responses:
Teachers answer questions regarding their
perceptions of leadership capabilities and
attachment of importance as well as
adequate professional development for
curriculum development.

Participating Stakeholders and Sample Selection
Chinese teachers were selected as the stakeholders of this study because they were
responsible for developing the Chinese curricula for their own students. Purposeful sampling was
the method chosen due to the fact that these teachers are the ones who could provide insights and
information for this research. At present there are 35 Chinese teachers teaching in three divisions
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at EAS: elementary school, middle school, and high school. As the focus of Chinese curriculum
is different between elementary, middle, and high school, the elementary Chinese teachers who
meet the sampling criteria described below were invited to participate in the study in the forms of
focus groups and written responses, and middle and high school Chinese teachers who meet the
sampling criteria were invited for one-on-one interviews.
At middle and high school, two teachers from each division were invited to participate in
the individual interviews as long as they meet the sampling criteria below. The researcher
deemed it important that the teachers have sufficient experience teaching Chinese at EAS to
participate in the study. In this way the researcher could ensure that all participants are familiar
with the EAS Chinese curriculum development for their grade levels.
Sampling
In order to effectively measure the knowledge, motivation, and organizational barriers in
terms of standards-based Chinese curriculum development, data collection strategies of
interviews, focus groups, and written responses are utilized in this study. A convenient strategy
was used to invite participants because the researcher is one of the ES Chinese teachers. The
researcher invited the sample from teachers who have taught at EAS for 6 years or more because
these teachers have experienced two generations of Director of World Language. The sampling
criteria for individual interviews are as follows:
1. Teachers from middle school and high school
2. Teachers who have taught at EAS for 6 years and above
The sampling criteria for focus groups and written responses are:
1. Teachers from K–2 and 3–5
2. Teachers who have taught at EAS for 6 years and above
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Recruitment
For the purpose of this study, the sampling strategy sought to recruit participants by
invitation and sample emails were provided in Appendix A. All Chinese teachers of K–12 who
met the criteria outlined above were contacted for possible participation in the interviews, focus
groups, and written responses. As there is regular PLC time for all ES Chinese teachers in the
early morning and there is no common time for MS and HS teachers, the ES participants
participated in the focus groups and written responses while the MS and HS teachers participate
in the one-on-one interviews. At the time of recruitment, teachers were invited by an email as
shown in Appendix A and informed with an information sheet in Appendix B and the interview
protocol in Appendix C in order to ensure their understanding of the study, their rights, as well as
confidentiality.
Instrumentation
Once the population of participants was decided, the instrumentation used for this study
was an interview protocol. The interview protocol asked questions around the teachers’
knowledge, motivation, and organizational resources in elementary school, middle school, and
high school.
Interview Protocol
The questions in the interview protocol consist of three main sections, which were,
knowledge, motivation, and organizational resources. Domains of knowledge included the
understanding and opinions of knowledge in the area of curriculum development, such as
standards and benchmarks, curriculum focus, curriculum framework, relationship between
language acquisition theories, curriculum, and instructions, learning theories, learner and learner
styles, as well as reflections upon curriculum development, implementation and evaluation.
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The section on motivation was divided into two three subsections with one dealing with
teachers' perceived self-efficacy in developing a standards-based curriculum. The second
subsection asked the participants for their opinions of the importance of developing such a
curriculum as well as their perceived capabilities in this area. The third one inquired about the
teachers’ perceptions of being treated fairly in terms of their salary and benefits and whether this
impacts their motivation in developing standards-based curricula.
The third section assessing organizational resources explored the teachers' views on the
support they received from EAS and the challenges they faced in respect to redesigning their
curriculum. The questions focused on asking the teachers about their perceived leadership vision
and capability in Chinese, the material resources allocated to Chinese such as time and money,
and professional development they have received in this area. The interview protocol was semi-
structured for individual interviews of teachers from middle and high school at EAS.
Focus Groups
Brinkmann and Kvale (2015) suggest that a research interview is a conversation with a
structure and a purpose. The same set of questions were provided as the guiding questions for the
focus groups. But due to the nature of a focus group, the conversations were semi-structured and
the participants were able to share their opinions, perceptions, and insights in a lighter manner.
The questions were emailed to the interviewees together with the Information Sheet prior to the
focus groups and were designed into 10 slide pages guiding the process of zoom interviews and
focus groups in the digital format. The questions of focus groups and interviews were the same
and a sample of the interview protocol was provided in the Appendix C.
Written Responses
As the teachers were engaged in their busy daily classroom teachings and a variety of
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activities after class such as meetings with colleagues, parents, and students, leading extra
curriculum activities, and attending training sessions, they might not be able to make it for one-
on-one interviews or focus groups. Just in case they could not make it for either interviews or
focus groups, their written responses to the interview questions were also counted as a way of
data collection.
Data Collection
Following University of Southern California Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval,
participants were solicited for interviews and focus groups. The interview and focus groups were
both recorded and the duration was 45 minutes. The access approval from the Deputy
Superintendent at EAS was granted in March 2021. Due to the safe distance procedures of
Covid-19, the interviews and focus groups took place via Zoom. The written responses were sent
back via emails and consolidated in a google document.
Data Analysis
Qualitative data analysis was used to study natural environments and focused on
understanding how people make sense of, and experience, the world around them (Lochmiller
and Lester, 2017). The data collected were analyzed using different strategies. Interviews and
focus groups were transcribed and coded according to the knowledge, motivation, and
organizational categories. And the written responses were coded according to the same
knowledge, motivation, and organizational categories too. The interviews, focus groups, and
written responses helped validate and inform possible recommendations for the knowledge,
motivation, and organizational influences.
Trustworthiness of Data
It is utmost important to ensure the data collected is trustworthy. Three ways in which
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this researcher ensured the data is trustworthy are: collecting data using three different ways of
interviews, focus groups, and written responses, assurance of anonymity and confidentiality by
using pseudonyms in data collection and keeping the data confidential to the researcher only, and
member checks by returning the data to participants for accuracy and sharing all the findings
with participants involved.
Role of Investigator
The researcher is one of the Chinese teachers at EAS and her role in this study is to
conduct a problem-solving investigation in order to improve the organization's performance. The
potential results from this study might serve as a reminder and suggestion to the administrators at
EAS. As the researcher is undergoing cancer treatment while doing this study, the Chinese
teachers at EAS exhibit a lot of empathy and support for her and hope to assist her in whatever
ways it might need. Besides, some of the Chinese teachers feel the urgent need to attract the eyes
of the leadership to the field of Chinese curriculum and voice their concerns in terms of
curriculum development. With these two combined reasons they willingly participated in this
study and were open to share their opinions, feelings, and thoughts. However, in order to avoid
confusing their perception about the author’s role, steps were taken to ensure that the teachers
understand the author is wearing the hat of a researcher instead of their colleague and friend. The
author used her USC email to communicate with the Chinese teachers. She communicated with
the participants via emails, conversations, personal meetings, and WeChat messages, a social
media favored by Chinese teachers.
It is important that there is minimum potential for the participants to feel pressured to
participate. For example, teachers, especially those who participate in focus groups, might feel
they could not disclose too much in front of other colleagues in order to protect themselves. The
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following steps are taken in order to ensure that teachers understand the researcher’s role as an
investigator. This researcher:
● Ensured that procedures were followed to protect the anonymity of all participants.
● Avoided circumstances when the teachers’ identification could be accessed.
● Ensured that all participants volunteered to participate and their rights to not
participate or stop participating were thoroughly understood.
● Ensured absolute confidentiality of information, identity, and data.
Ethics
Ethics is fundamental to the entire research process. Maxwell (2013) argues that a
primary ethical obligation is to try to understand how the participants will perceive the
researchers’ actions and respond to these. The integrity of a research involves the researcher’s
ethical stance and ethical concerns should be involved in every aspect of the research: the
research goals, the selection of research questions, validity issues, and critical assessment of the
conceptual framework (Maxwell, 2013). Glesne (2011) suggests that researchers consider what
is “right” when it comes to ethical considerations. In this study, the author, as a practitioner-
scholar, acts in a responsible and fair way and makes sure to protect the participants from
potential harm that may result from the process. The researcher keeps in mind the interest and
needs of the participants, takes necessary action to ensure the confidentiality and anonymity of
the data, and does not harm the safety and dignity of the participants (Glesne, 2011). In the
meanwhile, the researcher also takes reference of the ethical guidelines and regulations, such as
guidelines from the American Educational Research Association and Institutional Review Board
of USC.
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Limitations and Delimitations
Limitations
The author has been teaching at EAS for 14 years and her particular interest in this topic
originates from her experience as a Chinese teacher in international schools in South-east Asia.
One of the limitations could be that this concern on standards-based curriculum development
was from the operational front level and the bigger picture in the organization may not be
captured clearly.
As this study is only focused on a small sample of Chinese teachers at EAS, this study’s
generalizability is limited and applies to EAS only. It does not explore the perceptions and
experiences of Spanish teachers and French teachers at EAS, which makes the findings less
useful for the entire World Language Department. This could be the second limitation to this
study.
The third limitation is that people’s perceptions evolve as the context changes, which
might make this study less useful. The previous WL Directors’ language acquisition theories,
leadership, and guidance to the Chinese teachers may not be agreed by the next one. In Year
2021 EAS welcomed a new WL Director to the school, who may start a new trend of teaching
philosophy, theories and strategies. Thus, the participants might experience different
requirements in curriculum and changed views towards curriculum development.
The fourth limitation is the threats to validity. Threats to validity may include potential
biases of collecting data from a few Chinese teachers only. Also, despite the assurance of
anonymity, participants may be concerned with being identified considering the small sample
size of this study.
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Delimitations
A delimitation to this study is the types of school and the specific demographics of
students and Chinese teachers. Participants came from the same international school with
students from diversified backgrounds representing a generally high income, high achieving
demographic. Caution is recommended when the results of this study are generalized to other
settings. Nevertheless, there are international schools and private schools with similar
demographics of study population as EAS and they may benefit from this research with regards
to building standards-based Chinese curricula. A second delimitation to this study could be the
cultural piece of Chinese teachers, who are ethnically Chinese. Their reflection on personal
experiences that contributed to their knowledge and skills, motivation, and organizational
resources may be pertinent to their racial, ethnic, or country origin groups, which makes this
research more specific and relevant to Chinese teachers from international schools with a
diversified, wealthy, and high achieving student body.

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Chapter Four: Findings
This study aims to understand the development of a standards-based Chinese curriculum
at Eagle American School (EAS). I used the gap analysis framework developed by Cark and
Estes (2008) to identify whether KMO (knowledge, motivation, organizational) factors were
barriers to creating a standards-based Chinese curriculum. The purpose of this chapter is to
report the results and findings of the data collected at Eagle American School.
The assumed causes that might hinder the Chinese teachers from developing a standards-
based Chinese curriculum were presented in Chapter Three and categorized under knowledge,
motivation, and organizational influences. The results were organized by the categories of
assumed and validated causes, i.e., Knowledge, Motivation, and Organization. I collected the
qualitative data from three divisions at EAS, namely, elementary school (ES), middle school
(MS), and high school (HS), via one-on-one interviews, written responses, and focus groups. The
goal was to validate the assumed causes and understand the knowledge, motivation, and
organizational challenges that the Chinese teachers encounter in designing standards-based
Chinese curricula at EAS.
I conducted one-on-one interviews with the MS and HS participants. Initially, I planned
to conduct two focus groups at ES. However, five out of the 15 participants could not attend the
agreed meeting due to other commitments and only ten participants joined the two focus groups.
Among the five who could not make it to focus groups, one participated in a one-on-one
interview and the other four submitted written responses to the interview protocols that were
used in the two focus groups. It took me 1 month to collect the data from participants who
represented three divisions at EAS. I first collected data at ES, followed by four interviews at MS
and HS.
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Participating Stakeholders
The participants in this study were invited from three divisions, namely, ES, MS, and HS.
Nineteen Chinese teachers voluntarily participated, with fifteen from the ES, three from the MS,
and one from the HS. All of them are professional, experienced, and mature Chinese teachers
with rich Chinese teaching experiences in international schools. Their EAS tenure ranges from 7
to 16 years, and their ages range from 32 to 59 years old. Among these Chinese teachers, one is a
White from England, one is a Chinese from Singapore, and the other seventeen are Chinese from
China. Seven (36%) of the participants were overseas hired and twelve (64%) of them were
locally hired. See Table 6 for detailed information of the participants.
Three MS Chinese teachers agreed to participate in this study, which is more than
planned. However, only one HS volunteer participated due to their heavy schedule and
workloads. Following the interviews, focus groups, and written responses, the data were
transcribed, categorized, coded, analyzed, and organized according to the assumed influences.

Table 6
Participants Information
Races Ages Hiring packages Tenure at EAS (years)
English (1) 47 Overseas hired 11
Singaporean (1) 59 Locally hired 16
Chinese from China (17) 32–55 Overseas hired (6) 11
Locally hired (13) 7–16

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Determination of Assets and Needs
The data collected include five one-on-one interviews, two focus groups, and four written
responses to the interview protocol. Triangulation was made through examining data from
interviews, focus groups, and written responses, which provides a more comprehensive
understanding of developing a standards-based Chinese curriculum at EAS. The criteria for
determining an influence as an asset or a need is over 50% of the participants’ agreement rate.
Research Question 1: Influences
Research Question 1 asked the following: What is the current status of the Chinese
teachers’ knowledge, motivation, and organizational resources regarding developing standards-
based curricula at EAS? To understand the possible causes hindering teachers from developing a
standards-based curriculum, I designed an interview protocol to guide the research, which used
the framework created by Marriam and Tisdell (2016). The interview protocol included 16
questions: two warm-up questions, four knowledge questions, six motivation questions, three
organizational questions, and one question seeking additional information. This same set of
questions guided the interviews, focus groups, and written responses. I conducted the interviews
and focus groups via Zoom. The four participants who could not attend the focus groups or
interviews at ES emailed me their responses to the interview protocol. An independent source
transcribed all the data, and the participants’ identities were protected by using pseudonym
names.
The data collected from interviews, written responses, and focus groups indicated a
knowledge gap, especially in declarative and procedural knowledge at three divisions: ES, MS,
and HS. Besides, there exists a procedural knowledge gap at ES. A motivational gap was
identified from the findings, especially in teachers’ self-efficacy and expectancy-value. The data
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suggested that the motivation of locally hired teachers is lower than that of overseas hired due to
the enormous disparities in salaries and benefits. The organizational barriers identified from the
evidence suggest that participants have substantial needs for curriculum leadership, guidance,
experts, specialists, time, resources, and administrative support. In the following section, I report
the results and findings in Knowledge, Motivation, and Organizational causes in detail.
Results and Findings for Knowledge Causes
The objective of the knowledge analysis is to explore the assumed causes that may be the
origin of any knowledge gaps related to the development of a standards-based Chinese
curriculum. It is assumed that the Chinese teachers must be equipped with the necessary
knowledge of curriculum development, have a team-agreed curriculum process and framework,
and know the curriculum standards and benchmarks. The teachers must understand their learners
and learning styles, be confident that they can design a standards-based curriculum, understand
their performance goal, and align their educational philosophies and professional practices with
the school and their colleagues. The results and findings are reported using the knowledge
categories, and the assumed and validated causes for each type as identified in Chapter 2.
Assumed and Validated Knowledge Causes
Anderson and Krathwohl’s taxonomy (2001) suggested three dimensions of knowledge:
declarative, procedural, and metacognitive. Thus, I assessed the knowledge domain focusing on
these three dimensions. These knowledge categories were linked to the organizational vision,
performance goal, and stakeholders’ goal. Based on the data collected, declarative knowledge is
determined as a need for three divisions, procedural knowledge a need for ES, an asset for MS
and HS, and metacognitive knowledge an asset for three divisions. See Table 7 for the summary
of the knowledge assessment.
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Table 7
Assessment of Declarative, Procedural, and Metacognitive Knowledge Influences
Knowledge
Declarative
(asset/needs)
Procedural
(asset/needs)
Metacognitive
(asset/needs)
ES Need Need Asset
MS Need Asset Asset
HS Need Asset Asset
Overall Need for
ES, MS, and HS
Need for ES, and
Asset for MS and HS
Asset for
ES, MS, and HS

Assumed Knowledge Need of Successful Teacher #1: Declarative.
It is assumed that successful teachers are clear of their teaching philosophies, language
acquisition theories, learning and learners’ styles, and standards and benchmarks. They know the
standards of the Chinese curriculum, know the learners and their learning styles. The following
discussed the findings and results of this study based on the data collected from EAS.
Findings and Results. Two questions were asked to assess teacher knowledge of curriculum
development. The findings from the responses to the interviews and focus group questions show
that the participants agree with the importance of having curriculum standards, benchmarks,
alignment, common assessments, understanding students’ levels, specified content such as
vocabularies, structures, and contexts, and constant curriculum updates for developing a
standards-based curriculum. And it is a great strength that many of the participants have obtained
an Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) certificate.
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Philosophies. This influence was not explicitly validated. Only 10% (two out of
nineteen) of the participants mentioned the importance of having shared focus and aligned
instructional perspectives with their colleagues at ES, indicating that they need to do team
building and work on shared agreements within the group.
Language Acquisition Theories. Thirty-six percent of (7 out of nineteen) participants
mentioned the importance of knowing language acquisition theories. However, only 10% of (two
out of nineteen) participants explicitly spoke about specific language acquisition theories, such
as Krashen’s comprehensive input, Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling
(TPRS), Vygotsky’s theory of scaffolding, and Schumann’s acculturation model.
Learners and Learning Styles. Forty-two percent of (eight out of nineteen) participants
talked about the importance of knowing the learners and appropriate developmental theories.
However, only 5% (one) of the participants named a learning theory of Skinner’s Radical
Behaviorism, and none of them mentioned any other views related to learners and learning
styles.
Standards of the Curriculum. Eighty-four percent of (16 out of 19) participants stressed
the importance of knowing ACTFL standards for curriculum development. However, the further
assessment indicated that they had no access to the World Language Standards or Chinese
Standards developed by ACTFL (2015).
Benchmarks of the Curriculum. Sixty-three percent of (12 out of 19) the participants
agreed that benchmarks measure students' learning. However, the further assessment indicated
that although the participants know the ACTFL proficiency levels and Can-do Statements well,
some might be confused by the three terms: standards, benchmarks, and proficiency guidelines.
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One participant said, “Benchmarks are probably the breakdown criterion of proficiency, and
standards and benchmarks are probably what the students need to master in every unit.”
Synthesis of the Results. The teachers have excellent knowledge about ACTFL
Proficiency guidelines as many have obtained OPI certificates. However, although the
participants know the importance of having standards and benchmarks for curriculum
development, some might have mixed the ACTFL proficiency guidelines with ACTFL standards
and benchmarks. And their declarative knowledge about learners, learning theories, and language
acquisition theories is significantly low. Based on the above findings, enhancing the teachers’
declarative curriculum design expertise is necessary. The results validated the assumed
knowledge needs that the successful teachers should be clear of their teaching philosophies,
language acquisition theories, learning and learners’ styles, and standards and benchmarks. They
should know the standards of the Chinese curriculum, know the learners and their learning
styles.
Assumed Knowledge Influence #2: Procedural.
It is assumed that successful teachers are knowledgeable of curriculum development
processes, curriculum focus, and a curriculum framework. They have sufficient procedural
knowledge to develop their standards-based curricula. The following discussed the findings and
results of this study based on the data collected at EAS.
Findings and Results. The data collected from the interviews and focus groups
suggested that all teachers are extremely confident about ACTFL proficiency guidelines. They
are very secure and capable of designing teaching materials, creating stories, deciding on the
vocabularies and structures, and developing common assessments. Although not explicitly
articulated, the curriculum process is identical for three divisions: they design their curricula,
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update, and review regularly, which is an asset throughout divisions. In addition, the curriculum
focus across the three divisions is similar: oral proficiency, an asset throughout divisions as well.
But as literacy has been a new requirement for the teachers at ES and MS since last year, there
appears an urgent need to enhance their knowledge about the literacy requirements, standards,
benchmarks, and contents for different proficiency levels. The interview results indicated
different curriculum framework patterns within three divisions. Here I described these findings
in depth by elementary, middle, and high school.
Elementary School. The current ES Chinese team was a joint force of K–2 and 3–5
teachers due to the policy change 2020, where the Chinese teachers were asked to change the
proficiency levels they used for teaching, and the K–2 and 3–5 teams merged into a large ES
team with 20 Chinese teachers. It appears that the themes of team-building issues and agreement
of shared philosophies and teaching concepts were still developing in process during the
interviews. The ES Chinese teachers grouped themselves as a few small PLCs with three or four
teachers, and each PLC developed its curriculum for the proficiency level they teach. The small
PLCs include teachers from the original K–2 and 3–5 teams so the teachers were doing their best
to learn from each other and develop their curricula by combining the features and advantages of
their previous curricula.
The results from responses to interviews and focus groups revealed no team-agreed
curriculum framework, presentational format, or standard content in their current curricula. And
the small PLCs either create their format and framework or continue with their previous ones.
Some small PLCs’ curricula cover an overview, suggested stories, and some resources, while
some comprise only a theme and an outline. Aside from that, some small PLC groups wrote their
curriculum in Word format, and some presented theirs in Excel format. Despite that, they
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develop common assessments together which might result in different learning outcomes when
the students learn different sets of vocabularies and structures in different classrooms. Some
PLCs were still discussing whether the instructions and assessment should be proficiency-based
or performance-based. It seems the prerequisite of a consistent and well-aligned curriculum for
ES is the team agreement.
Middle School. One hundred percent (three out of three) of MS participants were happy
with their current curricula at EAS because they, as a team, used Unit Backward Design (UBD)
as a curriculum framework. They had unified learning goals, a well-planned format, standard
content, and precise assessments as a team. They communicated with the students about courses’
requirements and differences between proficiency levels. The students knew what they needed to
know about content, assessments, and the differences between proficiency levels. Teacher C
from MS described their curriculum development process in detail: According to ACTFL
proficiency levels, they first decide on a yearly goal for what the students need to learn, which
connects to their previous learning. After that, they decide on concrete topics, followed by
creating stories, context, and vocabulary. The MS teachers were happy with their curriculum
alignment with HS and they were still working on alignment with ES.
High School. Over the years, the HS Chinese curricula were passed down, reviewed, and
edited yearly, and the curriculum framework, format, and content were fixed as the syllabus for
students and teachers. The basis of designing the curriculum was the OPI proficiency guidelines,
which might be inappropriate because OPI was intended as an adult language test and may not be
appropriate for high school students to use as a curriculum standard. Moreover, the participant
from HS suggested that the teachers have rich hands-on teaching experiences and understand the
students' levels and needs. However, as indicated by Teacher H, they may not be able to design
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an excellent standards-based curriculum compared to a curriculum developed by a professional
curriculum writer.
Synthesis of Results. The interview data indicated that the teachers from three divisions
know the curriculum process and focus well. The MS and HS teachers understand the curriculum
development process and have a unified curriculum framework with standard content, and it is
an asset. However, as there is no unified and shared curriculum framework, format, and specific
content yet for the large ES team, it is a need for ES teachers to work on a team-agreed
curriculum framework that specifies format, content, resources, and assessments. It is important
for new teachers to have curriculum references for the first year otherwise they have to design
the curriculum from scratch without knowing the students’ previous learning. Consequently, the
evaluation for teachers' procedural knowledge is a need for ES and an asset for MS and HS. The
results validated the assumed knowledge that the teachers know about curriculum development
processes, curriculum focus, and a curriculum framework.
Assumed Knowledge Influence #3: Metacognitive.
It is assumed that successful teachers understand that a curriculum needs to be
implemented, evaluated, revised, and updated to achieve the desired learning outcomes. They
know how their awareness of their cognitive processes and strategies impacts their students’
learning. The following discussed the findings and results of the study based on the data
collected at EAS.
Findings and Results. Evidence from the responses to interviews and focus groups
indicated that all Chinese teachers developed and updated curricula every year, and the
curriculum review, edit, and update had already become one part of their work since many years
ago. They were cognitively aware of their knowledge in terms of curriculum development,
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thought about the problems with the current curriculum, and understood how their awareness of
their cognitive processes impacted the students’ learning. I reported the findings in elementary,
middle, and high school divisions.
Elementary School. The findings from the responses to the interviews and focus groups
indicated that the participants knew that their constant curriculum development did not make
them curriculum development experts. Their available time for curriculum development was
constrained as they must devote most of their time to classroom instruction. They lacked the
latest research knowledge, a macro and spiral view of the curriculum development and
alignment, and understandings of students they did not teach. They were conscious that they had
not agreed to a shared curriculum format as a big team yet. Some small PLCs had not aligned
their teaching perspectives with their colleagues within the group and did not agree to a standard
assessment concept, such as performance or proficiency-based. They hoped to obtain the
school’s support and get one or a team of Chinese curriculum experts or specialists, who had
theoretical knowledge and teaching experiences, to lead them through the curriculum
development process.
Middle School. Evidence from MS suggested that although there were well-developed
and unified curricula, it might be necessary to make the curriculum and instructions personalized
for students at their levels. One of the participants revealed that there were eleven students in one
of his classes, and these students were all developing language skills at different proficiency
levels. So, customizing the curriculum and instructions for each student was a time-consuming
task for this teacher. The MS teachers reflected that building a structure or a platform for
students to review their knowledge and skills was necessary. They also advocated for training
and information in light of the latest development of Chinese programs worldwide, such as the
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immersion programs at EAS. Teacher C suggested changing the course names because some
students stayed in the same proficiency levels for many years, which might leave an impression
that these students made no progress at all.
High School. The curriculum at HS is relatively consistent across proficiency levels. A
few years ago, the teachers put a lot of time and energy into developing curricula with goals,
content, and assessment for each unit. After that, they reviewed, made changes, and updated the
curriculum every year. And there was not much need to work on curriculum development at the
moment. When new teachers joined the team, they had a syllabus ready to work with their
students.
Synthesis of Results. Based on the above findings, teachers' metacognitive knowledge
assessment is an asset for ES, MS, and HS. Due to the insufficient data gathered about the
curriculum evaluation, this cause could not be validated. The results validated the assumed
knowledge that teachers understand that a curriculum needs to be implemented, evaluated,
revised, and updated to achieve the desired learning outcomes. They know how the awareness of
their cognitive processes and strategies impacts their students’ learning. The evidence from the
data revealed that teachers believe that making Chinese fun and believing in the students’
learning abilities would enhance their confidence in Chinese.
Emerging Themes. The interview data revealed some emerging themes for different
divisions at EAS and I describe the findings first in general and then in ES, MS, and HS.
Curriculum Training Needs for Three Divisions. The findings suggested that the
teachers were confident that they could do specific material designs. However, they needed a
curriculum guide and expert to support them in developing a well-aligned and standards-based
K12 Chinese curriculum. Teacher C , an overseas hire, said, " 这是一个 teamwork, 个人是很难
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做出来的，我可以 make contribution, 可以给一些 idea ，我个人没有受到有关的专业培训.”
which is translated as, “This (curriculum development) is teamwork, and it can be very
challenging for individuals (to develop it alone). I can make contributions, offer some ideas, but I
have not got any relevant training in this area yet.” Teacher D, an overseas hire, said, “ 这个是一
个专业，在这方面，我可能没有办法做到那么专业，在 group 里面我可以给一些想法，对
我的 knowledge 来说，还是不够的,要经过专业训练才可以写出来专业的东西的,” which
can be translated as, “This (curriculum development) is a specialized area, and I might not be
able to be so professional here. I may provide some ideas in the group, but my knowledge is not
sufficient yet. Only (those) specialized and trained (in curriculum development) could design
professional stuff (here, stuff means curriculum). " Teacher E, a local hire, said, “I wish to see a
well-designed and aligned curriculum with standards, benchmarks, content, and resources.”
Urgent Needs for Near Native Curriculum Development at ES. One participant teaches
the Near Native (NN) Track, and she was concerned about the curriculum development for NN:
The higher the grade levels, the more challenging the NN curriculum design. The K–2 NN
curricula were designed with must-know vocabulary, structure, and context. But when the
students grew older, it was difficult for the teachers to define the must-knows, and the
curriculum consisted of only a common essential question and unit theme. And the current
situation was those individual teachers designed their curricula according to their understanding,
teaching habits, and expertise. The students learned different sets of vocabulary, texts, and
structures in various classrooms, which was not beneficial for the alignment of students’
development of language and skills. When a teacher left, the new teacher had to create the whole
curriculum from scratch without any guidance of curriculum standards or benchmarks. An
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essential question and unit theme were not enough to serve as the only curriculum design basis
for a spiral and well-aligned curriculum across classrooms, grade levels, and divisions.
Urgent Needs for Literacy Curriculum Development at ES and MS. Previously the
curriculum focus was on oral proficiency, namely, listening and speaking. However, the latest
development of Chinese curricula required the teachers to start a literacy program last year.
During the interviews, both participants from ES and MS emphasized the urgent need to develop
reading and literacy standards, benchmarks, content, structure, and assessment. Teacher A, an
overseas hire, said, “ 我们还没有准备好，什么也不知道，就这样赶鸭子上架，开始加上了
阅读。” which can be translated as: “We were not ready yet (to offer the reading program) and
didn’t know anything (about reading literacy). Last year we (were told to start and) started the
reading program, (which is) like driving ducks onto the perch.” At HS, reading starts from the
novice level, and there is a well-developed literacy syllabus.
Synthesis of Findings of Knowledge Influences
The interview data validated the assumed causes of teachers’ knowledge in curriculum
development. The results indicated that teachers’ metacognitive knowledge is an asset for all
three divisions. However, there are gaps in teachers’ declarative knowledge at three divisions
and ES teachers’ procedural knowledge. The MS and HS teachers’ procedural knowledge is an
asset. See Table 8 for the assessment, measurement, and validation of assumed knowledge and
skills influences.

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Table 8
Assessment, Measurement, and Validation of Assumed Knowledge and Skills Influences.
Organizational mission
Eagle American School is committed to providing each student an exemplary American
educational experience with an international perspective.
Organizational performance goal
By 2024, EAS Chinese teachers will have established a standards-based Chinese
Curriculum.
Stakeholder goal: teachers
By June 2024, the Chinese teachers from three divisions at EAS will complete the
development of a standards-based Chinese curriculum.
Assumed knowledge needs of successful teachers
Declarative knowledge
Knowledge need #1: Successful teachers are clear of their educational philosophies,
language acquisition theories, and learning theories. They know the standards of the
Chinese curriculum and know the learners and their learning styles.
How was it assessed? Was it validated?
Interview, focus groups, and written responses:

- Teachers answer questions about their
understanding of teaching philosophies, language
acquisition theories, learning theories, learners,
learner styles, standards, and benchmarks.

- Teachers answer questions about the relationship
and importance of these concepts.

Validated: yes.
Not validated: Teachers’ educational philosophies.
Evidence themes

- Teachers are explicitly
knowledgeable of language
acquisition theories, learning theories,
learners, learner styles, standards, and
benchmarks which are evidenced
from the collected data.

- Teachers have learned or been
trained about the standards,
benchmarks, language acquisition,
and learning theories.

Procedural knowledge
Knowledge needs #2: Successful teachers are knowledgeable of curriculum development
processes, curriculum focus, and a curriculum framework.
How was it assessed? Was it validated?

Interview, focus groups, and written responses:

Evidence themes

- Teachers have a team-agreed
curriculum process, framework, and
shared curriculum focus.
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- Teachers answer questions describing their
understanding of the curriculum process, their
opinions on curriculum focus, and their
perceptions of a curriculum framework.

Validated: yes
- Teachers have easy access to the
curriculum and can pass a ready
curriculum to the new teachers.
Metacognitive knowledge
Knowledge needs #3: Successful teachers understand that a curriculum needs to be
implemented, evaluated, revised, and updated to achieve the desired learning outcomes.
They know how their behavior impacts the students’ learning.
How was it assessed? Was it validated?

Interview, focus Groups, and written Responses:

- Teachers answer questions about their reflections
of curriculum implementation and evaluation and
their comments on the quality of the current
curriculum at EAS.

- Teachers know how their behavior impacts the
students’ learning.

Validated: Yes
Not validated: Curriculum evaluation.
Evidence themes

- Teachers understand and regularly do
curriculum evaluation, revision, and
update based on their implementation
of the curriculum developed which
are evidenced from the collected data.

- Teachers talk about their behavior
impacts on the students learning.

Results and Findings for Motivational Causes
The objective of the motivational analysis is to explore the assumed causes that might be
the origin of the motivational gap hindering teachers from designing a standards-based Chinese
curriculum. It is assumed that the teachers are confident with their knowledge in curriculum
development, believe it is essential to develop the curriculum, and are capable of doing it. It is
also assumed that they think they are treated fairly in their input and output. Here three theories
are applied in assessing the motivational causes. The first theory is self-efficacy (Bandura, 1994).
Self-efficacy in this context means the Chinese teachers are confident with their knowledge of
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developing a standards-based curriculum. The second is the expectancy-value theory (Locke,
1991a, 1991b; Smith, 1989). Expectancy-value in this context means the Chinese teachers
recognize the value of designing a standards-based curriculum and are confident in developing
one. The third is the equity theory (Adams, 1963, 1965). The teachers believe that they are
treated fairly compared to others in input and output. The results and findings are described using
the motivational categories and the assumed and validated causes for each type, as delineated in
chapter 2. See Table 9 for a summary of the results and finds of the motivational causes.
Assumed Motivational Causes #1: Self-Efficacy
It is assumed that successful teachers are confident with their knowledge of developing a
standards-based curriculum. The data collected from interviews, focus groups, and written
responses indicated that 100% of (19 out of 19) teachers agree that developing a standards-based
Chinese curriculum was very important, which benefited the students, parents, and new teachers
achieved consistent learning outcomes, developed shared understandings across the three divisions,
and held shared accountability. However, only 16% of (three out of nineteen) the participants
believed that they could create a standards-based curriculum, and one participant mentioned she
could only contribute to the curriculum of her division. Seventy-three percent of (fourteen out of
nineteen) them thought they needed a curriculum leader and a specialist, who had theoretical
knowledge together and practical teaching experiences in international schools, to guide them
through the curriculum development process. The results exhibited the participants’ low self-
efficacy in designing a standards-based curriculum.

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Table 9
Assumed and Validated Motivational Causes
Motivation Self-efficacy Expectancy value Equity
Participants Need Need Asset for overseas hires
Need for local hires

Assumed Motivational Causes #2: Expectancy Value
It is assumed that successful teachers recognize the value of designing a standards-based
curriculum and believe they can design one. The data disclosed that 100% of the participants saw
the value of developing a standards-based curriculum, and 78% of (15 out of 19) participants
suggested that they needed expert and leaders’ guidance in creating a standards-based
curriculum. Only 16% (three out of 19) felt they were capable of designing a standards-based
curriculum. The majority of participants thought they could make contributions, but needed
guidance, and only 5% of (one out of 19) participants mentioned that they had theoretical
knowledge for curriculum design. Teacher E, a locally hired teacher, said, “ 我觉得我具备了一
定的知识，主要是感谢我的研究生课程，有很多都是跟中文教学相关的，有一门讲词汇教
学，有听说教学，还有一门课受益很大，语言测试.” (Translation: “I think I have some
knowledge of curriculum development and I attribute this to my master's program, which offers
courses such as vocabulary teaching, listening and speaking teaching. The course of language
assessment greatly benefited me.” Due to time and knowledge constraints, the teachers’
expectancy-value of developing a standards-based curriculum is low.
Assumed Motivational Causes #3: Equity. Successful teachers believe that they are treated
fairly compared to others in terms of input and output.
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Findings and Results. The findings revealed distinctive differences between locally
hired and overseas hired participants. EAS was founded in 1956, and over the past 65 years, EAS
has been using two hiring practices: local hires and overseas hires. The locally hired teachers are
less costly as they require no hiring or relocation costs. Local hires also do not receive some of
the benefits provided to overseas hires including housing allowances, good insurance, free tuition
for children, overseas travel allowance, family return flights, and others. Sometimes the overseas
hired teachers’ housing allowance is equal to or more than the local hired teachers’ salary. This
inequity in pay and benefits between overseas and locally hired teachers creates a noticeable
disparity. For example, the maximum earning power for a locally hired teacher with a Ph.D. and
22 years of teaching experience at EAS without children is less than half that of an entry-level
overseas hired teacher with a bachelor’s degree and two children. At EAS, 87% of the faculty
and administrators are overseas hired, and 13% are locally employed (SAS Human Resource
Data, 2020). Among the participants in this study, 37% of (seven out of 19) participants are
overseas hires, and 63% (12 out of 19) are local hires.
Local Hires. The data from the responses revealed that due to the differences in salary
and benefits, 100% of (12 out of 12) locally hired teachers thought they were not being respected
nor sufficiently rewarded for their work. Moreover, this inequity produces a lower economic
status perception, thus a second-class sense compared to overseas hires. Sixteen percent (two out
of 12) of the locally hired participants suggested there was no impact on their motivation in
general terms. However, 75% (nine out of 12) of the locally hired participants suggested an
impact on their motivation, 8% (one out of 12) of the locally hired indicated that there was no
impact professionally, but there was an impact emotionally. And 16% (two out of 12) of the
locally hired indicated that the salary and benefits at EAS were competitive if compared
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externally. The equity issue of local hires was the White Elephant in the room, and people
usually avoided talking about this topic. Teacher F, a locally hired teacher, quoted an ancient
saying in China towards this different hiring practice, “ 不患寡而患不均,” (Translation: The
problem lies not in scarcity but inequity). Despite the enormous disparities in hiring practices, all
the local hires were grateful that they had a job at EAS.
Overseas Hires. One hundred percent of (seven out of seven) overseas hired participants
suggested that their salary and benefits were acceptable and had no complaints, and they were
grateful working at EAS. Their concerns involved a high tax on their children's tuition, and
housing allowance, no salary raise over the years, and no reflection toward teachers’ concerns
about tax and salary practices. Fourteen percent of (one out of seven) participants expressed their
concern that the school’s different hiring practices might project and impact the inequity
perceptions to the students, parents, and the community. There was also a sense of
embarrassment and self-defense within overseas hires when talking about their salaries and
benefits. Teacher G, an overseas hired teacher, said, “The salary and benefits were like that when
I signed the contract, and I was not aware of the differences between local hires and overseas
hires.”
Regardless of the hiring packages, 36% of (seven out of 19) the participants revealed that
the inequity consequences came in the short, middle, and long term. Teacher L, an overseas hire,
suggested,
老师们非常专业，从短期来说，影响不大，但是有着中长期的影响。长期的不公
平，会影响老师的动力的；更长期潜在的影响甚至会导致行业的发展收到不良影
响，甚至更少人想要当老师。(Translation: Our teachers are very professional and in
the short term, there is not much impact. But there could exist middle and long-term
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effects. Unfairness for a long time will affect teachers’ motivation, and the potential
longer-term impact might even cause the development of the industry to be adversely
affected, which could result in fewer people wanting to become teachers.)
Sixty-eight percent of (13 out of 19) the participants indicated that the inequity
perceptions of the school and teachers may have an impact on that of the students, parents, and
community. Overall, the results revealed no motivational impact on overseas hired participants
but significantly influenced locally hired participants. The overseas employed participants appear
to believe they were treated fairly compared to others regarding input and output, while the local
hires seemed to think vice versa.
Synthesis of Findings and Results. In summary, the data revealed that all participants
viewed a standards-based curriculum as essential and valuable to students, teachers, and parents.
However, their self-efficacy was low due to the lack of theoretical knowledge and a macro view
of the entire curriculum. They explicitly expressed their needs for a curriculum leader, expert,
and specialist repeatedly. The local hires were less motivated in redesigning their curricula due
to the vast salary and benefits disparities, but this did not impact the overseas hires’ motivation.
See Table 10 for a summary of the assessment, measurement, and validation of motivational
influences.

Table 10
Assessment, Measurement, and Validation of Assumed Motivational Influences.
Organizational mission
Eagle American School is committed to providing each student an exemplary American
educational experience with an international perspective.
Organizational performance goal
By 2024, EAS Chinese teachers will have established a standards-based Chinese
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curriculum.
Stakeholder goal: teachers
By June 2024, the Chinese teachers from three divisions at EAS will complete the
development of a standards-based Chinese curriculum.
Assumed motivational needs of successful teachers
Motivation (self-efficacy)
Successful teachers are confident with their knowledge of developing a standards-based
curriculum.
How was it assessed? Was it Validated?
Interview, Focus Groups, and Written
Responses:

- Teachers answer questions about their
confidence in redesigning the Chinese
curriculum.

Validated: yes.
Evidence Themes

- All teachers understood it was crucial to
design a well-aligned and standards-based
Chinese curriculum.
- The majority of teachers suggested that
they needed guidance from curriculum
leaders, experts, and specialists to achieve
this task.
- Teachers felt confident in designing
teaching materials, setting assessments, and
collaborating as a team.
Motivation (expectancy value)
Successful teachers recognize the value of designing a standards-based curriculum and
believe they can design one.
How was it assessed? Was it validated?

Interview, focus groups, and written
responses:

- Teachers answer questions related to
their perceived value in redesigning the
curriculum and their capabilities in doing it.

Validated: yes
Evidence themes

- All teachers recognized the value of
designing a well-aligned and standards-
based Chinese curriculum. Most teachers
revealed that they needed guidance from
curriculum leaders, experts, and specialists
to achieve this task.
Motivation (equity)
Successful teachers believe that they are treated fairly compared to others in input and
output.
How was it assessed? Was it validated?

Interview, focus groups, and written
Evidence themes

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responses:

- Teachers answer questions regarding
their sense of equity in salary and benefit
and how this impacts their motivation and
behavior in developing a standards-based
curriculum.

Validated: yes
- All teachers suggested that they were
grateful to have a job at EAS.
- Overseas hired teachers thought they were
treated relatively fairly regarding their
input and output.
- Locally hired teachers thought they were
not treated equitably regarding their input
and output.

Results and Findings for Organizational Causes
The objective of organizational causes is to explore whether the organization has
provided sufficient support for teachers to achieve their performance goals of developing a
standards-based Chinese curriculum. Organizational influences include resources, policies,
processes, procedures, and culture. And the processes here point to the material resources.
According to Gallimore and Goldenberg (2001), cultural models and cultural settings influence
the achievement of organizational performance goals, and “Cultural models are so familiar that
are often invisible and unnoticed by those who hold them” (p.47). Cultural settings are defined as
occurring “whenever two or more people come together, over time, to accomplish something”
(Sarason, 1972).
The assumed cause related to the cultural model in this practice problem is that although
the teachers are heavily loaded with daily instructions and professional learnings, the
organization still allocates curriculum time and resources to design a standards-based Chinese
curriculum. The assumed cause related to cultural settings is that the leadership attaches
importance to the subject of Chinese, and the Chinese teachers have sufficient knowledge and
training to develop a standards-based Chinese curriculum in a PLC setting. The results and
findings are detailed using the organizational categories and the assumed and validated causes
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for each type, as delineated in chapter 2. See Table 11 for a summary of the assessment of the
assumed organizational causes.
Assumed Organizational Causes #1: Cultural Models
It is assumed that successful teachers believe they have sufficient resources to collaborate
and redesign the curriculum. They have strong support from the school to develop standards-
based curricula such as allocated curriculum time, leading experts, and sufficient training. The
following discussed the findings and results based on the data collected at EAS.
The data collected from interviews, focus groups, and written responses suggest that 89% (17 out
of 19) of participants thought they needed guidance from curriculum leaders, experts, and
specialists. Eighty-four percent (16 out of 19) advocated for more curriculum design training,
especially literacy reading training. One of the participants mentioned that “They (the school) did
provide us with wonderful oral (listening and) speaking training, so our teachers here are really
good at understanding and rating and being consistent in rating.” However, the training was
merely on ACTFL Oral Proficiency Guidelines. “One of the supports we need is that we need
someone who is an expert and has experience in this (reading literacy) to be able to guide us
through the changes in reading especially between middle school and elementary school,”
suggested by Teacher H.

Table 11
Assessment of the Assumed Organizational Causes
Organizational causes Cultural models Cultural settings
Participants Need Need

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Fifty-seven percent (11 out of 19) of participants demonstrated that they need resources,
such as access to standards and benchmarks, and IT support for material design. Eighty percent
of (15 out of 19) participants indicated that they need time allocated explicitly to curriculum
development. Every year they were given time out of the classrooms to focus on curriculum
review, and 57% (11 out of 19) expressed the need for more workforce redesigning the
curriculum. Teacher H also talked about how another international school supported their
Chinese curriculum development and hoped that EAS could do something similar. He said, “She
(the Chinese Principal) got three people to help her, so that she ended up with someone working
on developing materials, one working on assessment, and the third one focusing on standards,
alignment, and consistency. And that helped her to build the program from the bottom up, and it
was aligned. My perception is that for organizational support, we need other people to help us
with certain things and make sure they are talking to small PLCs and grade-level people so that
we are on the same path.”
In summary, the data pointed to the organizational support that the teachers needed to
work on the standards-based curriculum. And the assessment of the results is a need for
organizational causes.
Assumed Organizational Cause #2: Cultural Settings
It is assumed that successful teachers believe that they are provided with capable
leadership and appropriate professional training in curriculum design. They have the leadership
from administrators who strive to lead them in this curriculum development journey and have
available trainings to assist them with this task. The following discussed the findings and results
based on the data collected at EAS.
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Results and Findings. The data show that 95% (18 out of 19) of the participants
indicated that they needed the support of curriculum leadership, experts, and specialists. And
89% (17 out of 19) of them agreed that professional development (PD) was for learning, and
they required more PDs related explicitly to curriculum development. So far, they had not been
trained about how to systematically design a proper curriculum during the PDs they had in the
past, and their curricula were developed based on their expertise and experiences. Fifty-three
percent (ten out of 19) of the participants argued that small professional learning communities
(PLCs) were designed to do unit/lesson plans, develop teaching materials, work on assessments,
discuss data, and exchange teaching ideas and strategies. However, they have been using small
PLCs to design their grade-level curricula while working on those mentioned above so time was
very limited and precious to all of them. Evidence from Teacher A showed her perception that
“PD refers to workshops to learn new skills and a new topic. PLC means that (team members)
come together to brainstorm ideas for teaching. And curriculum development solely means
coming together to develop a curriculum.”
There were some new workforce changes to this school year, such as a new instructional
coach role and a new World Language (WL) Director joining the school in August 2021. The
new WL Director realized the alignment problem of the Near Native (NN) track and started to
provide guidance by offering training sessions and the instructional coach provided guidance in
classroom instructions for the Chinese teachers. The results from the data disclosed that the
participants had not got sufficient leadership and guidance from their school leaders on
curriculum development. And the pieces of training they received in the past were not related to
this topic either. Hence, the assessment of assumed cultural setting causes is a need.
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Synthesis of the Results and Findings. The needs for curriculum leadership, experts,
and specialists were consistent throughout the whole research process. The data suggested that
although the school had provided PDs for teachers in various topics, the PDs for curriculum
development were not furnished sufficiently. The participants took the opportunity of joining this
research and voiced their concerns, problems, and hopes for more organizational support,
especially training in this area. Besides, the school had never asked them about their feedback
and opinions on PDs, curriculum leadership, and support for curriculum development. Based on
the above findings, the assessment for organizational causes in this gap analysis is a need in
developing a standards-based Chinese curriculum. See Table 12 for a summary of the
assessment, measurement, and validation of assumed organizational causes.

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Table 12
Assessment, Measurement, and Validation of Assumed Organizational Causes
Organizational mission
Eagle American School is committed to providing each student an exemplary American
educational experience with an international perspective.
Organizational performance goal
By 2024, EAS Chinese teachers will have established a standards-based Chinese
Curriculum.
Stakeholder goal: teachers
By June 2024, the Chinese teachers from three divisions at EAS will complete the
development of a standards-based Chinese curriculum.
Assumed organizational needs of successful teachers
Organizational barriers (cultural models)
Successful teachers believe that they have sufficient resources to collaborate and redesign
the curriculum.
How was it assessed? Was it validated?
Interview, focus groups, and written
responses:

- Teachers answer questions about their
perceptions of sufficient support for their
curriculum development in terms of time,
money, and resources.

Validated: yes.
Evidence themes

- The majority of teachers reported their
needs for curriculum guidance, leadership,
experts, and specialists
- The majority of teachers voiced their needs
for organizational support, such as time,
resources, training, and human resources.
Organizational barriers (cultural settings)
Successful teachers believe that they are provided with capable leadership and appropriate
professional training in the area of curriculum design.
How was it assessed? Was it validated?

Interview, focus groups, and written
responses:

- Teachers answer questions regarding their
perceptions of leadership capabilities and
attachment of importance and adequate
professional development for curriculum
development.

Evidence themes

- The majority of teachers voiced their needs
for organizational support, such as time,
resources, training, and workforce.
- The teachers acknowledged that although
they received PDs in various topics, those
PDs were not related to curriculum
development.
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Validated: yes - Majority of teachers reported their needs
for curriculum guidance, leadership,
experts, and specialists

Summary
Combining the data across knowledge, motivation, and organizational gaps, it was clear
that the teachers believed that they needed organizational support such as curriculum leaders,
experts, and specialists to guide them through developing a standards-based Chinese curriculum.
And they also need other administrative help such as time, resources, and extra staffing to
achieve this task.
The data show that teachers did not have access to ACTFL World Language Standards
and Chinese Language Standards, although many of them had obtained the OPI certificates and
knew the ACTFL Oral Proficiency Guidelines well. It appeared that the teachers were
outstanding and consistent in assessing students’ oral proficiency, but the proficiency guidelines
may not be the only basis for curriculum development. At Elementary School, the teachers
appeared to be still working on their team-agreed understandings of the curriculum framework,
teaching orientations such as proficiency-based or performance-based, and shared content and
resources. At Middle School and High School, the teachers suggested that their curricula were
well developed and aligned, and they had common curricula and standard content for all teachers
and students.
The teachers sounded confident in designing teaching materials, assessments, and units of
study, but they showed low self-efficacy in designing a standards-based curriculum. They
recognized the value and importance of having a standards-based curriculum. Still, their
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motivation was low due to the lack of theoretical knowledge and a macro view of the whole
curriculum. The overseas hired teachers appeared contented regarding their input and output. In
contrast, the local hires seemed angry and disappointed for being treated inequitably with their
salaries and benefits. Their motivation was not as high as the overseas hires.
This chapter included a comprehensive analysis of assumed knowledge, motivational and
organizational causes for Research Question One: What is the current status of the Chinese
teachers’ knowledge, motivation, and organizational resources regarding developing a standards-
based curriculum at SAS? Chapter Five will focus on Research Question Two by establishing
recommended knowledge, motivation, and organizational resources that the school and teachers
might use and achieve the performance goal of developing a standards-based Chinese
curriculum.

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Chapter Five: Recommendations Implementation and Evaluation
The purpose of this chapter is to lay out research-based recommendations that address the
validated knowledge, motivation, and organizational causes as described in the data analysis of
chapter four. I will first present research-based suggestions followed by a plan for
implementation and evaluation. I will end this chapter with a summary of recommendations for
further research, practices, and implications for other international schools.
Research Question 2: Recommendations
Research Question 2 asked the following: What are the recommendations for
organizational practice to create standards-based Chinese curricula at EAS? I laid out
suggestions in the order of knowledge, motivation, and organizational barriers. The following
section discussed the suggested recommendations based on the findings and results based on the
data collected from the participating Chinese teachers at EAS.
Knowledge and Skills
I investigated three knowledge and skills influences that the Chinese teachers need to
demonstrate in curriculum development through this study: declarative, procedural, and
metacognitive knowledge. The declarative knowledge was validated as a need for all three
divisions: elementary school (ES), middle school (MS), and high school (HS). The participants
knew their students very well, but they did not explicitly name theories of learners and learning
styles. Although some of the teachers had recalled specific language acquisition and learning
theories, most of them did not consciously call to mind these theories. Besides, further
investigation indicated that the teachers had no access to ACTFL World Language Standards,
and they might have mixed it with ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines. Their current curricula were
written based on ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines. The curriculum evaluation and comparison led
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by management or outside evaluators had not occurred, although the teachers updated the
curriculum every year. Be that as it may, the teachers’ educational philosophies were not
validated due to insufficient data collected. A solution is required for declarative knowledge for
three divisions at EAS.
The procedural knowledge was validated as an asset for MS and HS and a need for ES.
The teachers from MS and HS had team-agreed curriculum processes, shared focus, and a
common framework. Although ES teachers had shared curriculum focus, they had not developed
team agreed curriculum processes, shared approaches to instruction and assessment, nor
established a common framework due to the recent merger of the K–2 and 35 teams. A solution
is required for the ES team in procedural knowledge.
The metacognitive knowledge was validated as an asset and did not require a solution.
The teachers knew that a curriculum needed to be implemented, evaluated, revised, and updated
to achieve the desired learning outcomes. They knew how their cognitive processes and
strategies impacted their students' learning. These teachers knew what knowledge they needed to
develop a standards-based Chinese curriculum. They constantly spoke about their requirements
for resources, training, curriculum leadership and guidance, and more professional development
opportunities directly related to curriculum development.
Recommendations for Knowledge and Skills
The first recommendation is to provide training sessions on curriculum development. As
most teachers are away from graduate schools and universities for long periods and are not aware
of the latest products and research in curriculum development, it is necessary to refresh their
memories of theories and allow them to get benefits from the latest research and academic
developments. One missing piece in the current curriculum development is precise units of
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progression (Macalister and Nation, 2020) or units of analysis (Long and Crookes, 1993) in the
course, such as world frequency levels and vocabulary sequencing. It is recommended to focus
on this area when developing standards-based K12 curricula. The training sessions should be
more specific, directly related to standards-based curriculum development, and address
divisional knowledge gaps, such as the procedural knowledge gap at ES, and the curriculum
evaluation at three divisions.
One of the causes of the procedural knowledge gap at ES is team building due to the
recent merger, so the training for ES could include team building sessions and achieve team
agreements on shared curriculum processes and a common framework. An important
consideration about curriculum content is its close relationship with the instructional method and
orientation (Nicolls and Nicolls, 2019), which is an essential topic that ES teachers should decide
on and agree on. One of the urgent knowledge needs is developing reading proficiency curricula
at ES and MS; thus, the training could focus on this domain. For the Near Native program at ES,
it is pressing to adopt or agree on a set of Chinese language standards, benchmarks and adapt or
create appropriate curriculum materials. These can be achieved through training sessions. One
ES team member recommended taking reference of the Chinese curricula developed by the
Ministry of Education of the host country and the curriculum materials designed by 汉办 (Han
Ban, Office of Chinese Language Council in China).
The second recommendation is that the school provides resources for teachers to gain
more declarative knowledge for curriculum development, such as access to the latest ACTFL
World Language Standards (2015), Chinese Standards (2015), World-Readiness Standards for
Language Learning (2015), and the revised 2017 NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements, a
collaboration between National Council of State Supervisors for Languages (NCSSFL) and the
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ACTFL guide. However, the teachers are heavily loaded with lesson planning, creating
materials, classroom instructions, professional learning communities (PLCs), communicating
with parents and colleagues, and other administrative duties daily. Thus, it is best to organize and
plan the reading of the documents with teachers and provide training on using these resources.
The school may explore the latest online resources, such as LinguaFolio online, driven by the
2017 NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements.
Motivation
Three motivational influences were examined in this study: self-efficacy, expectancy-
value, and equity. These causes were validated and swayed teachers’ motivation to develop a
standards-based Chinese curriculum. Due to the declarative knowledge gap, the teachers are
confident only in designing curriculum for their own students, creating materials, and developing
common assessments based on their expertise and experiences, thus low self-efficacy. Even
though they all recognized the importance and value of designing a standards-based curriculum,
their expectancy-value motivation was down due to the gaps in declarative knowledge at three
divisions and procedural knowledge at ES.
The equity problem regarding input and output was complex due to disparities in hiring
practices, which result in overseas hires’ high motivation and local hires’ low motivation.
Solutions to address the knowledge gap were elaborated in the above sections; hence, I will
address the motivational gap caused by the inequity issue through examining the different hiring
practices and describing EAS’ progress in the past 30 years.
Inequity from the Different Hiring Practices
The problem of different hiring practices is the result of a 64-year-old EAS policy of
treating local teachers differently from overseas teachers with the resulting impact on the
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motivation of local teachers. The difference in the pay structure for the same job creates
inequities and distinct social classes among teachers, which shapes the present at EAS and many
international schools worldwide. At SAS, 87% of the faculty and administrators are overseas
hires, and the majority of them are from North America. Thirteen percent are locally employed,
and most of them are Chinese (SAS Human Resource Data, 2020).
EAS’ Progress
Although EAS started to engage in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) 2 years ago, the
problem of different hiring practices remains. The current Superintendent and senior
management team publicly acknowledged this problem and have started to tackle it in small
steps. The progress that EAS has achieved in the problem of local hires was to provide free or
partially paid tuition for one or two children of the local hires starting in 2021. This was
achieved through the voices raised by the local hires and the consideration of the administration.
“Our commitment is to provide locally hired teachers who have a household income less than
S$375,000 with financial support such that they will not have to pay more than 15% of their
post-tax, post-living expenses disposable income for one child to attend SAS and 20% for two
children to attend. Locally hired teachers who have a household income of less than S$175,000
will be able to receive support for 100% of their children’s tuition (up to two children).” (EAS
Community Letter from the Superintendent, 2021). Offering partial tuition support for locally
hired teachers may seem a step in the right direction.
Still, those who hold organizational memories remember that the local hires were offered
100% free tuition for two children 10 years ago. Until that time, the local hires had the benefit of
free tuition fees for two children, which symbolized the local hires’ voices and goodwill from the
school to minimize the gap. This practice was in place for about 20 years. However, EAS
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changed this practice in 2011 because it was not written in the local hires’ collective agreement,
or contract. Hence, although EAS’s new practice in 2021 symbolizes progress and encourages
equity, the inequity problem remains compared to the free tuition fee for three children of
overseas hires.
Recommendations for Motivation
In light of the analysis above, there is an urgent need to make changes, eliminate the pay
gap, and use it as a primary way to enhance the motivation of the locally hired teachers.
However, if the school is not determined, ready, or able to abolish the policy of different hiring
practices right away, The findings from this study lead to four suggestions for international
school administrators facing a similar situation to address this problem creatively and step by
step, which in turn would bring in more equity and boost the motivation of the local hires.
First, the school administrators should study the problem in-depth, be more alert of the
unequal packages and adverse effects, take it as their responsibility to solve this problem, and
diligently create options to make systemic changes and compensate the local hires in monetary or
non-monetary ways. Offering partial tuition support for local hires is a first step.
Second, the school should look at remuneration options, offer the same package to all
employees, and create equal compensation for staff from the local area and overseas in terms of
tax, relocation cost, and travel expenses. Some international schools and government schools
offer equal packages to all employees, for example, Hong Kong International School and Beijing
International School.
Third, locally hired members should continue to make their experiences public and
ensure their voices are heard by the whole community. Changes can only be made when
everyone is aware of unequal conditions. All stakeholders will generate more support when
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interest convergence occurs from overseas hires, local hires, parents, and students. A school
identity of equality, diversity, and inclusion is much sought after, and necessary, in this 21st
century digital age.
Finally, there is a lack of published literature on local hire problems in international
schools, and the school and educational leaders should study this topic and disseminate their
findings to the international school community. One of the challenges is that the overseas hires
do not know much about this problem, and the local hires keep silent in order to keep the job.
More research on this topic is necessary to fill this knowledge gap.
Local hires exist at EAS and in many international schools worldwide. It is important to
look into this critical area because education is a platform to promote equality, diversity, and
inclusion. The educators’ responsibility is to raise questions, minimize the harmful effects of
inequity, and establish a better educational environment at schools.
Organizational Barriers
Two organizational influences were investigated in terms of cultural models and cultural
settings. The validated organizational barriers of the cultural model indicated that although the
teachers are heavily loaded with daily instructions and professional learnings, the organization
still allocates curriculum time to design the Chinese curriculum. However, the school did not
provide other resources such as relevant curriculum training and access to standards and
benchmarks. The validated influence of cultural settings demonstrated that the EAS leadership
had not attached importance to the Chinese curriculum development. The teachers had no
sufficient knowledge and training to develop a standards-based Chinese curriculum in a PLC
setting.

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Recommendations for Organizational Barriers
One suggestion is to provide curriculum leadership and guidance and hire curriculum
experts or specialists to guide the teachers in developing a standards-based Chinese curriculum.
EAS had hired language experts to assist with the Chinese program in the past. However, these
experts were all Caucasians, and they were specialists in a language closely related to English
native speakers. Chinese is exceptionally difficult for native English speakers to learn. Thus, the
curriculum experts or specialists should be specialized in Chinese language curriculum design.
More importantly, as Chinese teachers require, these experts should have teaching experiences
and understand the needs of international schools.
The second recommendation is that the school attaches more importance to the Chinese
curriculum development and hires more staff or external consultants to assist the World
Language (WL) Director. The former WL Director had no assistant and left EAS in 2019, and
the school hired a new one who could only get onboard 1 year later. The new WL Director, who
joined EAS in August 2021, has a shared assistant with other colleagues and supervises the Pre-
School to 12 Chinese as World Language programs and the dual-language Chinese Immersion
Program of five grade levels with assistance from deputy principals. Her limited time and energy
may restrict her from going deep into the issue of curriculum development for every proficiency
and grade level. One of the participants in this study mentioned that at CIS, the Chinese principal
had support from three curriculum specialists: one assisted her in focusing on alignment and
consistency, the second assisted her in developing teaching materials, and the third assisted her
in developing common assessments. I suggest that EAS consider adding more staff to assist the
World Language Director.
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The third recommendation is to regularly obtain feedback from the Chinese teachers who
work on the front line. Research has shown that feedback is helpful, and it is a common practice
to be included in professional learning communities (DuFour, DuFour and Eaker, 2008). I have
worked at EAS for 15 years, and there has never been a request for feedback on the Chinese
curriculum development or classroom instructions. It appeared this research was the first time
that the teachers were asked for feedback and reflections on Chinese curriculum development.
Many teachers took it as an opportunity to voice out their concerns and hopes for support. I
suggest that EAS consider adding a feedback system on academic matters instead of
administrative issues. Table 13 summarizes recommendations for the knowledge, motivation,
and organizational influences.

Table 13
Summary for Recommendations: Need for Knowledge, Motivation, and Organizational
Influences
Knowledge influences Cause Recommendations
Knowledge need #1:
declarative
Successful teachers are clear
of their own educational
philosophies, language
acquisition theories, and
learning theories. They
know the standards of the
Chinese curriculum and
know the learners and their
learning styles.
Validated One recommendation is that the school provides
resources for teachers to gain more declarative
knowledge for curriculum development, such as
access to the latest ACTFL World Language
Standards (2015), Chinese Standards (2015),
World-Readiness Standards for Language
Learning (2015), and the revised 2017
NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements, a
collaboration between National Council of State
Supervisors for Languages (NCSSFL) and the
ACTFL guide.

It is best to organize and plan the reading of the
documents with teachers and provide training on
using these resources. The school may explore
the latest online resources, such as LinguaFolio
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online, driven by the 2017 NCSSFL-ACTFL
Can-Do Statements.
Knowledge need #2:
procedural

Successful teachers know
curriculum development
processes, curriculum
focus, and a curriculum
framework.

Validated The second recommendation is to provide training
sessions on curriculum development. The
training sessions should be more specific,
directly related to standards-based curriculum
development, and address divisional knowledge
gaps, such as the procedural knowledge gap at
ES, and the curriculum evaluation of three
divisions.

One of the causes of the procedural knowledge
gap at ES is team building due to the recent
merger, so the training for ES could include
team building sessions and achieve team
agreements on shared curriculum processes and
a common framework.

For the Near Native program at ES, it is pressing
to adopt or agree on a set of Chinese language
standards, benchmarks and adapt or create
appropriate curriculum materials. These can be
achieved through training sessions.
Knowledge need #3:
metacognitive
Successful teachers
understand that a
curriculum needs to be
implemented, evaluated,
revised, and updated in
order to achieve the desired
learning outcomes. They
know how their awareness
of their cognitive processes
and strategies impacts the
students’ learning.
Validated No recommendation is needed as this influence is
an asset.
Motivational influences Cause Recommendations
Motivational need #1: self-
efficacy
Successful teachers are
confident with their
knowledge of developing a
Validated The teachers’ motivation of self-efficacy was low
due to the declarative knowledge gap at three
divisions and procedural knowledge gap at ES.
The solution is the same as that for the
declarative and procedural knowledge gaps.
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standards-based
curriculum.
Motivational need #2:
expectancy-value
Successful teachers recognize
the value of designing a
standards-based curriculum
and believe they are
capable of designing one.
Validated The teacher’s motivation of expectancy-value was
low due to the knowledge gap. The solution is
the same as that for the declarative and
procedural knowledge gaps.
Motivational Need #3: equity
Successful teachers believe
that they are treated fairly
compared to similar others
in terms of input and
output.
Validated The school eliminates the pay gap and offers the
same package to all teachers. If the school is not
determined, ready, or able to do so right away,
they can do it creatively and step by step:

Firstly, the school administrators may study the
problem of different hiring practices in-depth,
be more alert of the unequal packages and
adverse effects, take it as their responsibility to
solve the problem, and diligently create options
to make systemic changes and compensate the
local hires in monetary or non-monetary ways.

Secondly, the schools may look at remuneration
options, offer the same package to all
employees, and create compensation for staff
from overseas in terms of tax, relocation cost,
and travel expenses.

Thirdly, locally hired members may continue to
speak up, make public of their experiences and
feelings, and make their voices heard by the
whole community.

Lastly, further and more research on this topic is
necessary to fill in the gap in the literature.
Organizational influences Cause Recommendations
Organizational need #1:
cultural model
Successful teachers believe
that they have sufficient
Validated One recommendation is to provide curriculum
leadership and guidance and hire curriculum
experts or specialists to guide the teachers in
developing a standards-based Chinese
curriculum. And the curriculum experts or
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resources to collaborate and
redesign the curriculum.
specialists should be specialized in Chinese
language curriculum design. More importantly,
as Chinese teachers require, these experts should
have teaching experiences and understand the
needs of international schools.
Organizational need #2:
cultural settings
Successful teachers believe
that they are provided with
appropriate professional
training in the area of
curriculum design.
Validated The second recommendation is that the school
attaches more importance to the Chinese
curriculum development and hires more staff or
external consultants to assist the World
Language (WL) Director.

The third solution is to regularly obtain feedback
from the Chinese teachers who work on the
front line.

Implementation
The solutions recommended above consist of feedback on academic matters, professional
development targeting the knowledge gap, and organizational support, such as hiring curriculum
experts and specialists to guide through the curriculum development, and modifying hiring
practices to encourage and motivate the locally hired teachers. The proposed implementation
plan starts in June 2022 for team-building at ES and goal setting at three divisions, filling in the
knowledge gap by providing professional development in the year 2022–2023, and working on
the curriculum development in the year 2023–2024.
Feedback
Research has shown that feedback is one of the most effective ways to improve the
quality of instruction and achievement in schools (DuFour, Eaker and DuFour, 2008). The
Chinese teachers have many questions about curriculum development, and obtaining their
feedback on academic matters is the first step towards targeted support. The suggested
implementation plan starts with all Chinese teachers’ input in April 2022 and is followed by a
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goal session in May 2022. This timeline gives the new WL director eight months to get familiar
with the school, teachers, and programs and plan for the PDs in the new school year 2022–2023.
Professional Development
The professional development training sessions include the whole school and divisional
training. I will address the PDs in two topics: training for the entire school and training for the
divisions. The training sessions can be conducted during the PLCs for in-service days and during
other specifically allocated PD times in the 2022–2023 school year.
Training for the Chinese Teachers of the Whole School
The training topics for the three divisions may include the latest research and
development in the Chinese language, memory-refreshing theories such as learning theories,
language acquisition theories, learners and learning styles, how to unpack WL Standards and
Chinese Standards, how to use these standards to guide the curriculum development, how to
evaluate a curriculum, how to identify units of progression, world frequency levels, and
vocabulary sequencing. These sessions can be conducted by external curriculum consultants,
curriculum experts, in-house talents, and the WL Director. And these sessions could spread over
in a whole school year 2022–2023 during teacher in-service days.
Training for ES Chinese Teachers
The team-building sessions should start in April, be complete by June 2022, and be led
by the WL Director. The ES teachers should have an agreement upon their instructional and
assessment methods and orientation and achieve a team-agreed philosophy for curriculum and
instructions. The curriculum training sessions can be conducted from August 2022 and include
an agreed curriculum process, a set of principles, a common curriculum framework, and
developing flexible plans or “source units” for all teachers. The purpose of the source units is to
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provide plenty of possible materials from which teachers can select to be used with any
particular group. These plans are flexible enough to permit modification and cover a wide range
of possible experiences according to any groups’ needs, interests, and abilities (Tyler, 2013).
This training may be conducted through common PD time by curriculum specialists.
Training for Near Native (NN) Teachers at ES
There is a need for K–5 Near Native teachers to decide on standards, benchmarks,
objectives, and a well-designed, aligned, consistent, and spiral curriculum with concrete goals,
abundant teaching materials, resources, common assessments, and standardized communication
with parents. The WL Director should work with the NN teachers and hire an external
curriculum consultant to work on the NN programs in 2022–2023. This training can be
conducted through weekly big PLCs.
Reading Literacy Training for ES and MS Chinese Teachers
As reading literacy is a new requirement for the WL program, teachers have not agreed
upon language standards, common benchmarks, concrete vocabulary, structure levels, and shared
materials and resources. A curriculum expert may lead reading literacy development for ES and
MS and build the curriculum up for K–8. A common PLC time should be set up for Chinese
teachers from ES and MS in 2022–2023 on reading literacy.
Professional Learning Communities
At EAS, there are two kinds of PLCs: big PLCs and small PLCs. Big PLCs are typically
used to work on administrative matters, planning departmental events and activities such as
celebrations of festivals, updates on small PLC planning and activities, discussion of assessment
and data collection, exchange information, and support on teaching strategies, classroom
activities, challenges, and solutions. Small PLCs include three or four teachers who work on the
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same proficiency levels. This time is commonly used for curriculum planning, creating and
sharing materials, assessments, newsletters, and communication and planning for special events.
The implementation plan may take some of the big and small PLC times and provide training
according to divisional needs from August 2022 to May 2023.
Organizational Support
Organizational Support is needed in two areas: tackling the inequity in different hiring
practices and providing sufficient resources for Chinese curriculum development, such as time,
more PD funds, and hiring curriculum experts, specialists, and external consultants to assist the
WL Director and the Chinese teachers. The current WL Director is heavily loaded with the Pre-
School to 12 WL programs (around three thousand and eight hundred students and thirty-eight
Chinese teachers) and the Dual-Language Chinese Immersion program (about two hundred and
thirty students, and ten Chinese teachers). However, she has only a shared assistant in the Office
of Learning to support her.
Enhancing Motivation by Tackling the Issue of Different Hiring Practices
In light of the fact that the motivation of the local hires teachers is lower than overseas
hires, it is important to make changes to the different hiring practices. Although the different
hiring practices are complex and inherited, it is possible to reflect and acknowledge the problem,
address the issue, and provide more equitable remuneration for locally hired teachers. I would
suggest that the leadership team, including the Superintendent, HR Director, the Principals, and
other senior management team members, conduct conversations with locally hired teachers from
August 2022, collect feedback, consult external resources, seek creative options by December
2022, and determine equitable hiring policy by May 2023. The new equitable hiring practices
start in the new school year from August 2023.
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Tiling More Organizational Resources Towards Chinese
Although the Chinese teachers have received quite a lot of training, such as the Inquiry-
based approach, social and emotional learning, and teaching proficiency through reading and
story-telling, they have not got sufficient and systematic training on curriculum development. I
suggest that EAS allocates adequate funds to purchase access to resources such as ACTFL WL
Standards and Chinese Standards, online applications such as LinguaFolio starting from August
2022. The school budgets funds to contract external curriculum consultants, experts, and
specialists to assist Chinese teachers with curriculum development from the Year 2021 to 2022
onwards. EAS creates two new positions and hires a deputy WL Director and an assistant to
support the WL Director and plan the training sessions needed. The organizational support
should be ongoing instead of one shot. In the long run, the Chinese program can only become
better and achieve the reputation of a world-class program with continuous organizational
support. See Table 14 for the solutions and implementation plan.

Table 14
Recommendations and Implementation Plan
Recommendations for the knowledge gap Implementation plan 2022–2023
The first suggestion is to provide training
sessions on curriculum development. The
training sessions should be more specific,
directly related to standards-based
curriculum development, and address
divisional knowledge gaps, such as the
procedural knowledge gap at ES, and the
curriculum evaluation of three divisions.

One of the causes of the procedural
knowledge gap at ES is team building due
Divisional Training

Team-building at ES. The team-building
sessions should start in April, be
complete by June 2022, and be led by the
WL Director. The ES teachers should
agree upon their instructional and
assessment methods and orientation and
achieve a team-agreed philosophy for
curriculum and instructions. The
curriculum training sessions can be
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to the recent merger, so the training for ES
could include team building sessions and
achieve team agreements on shared
curriculum processes and a common
framework.

For the Near Native program at ES, it is
pressing to adopt or agree on a set of
Chinese language standards, benchmarks
and adapt or create appropriate curriculum
materials. These can be achieved through
training sessions.
conducted from August 2022 and include
an agreed curriculum process, a set of
principles, and a common curriculum
framework, and developing flexible
plans or “source units” for all teachers.

Near native training. It is an urgent need
for K–5 NN teachers to decide on
standards, benchmarks, objectives, and a
well-designed, aligned, consistent, and
spiral curriculum with concrete goals,
abundant teaching materials, resources,
common assessments, and standardized
communication with parents. The WL
Director may work with the NN teachers
and hire an external curriculum
consultant to work on the NN programs
in 2022–2023. This training may be
conducted through weekly big PLCs.

Reading literacy training. As reading
literacy is a new requirement for the WL
program, teachers have not agreed upon
language standards, common
benchmarks, concrete vocabulary,
structure levels, and shared materials and
resources. A curriculum expert may lead
reading literacy development for ES and
MS and build the curriculum up for K-8.
A common PLC time should be set up
for Chinese teachers from ES and MS in
2022–2023 on reading literacy.
The second recommendation is that the school
provides resources for teachers to gain more
declarative knowledge for curriculum
development, such as access to the latest
ACTFL World Language Standards (2015),
Chinese Standards (2015), World-Readiness
Standards for Language Learning (2015),
and the revised 2017 NCSSFL-ACTFL
Can-Do Statements, a collaboration
between National Council of State
Supervisors for Languages (NCSSFL) and
the ACTFL guide.

Professional development
The training sessions may be conducted in
the PLCs, four in-service days, and
specifically allocated PD times in the
new school year from August 2022 to
May 2023.

Whole school training
The training topics for three divisions may
include the latest research and
development in the Chinese language,
memory-refreshing theories such as
learning theories, language acquisition
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It is best to organize and plan the reading of
the documents with teachers and provide
training on using these resources. The
school may explore the latest online
resources, such as LinguaFolio online,
driven by the 2017 NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-
Do Statements.

theories, learners and learning styles,
how to unpack WL Standards and
Chinese Standards, how to use these
standards to guide the curriculum
development, how to evaluate a
curriculum, how to identify units of
progression, world frequency levels, and
vocabulary sequencing. These sessions
can be conducted by external
consultants, curriculum experts, in-house
talents, and the WL Director. And these
sessions could spread over in a whole
school year 2022–2023 during teacher
in-service days.
Recommendations for the motivational gap Implementation
The teachers’ self-efficacy motivation was
low due to the declarative knowledge gap at
three divisions and procedural knowledge
gap at ES. The recommendation is the same
for the declarative and procedural
knowledge gaps.
Same as above.
The teacher’s motivation of expectancy-value
was low due to the knowledge gap. The
recommendation is the same for the
declarative and procedural knowledge gaps.
Same as above.
The school eliminates the pay gap and offers
the same package to all teachers. If the
school is not determined, ready, or able to
do so right away, they can do it creatively
and step by step:

Firstly, the school administrators may look
into the problem of different hiring practices
in-depth, be more alert of the unequal
packages and adverse effects, take it as their
responsibility to solve the problem, and
diligently create options to make systemic
changes and compensate the local hires in
monetary or non-monetary ways.

Secondly, the schools may look at
remuneration options, offer the same
The leadership team, including the
Superintendent, HR Director, the
Principals, and other senior
management team members, conduct
conversations with locally hired
teachers from August 2022, collect
feedback and consult external resources,
seek creative options by December
2022, and determine how to do
equitable hiring practices by May 2023.

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package to all employees, and create
compensation for staff from overseas in
terms of tax, relocation cost, and travel
expenses.

Thirdly, locally hired members may continue
to speak up, make public of their
experiences and feelings, and make their
voices heard by the whole community.

Lastly, further and more research on this topic
is necessary to fill in the gap in the
literature.
Recommendation Implementation
One recommendation is to provide curriculum
leadership and guidance and hire curriculum
experts or specialists to guide the teachers
in developing a standards-based Chinese
curriculum. And the curriculum experts or
specialists should be specialized in Chinese
language curriculum design. More
importantly, as Chinese teachers require,
these experts should have teaching
experiences and understand the needs of
international schools.
EAS allocates adequate funds to purchase
access to resources such as WL
Standards and Chinese Standards, online
applications such as LinguaFolio starting
from August 2022. The school budgets
funds to contract external curriculum
consultants, experts, and specialists to
assist Chinese teachers with curriculum
development from the Year 2021 to 2022
onwards.
The second recommendation is that the school
attaches more importance to the Chinese
curriculum development and hires more
staff or external consultants to assist the
World Language (WL) Director.

The third recommendation is to regularly
obtain feedback from the Chinese teachers
who work on the front line.
EAS creates two new positions and hires a
deputy WL Director and an assistant to
support the WL Director and plan the
training sessions needed. The
organizational support should be ongoing
instead of one shot.

Feedback is obtained in April 2022. And
continuous feedback is obtained in and
during the curriculum development
process.

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Evaluation
According to Clark and Estes (2008), the final step in gap analysis is to evaluate and
assess the effectiveness of the implementation plan. When the implementation plan is successful,
creating a standards-based curriculum could be achieved by 2024. Kirkpatrick and
Kirkpatrick (2008) proposed four levels of training evaluation, which will be used as the
framework to measure the success of the implementation program. The four levels of assessment
are described as follows: reaction, learning, behavior, and results.
Evaluation Level 1: Reaction
Reaction measures how valuable the participants felt the training was, how engaged they
were, how they contributed, and how they reacted to it. This step helps determine whether the
professional development is worthwhile and relevant to the participants’ jobs. The objective for
this level is that teachers will reflect upon each PD session they receive in 2022–2023 and
determine whether the knowledge learned is helpful for the Chinese curriculum design. The
desired outcome of the PDs is to ensure relevance to the performance goal and the participants’
engagement. The research completed for this dissertation identified some teachers who
completed their master’s degree recently and were able to recall theories related to learners,
learning, and language acquisition. The PD envisioned through this study will encourage and
motivate teachers to utilize their individual talent and expertise to conduct some of the training
sessions. The trainers can use a survey to determine the engagement and relevance levels. At the
end of the year, it will be helpful to collect teachers’ feedback on the PD sessions they received,
which may be used for the goal setting for the following year.
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Evaluation Level 2: Learning
The level of learning measures what the teachers have and have not learned. It also
evaluates their confidence level in doing things differently and motivational level in making
changes. It determines to which degree the teachers learn the prerequisite knowledge and skills,
confidence, and commitment to the performance goals during the training sessions. The starting
point is to identify the learning objectives and measure these areas before and after the training.
The first goal is that all teachers know what a standards-based curriculum looks like and
includes. With this knowledge, they will be able to look deeper into their curricula and determine
what is needed or not needed to make it a standards-based one. The second goal is that all
teachers have the knowledge of developing a standards-based curriculum, such as the knowledge
of WL standards and Chinese standards, curriculum development processes, framework,
language frequency levels and sequencing, and curriculum evaluation processes. With this
knowledge, the teachers will evaluate their current curricula, make reflections and decisions, and
have the confidence and motivation to redesign their curricula. The third goal addresses specific
divisional needs and provides targeting sessions for individual divisions. Each division has its
strengths and weaknesses, and the training sessions will build upon its strengths and minimize its
weaknesses. The method used to evaluate this level includes surveys on teachers’ knowledge,
motivation, and commitment.
Level Three: Behavior
This level of behavior measures how much of the training people apply their learning and
reveals where they might need help. However, behavior can only change when the conditions are
favorable. The goal is that all Chinese teachers apply the knowledge learned from the
professional development sessions from prestigious Chinese curriculum experts and specialists.
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The desired behavior change is that the teachers use what they have learned and collectively
design their curriculum into a standards-based one. The organizational conditions required for
this level include sufficient and allocated time for training and curriculum development.
Evaluation Level 4: Results
At the level of results, the final results of the training will be analyzed, including
outcomes that the organization determines to be good for businesses and good for team
members. The emphasis is on creating desired products for the whole implementation plan. The
performance goal for teachers at EAS is to develop a standards-based Chinese curriculum. Hence
the desired outcomes are appropriately aligned, consistent, and spiral standards-based K12
Chinese curricula. An external curriculum expert could be hired to evaluate the entire curricula.
Summary
The Kirkpatrick and Kirkpatrick (2008) model is utilized to assess the implementation
plan of the recommended solutions. This model will also help mark potential problems and
places that the training might not have covered, which may be used as possible training topics for
the following year. Table 15 summarizes goals, outcomes, and methods related to the four
evaluation levels.

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Table 15
Summary of the Goals, Outcomes, and Methods According to the Evaluation Levels
Level 1: Reaction–the degree to which the participants find the training valuable,
engaging, and related to their jobs.
Goals Desired outcomes Method
By May 2022, a performance
goal will be set to develop
standards-based curricula

The teachers will reflect
upon each PD session they
receive in 2022–2023 and
determine whether the
knowledge learned is
helpful for the Chinese
curriculum design.
To ensure the training
sessions are relevant to the
curriculum development
and the participants are
engaged in these learning
sessions.

- Quick Survey for every PD
session, semester and year-
end surveys for the entire
PD sessions.

- The potential problems
spotted in the surveys may
be used as the topics for the
training sessions the
following year.
Level 2: Learning–the degree to which the participants acquire the knowledge and skills,
changed confidence and motivation, and commitment to make changes.
Goals Desired outcomes Method
By May 2023,
- All teachers know what a
standards-based curriculum
looks like and includes.

- All teachers have the
knowledge of developing a
standards-based curriculum,
such as the knowledge of
WL standards and Chinese
standards, curriculum
development processes,
framework, language
frequency levels and
sequencing, and curriculum
evaluation processes.

- Specific divisional needs
are addressed and training
The teachers are confident
with their knowledge and
skills in curriculum
development, motivated to
reflect on their current
curricula, and committed
to redeveloping their
current curricula into
standards-based ones.
- Surveys will be conducted
on teachers’ knowledge,
confidence, motivation, and
commitment in curriculum
development.

129

sessions for individual
division are provided.
Level 3: Behavior–the degree to which the participants apply the knowledge and skills
learned from the PD sessions in their work.
Goals Desired outcomes Method
By May 2024, all Chinese
teachers will apply the
knowledge learned from
the professional
development sessions and
collectively redesign their
current curricula into
standards-based ones.

The school allocates
sufficient time and
resources to support
Chinese curriculum
development.

The teachers apply what
they learned to redesign
their current curricula as
teams.
- Surveys on what
knowledge is used in
curriculum development.
- Surveys on what potential
issues appear during the
curriculum design.
- These potential issues will
become the basis of
designing professional
development the following
year.
Level 4: Results–the degree to which the desired outcome occurs from training and support.
Goals Desired 0utcomes Method
By 2024, the K12 teachers
will have established
standard-based curricula.
The appropriately aligned,
consistent, and spiral
standards-based K12
Chinese curricula are
ready for external
evaluation.
Hiring external curriculum
experts to evaluate the
K12 Chinese curricula.

Future Research
During the study, I identified two areas that require additional research: Chinese
curriculum development and differential hiring practices in international schools. These two
areas are important but often neglected. I would suggest more future research in these two areas.
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Curriculum Development in International Schools
Although international schools are located in the host countries, as private institutions the
schools usually have the freedom to determine academic programs without the governance of
relevant authorities in the host countries. While taking advantage of this relative freedom in
curriculum development, the schools may face the dilemma of searching for guidance and a basis
for curriculum development. The same problem happens to the Chinese programs at EAS, other
subjects, and other international schools. In addition, With the fluidity nature of students, faculty,
and staff in international schools, the curricula' leadership, guidance, consistency, and alignment
remain a challenging area. International Schools occupy a big part of the educational field. ISC
Research (2021) indicated there were around 5.68 million students and 550,846 staff in the
12,373 international schools worldwide. The topics of curriculum development in international
schools are less researched and I would recommend more research in these areas.
Different Hiring Practices
For many international schools, the widespread different hiring practices divide the
faculty into overseas hires and local hires. There is not much scholarly literature studying this
specific problem in international schools. Besides, the local hires community tends to remain
silent for job security. Although there are some informal articles about this topic, the authors
mainly tend to acknowledge the problem's existence instead of studying it. These different hiring
practices grouped faculty and staff into two distinctive groups according to the economic status
of the employment package and further divided the community based on money, power, race,
class, and ethnicity. The problem of different hiring practices is multi-layered and complicated,
not only at EAS but also in other international schools and multinational companies globally. I
would suggest that those who understand this problem do more research in this field.
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Conclusion
In this study, I used Clark and Estes’ (2008) gap analysis framework to identify the
problem of Chinese curriculum development at EAS, an international school located in
Southern-East Asia. Although the Chinese teachers have been writing and updating their
curricula regularly, the curricula they have in hand need more work to become standards-based.
Based on the analysis of the data collected, solutions and implementation plans are proposed to
fill in the gap in knowledge, motivation, and organizational barriers and achieve the
organizational performance goals. Kirkpatrick and Kirkpatrick’s (2006) evaluation models are
applied to evaluate the implementation plan. Furthermore, the evaluation results will become the
starting point of another round of gap analysis, solutions, implementation, and evaluations.
It is worth noting that this research is heavily context-based and applied to EAS's context
only. However, as there are similar situations of Chinese curriculum development, this research
may also serve as a reference and guide for other international schools. The vision of EAS is to
offer standards-based programs and be a leader in the educational field. And it is important to
scrutinize the curricula, not only the Chinese ones, and redesign them into truly standards-based
curricula.
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Appendix A: Recruitment Email
Date:
Dear ____________,
This is Shuna Sun, a Doctoral student at Rossier School of the University of Southern
California. For the purpose of my dissertation, I would like to invite you to participate in a study
investigating the performance role of developing a standards-based Chinese curriculum. The
interview/focus group will take about 45 minutes of your time and the location will be in one of
the classrooms at EAS. And the whole interview session will be recorded for further analysis.
Please be rest assured that this interview/focus group will be completely confidential and
your identity will be protected. I will take the necessary measures to ensure I am the only one
who accesses this information you share. Once my dissertation is approved, I could share a copy
with you if you are interested.
Attached is the study Information Sheet and guiding questions for your reference. If you
have any questions, I can be reached via email: shunasun@usc.edu and HP: 9337 1576.
Thank you in advance for supporting my study.

Sincerely,
Shuna Sun
147

Appendix B: Information Sheet
University of Southern California
Rossier School of Education
3470 Trousdale Pkwy, Los Angeles CA, 90089
A Gap Analysis of Standards-based Chinese Curriculum Development
You are invited to participate in a research study. Research studies include only people who
voluntarily choose to take part. This document explains information about this study. You should
ask questions about anything that is unclear to you.
PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
This study aims to evaluate EAS’ performance related to the goal of developing a standards-based
Chinese curriculum and the analysis will focus on areas of knowledge and skills, motivation, and
organizational issues.
PARTICIPANT INVOLVEMENT
If you agree to take part in this study, you will be asked to participate in an interview/focus group
with a duration of 45 minutes.
CONFIDENTIALITY
There will be no identifiable information obtained in connection with this study. Your name,
address, or other identifiable information will not be collected.
INVESTIGATOR CONTACT INFORMATION
The Principal Investigator is:
● Name: Shuna Sun
HP: 9337 1576
Email: ssun@sas.edu.sg
The Faculty Advisors are:
● Name: Dr. Lawrance Picus
Email: lpicus@rossier.usc.edu
● Name: Dr. Darlene Robles
Email: drobles@rossier.edu.sg
● Name: Dr. Ekaterina Moore
Email: ekaterim@usc.edu
IRB CONTACT INFORMATION
University Park Institutional Review Board (UPIRB), 3720 South Flower Street #301, Los
Angeles, CA 90089-0702, (213) 821-5272 or upirb@usc.edu.
148

Appendix C: Interview Protocol for Chinese Teachers at EAS
Researcher Name: _______________
Research Questions
● What is the current status of the Chinese teachers’ knowledge, motivation, and
organizational resources with regard to developing standards-based curricula?
● What are the recommendations for organizational practice to create standards-based
Chinese curricula at EAS?
Setting the Stage:
1. How long have you been working at Singapore American
School (EAS)?
2. What grade levels have you taught since you joined EAS?
Knowledge Questions
3. What do you think is important in Chinese curriculum
development?
4. If someone were to ask you what Chinese curriculum
standards and benchmarks are, what would you say to them?
5. What assumptions do you make about your knowledge on
developing a standards-based Chinese curriculum?
6. In terms of curriculum development, what kind of changes
would you like to see at EAS?
Motivational Questions
7. How do you perceive the importance of developing a
standards-based curriculum?
Notes
Build rapport

Declarative
Declarative
Procedural
Metacognitive
Expectancy Value
Self-efficacy
Equity

149

8. How capable would you feel if someone asks you to redesign
your current curriculum into a standards-based curriculum?
9. In terms of salary and benefits, how do you feel about being
treated at EAS?
10. How does your perception of equity and fairness affect your
motivation in Chinese curriculum development?
11. What are the challenges you face in terms of standards-based
curriculum development if any?
12. What support do you think you need in order to develop a
standards-based Chinese curriculum?
Organizational Questions
13. How do you look at the articulation and alignment of the
Chinese curricula across divisions at EAS?
14. What is your opinion on the relationship between PD, PLC,
and curriculum development?
15. What is your perception of ideal organizational support
towards Chinese curriculum development?
Closing Question
16. Is there anything else you would like to add to this topic?

Cultural Models
Cultural Settings

Abstract (if available)

Abstract International schools are independent of the governance of the ministry of education of the host countries. Despite the fact that it is a great advantage to design curricula as the schools and teachers wish, there appears also a need for guidelines, standards, and benchmarks for curriculum design. At Eagle American School (EAS), the Preschool–12 Chinese curricula were teacher developed and school based. This study sought to understand the Chinese teachers’ perceptions about developing a standards-based Chinese curriculum as a World Language Program at EAS. This research was structured using Clark and Estes’ (2008) KMO (knowledge, motivation, and organization) framework, and were guided by the two following research questions:
1. What is the current status of the Chinese teachers’ knowledge, motivation, and organizational resources with regards to developing a standards-based curriculum?
2. What are the recommendations for organizational practice to create a standards-based Chinese curriculum at EAS?
Data for this study were collected from a sample of nineteen Chinese teachers from elementary, middle, and high school at EAS. By analysing the data generated from focus groups, semi-structured interviews, and written responses to research questions, there appeared knowledge gaps, especially declarative and procedural knowledge, motivational gaps in terms of self-efficacy, expectancy-value, and equity. There were also organizational barriers in terms of cultural setting and cultural model. Recommendations were made according to the analysis of the gaps. And an implementation plan and evaluations were suggested using Kirkpatrick and Kirkpatrick’s (2010) new world model.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Sun, Shuna (author)

Core Title Developing standards-based Chinese curricula in international schools: a gap analysis for Eagle American School

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Educational Leadership

Degree Conferral Date 2022-05

Publication Date 05/20/2022

Defense Date 03/24/2022

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Chinese curriculum development,Chinese teachers,international schools,KMO,OAI-PMH Harvest,standards-based

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Picus, Lawrence (committee chair), Moore, Ekaterina (committee member), Robles, Darline (committee member)

Creator Email shunasun@usc.edu,shunasun2013@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC111333308

Unique identifier UC111333308

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Sun, Shuna

Internet Media Type application/pdf

Type texts

Source 20220523-usctheses-batch-943 (batch), University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

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