ABSTRACT
Developing an awareness of the extent to which curricular changes are infl uenced by and are manifestations of social forces is an important understanding for curriculum developers. As was introduced in the vignette, K-12 public school teachers in the U.S. are expected to follow a required curriculum for content and grade level. A required curriculum does not specifi cally dictate to teachers how they are to deliver the required curriculum. The assumption that most public school administrators make is that it is clear to all K-12 teachers that there is an expectation that they must teach to the core. In the vignette above, we see that even though there is a required curriculum for language arts and the teacher knew that she was expected to follow it, she did not. It was not the primary force that drove her teaching or her decision-making process. There are always social forces and educational trends at work that infl uence how teachers will implement existing curricula. Both language teaching and curriculum development can best be understood if viewed in relationship to societal and contextual factors that infl uence decision-making. Curriculum must also be viewed against a historical backdrop of societal change both in terms of the fi eld of English language teaching and specifi c contexts, such as within public schools, private language schools, government sponsored programs, intensive English programs (IEPs), or higher education within the fi eld.
