1

CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT: THE INTERFACE BETWEEN

POLITICAL AND PROFESSIONAL DECISIONS (2010)

Péter Medgyes & Marianne Nikolov

Introduction

This chapter falls into two main sections. The first section is concerned with general aspects
of curriculum development and innovation. It sets out to define the curriculum in relation to
its sister concept, the syllabus, and further it examines the connection between theoretical and
practical aspects of curriculum development. The chapter goes on to address the issue of
curriculum innovation, an undertaking aimed at resolving the conflict between what is
desirable and what is acceptable and feasible. In view of pressing needs, this contradiction
has become more acute in recent years, giving rise to various kinds of friction between
curriculum designers and teachers on the one hand, and specialists and policymakers on the
other. Among the conditions supposed to ensure the success of curriculum reforms, the
primary one requires concerted efforts among all participants in education. Turning to
language education in particular, the first section of the chapter concludes by taking stock of
the major curriculum models adopted in the past forty years. The second section is devoted to
illustrating the main aspects of curriculum design postulated in the first section. The country
chosen to exemplify these assumptions is Hungary, a country in which curriculum reforms
were necessitated by pervasive political, economic and social changes in the last decade of
the twentieth century. Through an analysis of interim versions of the National Core
Curriculum, the way political decisions are brought to bear on curriculum reform in general
and on the development of the foreign language syllabus in particular is demonstrated.

What is the curriculum?

Issues relating to the curriculum have been of interest to philosophers and educators since the
time of Plato, but its formal study really began only in the twentieth century. However, as in
the case of many other new disciplines, there was no consensus over the meaning and scope
of curriculum, and definitions varied according to academic allegiance and geographical
location.
It was not until the last quarter of the century that debates over definition had
subsided and the term curriculum had come to refer to the whole educational process,
including the design, implementation, and evaluation of language programs (Richards, 2001).
In this broad sense, curriculum also comprises methods and approaches, measures of
evaluation, teaching materials and equipment, and even teacher education (Stern, 1983). In
contrast to curriculum, syllabus refers to a more circumscribed document generally taken to
refer to the content of an individual subject, such as history, physics, or English as a second
or foreign language (Dubin & Olshtain, 1986; Yalden, 1987).
Curriculum studies is an umbrella term covering both theoretical and practical issues;
in fact researchers differ mainly in their choice either to move toward deeper immersion in
academic scholarship, with only an indirect or tangential interest in practical issues, or to
become more closely involved with school affairs and the mechanics of curriculum
innovation (Jackson, 1992). In this regard, Pratt and Short complained that although ‘a
considerable body of knowledge concerning curriculum [studies] has emerged in the course
of the twentieth century, so far its impact on actual school practice has been minimal’ (1994:
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1325). This outcome is not only a result of the lack of a widely accepted and explicitly
formulated theoretical paradigm (Johnson, 1989) but also of the adoption of a top-down
model of curriculum development. According to this model, the theorists’ job is to articulate
well-defined general educational aims and behavioral objectives, design detailed content
specifications, and set valid and reliable assessment criteria, whereas practitioners are
relegated to the task of implementation.
Challenging this distribution of work, Stenhouse (1975) argued that it forces teachers
to adopt a hidden curriculum, that is, an alternative teaching program in the face of official
dictates. This contradiction can be resolved only by offering teachers the chance to subject
their professional skills and attitudes to critical scrutiny through continuous and active
involvement in curriculum research and development. The underlying images in Stenhouse’s
line of argument are those of the reflective teacher (Schön, 1983) and the teacher researcher
(Freeman, 1998), which have become catch-phrases in educational literature. To drive home
the same message, Graves substitutes enactment for implementation in order to reflect the
central role that teachers and learners play in the educational process, asserting that
‘curriculum must be enacted to exist’ (2008: 152).

What is curriculum innovation?

Attempts at innovation are spurred and justified by human needs which, for the purpose of
this discussion, may be defined as ‘a discrepancy between an actual and a preferred state’
(Pratt & Short, 1994: 1321). The key attributes of innovation are that (a) it is change that
involves human intervention, and (b) it is aimed at bringing about improvement (White,
1993). This is more a regular sentence than a list. Obviously, certain needs specifically call
for innovation in education, even though sociologists seem to agree that education basically
serves a socially and culturally reproductive function and is therefore conservative and
resistant to change.
Until the 1970s, educational and curriculum reforms followed one another at a steady
pace, and most of them were limited to the institution of minor modifications. In the final
decades of the century, however, the pace of curriculum reforms accelerated, and their scope
widened in response to the demands of a rapidly changing world. Fundamental measures
were taken to reform and centralize the curriculum even in such countries as the United
Kingdom, the United States, and Australia, which earlier had taken little interest in
curriculum issues (Skilbeck, 1994).
Curriculum reform, like any other innovation, involves several kinds of participants,
each assigned with distinct roles. Five main types of role may be distinguished:

1. Policy-makers, who take the major decisions (politicians, ministry officials,

deans, heads of departments)
2. Specialists, who provide the necessary resources (curriculum and syllabus
designers, materials writers, methodologists, teacher trainers)
3. Teachers, who deliver the services
4. Students, who receive the services
5. Mediators, who liaise among all the participants (government agencies like the
British Council, the United States Information Agency, and the Goethe
Institut, or nongovernmental organizations, such as the Soros Foundation).

Policy constraints
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In theory, any participant may initiate action, but in practice teachers (not to speak of
students) can seldom make their voices heard beyond their classrooms or schools. Specialists,
but especially curriculum and syllabus designers, are usually in a better position to influence
policymakers (Kaplan, 1992). However, the right of policymakers to act at their own
discretion is rarely challenged, in recognition of the responsibility they assume for their
decisions. Judicious specialists are willing to admit that a policy decision may be beneficial
even when it runs contrary to current educational or research wisdom (Judd, 1972). After a
decision has been made, it is the professional and moral duty of specialists to state their views
on feasibility, costing, and other aspects of implementation; again, it is up to policymakers
whether or not to seek expert advice.
Nevertheless, it appears that curriculum innovation suffers from what the American
sociologist Ogburn (cited in Skilbeck, 1994) once defined as social lag. Driven by economic,
financial, and social constraints, policymakers often find that the rate at which educational
reform is being introduced is too slow. In Pratt and Short’s view, ‘curriculum is not
successfully developed and installed until political pressure is strong enough to overcome the
forces of tradition, inertia, and vested interest that work against change in educational
institutions’ (1994: 1320). To make matters worse, there is growing dissatisfaction with the
quality of education delivered, from which policymakers conclude that

‘the curriculum should no longer be considered the “secret garden” for the
professionals to tend and enjoy. [...] The content of schooling and methods of
teaching are held to be too important to be left in the hands of teachers and
other educational professionals. They must be brought into line with the
overall objectives of society’ (Skilbeck, 1994: 1339, 1341).

Conditions for success

Curriculum development is a complex activity, and its products usually have slim chances of
long-term survival; in Adams and Chen’s estimate (1981, cited in Markee, 1997) 75 percent
of all innovations fail to take root. However, if certain preliminary measures are not taken
before designing the curriculum, the chance of success may be greatly enhanced. The first
question to be asked is whether the reform is necessary, timely, and feasible. The
continuation of a program that has lost steam usually causes less damage than the
introduction of a reform that is unjustifiable, premature, or short of financial support and
human resources. The second issue is that campaign-like reforms urged by agents with vested
personal interests in its realization are dangerous. In general, evolution is a far more desirable
goal than revolution in curriculum development (Johnson, 1989; Stenhouse, 1975). The third
consideration is that curriculum design should be conducted with methodological rigour
(Markee, 1997). Fullan is right in saying that ‘large plans and vague ideas make a lethal
combination’ (1982: 102). Finally, any innovative idea is bound to hurt those whose
psychological and occupational security rests on the survival of the old system. Therefore,
efforts should be made to convince opponents about the benefit that the new curriculum will
bring them (Kaplan, 1992; Kaplan & Baldauf, 2007).
Once the decision to get the curriculum reform off the ground has been made, a team
of specialists is invited to set to work. Experienced specialists are aware that curriculum
development, like most human endeavour, is a hopelessly untidy business, rife with
mismatches, uncertainties, and redundancies. It cannot be expected to work merely by
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legislation, decree, white papers, and centrally issued directives (Skilbeck, 1994). This being
the case, every participant involved in the undertaking should be prepared to engage in
continuous communication with every other agent. Only by dint of close collaboration and
mutual responsiveness can problems be identified, precluded, and remedied.

Curriculum models in language education

Let us now turn to issues that specifically relate to second and foreign language education. In
analyzing the relationship between general curriculum theory and curriculum theory in
language teaching, Stern noted that, in fact, ‘very little movement of thought across these two
trends has taken place’ (1983: 442). The two exceptions he referred to are Halliday,
McIntosh, and Strevens (1964) and Mackey (1965), who had made elaborate attempts at
designing a language curriculum based on theoretical underpinnings. With reference to
language projects, Kennedy (1988) also complained that, whereas the literature in other fields
of education was rich, there was a scarcity of research relating to language education. In a
similar vein, Fettes wrote, ‘the exlusion of education research from the field of language
planning [...] appears decidedly unhelpful’ (1997: 17).
Investigating innovative language syllabuses in the last third of the twentieth century,
one is dazzled by the variety of directions and models (Howatt, 2004). After the eclipse of the
audiolingual method in the late 1960s, Stern (1983) advocated the need to break away from
the method concept; indeed, method became a taboo word, as testified by the names of the
most quoted language teaching models of the 1970s, including silent way, community
language learning, suggestopedia, and total physical response (Richards and Rodgers, 1986;
Stevick, 1980). Incidentally, despite the originality underlying their philosophies and
practices, these models had limited currency in language classrooms.
However, the real breakthrough in language education came with the advent of
communicative language teaching (CLT), a paradigm that has permeated the language
teaching scene since the 1970s. Originally called the communicative approach, it had gone a
long way before it shed the capital letters and metamorphosed from a method through a
syllabus (i.e., the functional-notional syllabus; Munby, 1978; Van Ek, 1977; Wilkins, 1976)
to an all-encompassing humanistic philosophy of language education (Moskowitz, 1978;
Rogers, 1969; Stevick, 1990; Tudor, 1997), begetting a plethora of syllabuses and
methodologies, as well as classroom procedures and techniques (Breen & Candlin, 1980;
Brumfit & Johnson, 1979; Krashen & Terrell, 1983; Littlewood, 1981; Widdowson, 1978).
Among the best-known syllabuses are the procedural syllabus (Breen & Littlejohn, 2000;
Clarke, 1991; Prabhu, 1987), the content-based syllabus (Snow, Met & Genesee, 1989), the
content-based syllabus (Snow, 1998; Snow, Met & Genessee, 1989), the task-based syllabus
(Crookes & Gass 1993; Ellis, 2003; Skehan, 1996), and the lexical syllabus (Willis, 1990).
Nevertheless, two caveats may well be in place. One concerns critiques that have found fault
with CLT on both theoretical and pragmatic grounds (Medgyes, 1986; Swan, 1985). The
other has to do with the imposition of CLT under all circumstances, even in countries whose
educational ideologies and cultural traditions are not in harmony with learner-centredness and
humanistic education as defined by the leading theoreticians and ambassadors of CLT
(Holliday, 1994; Phillipson, 1992). Although CLT has become a buzzword, there is reason to
believe that teachers have continued to follow more structural lines in their classroom
practices (Karavas-Doukas, 1996).1

1 Markee (1997) warns that case studies may prompt some readers to ask, ‘What does this project have to do
with me?’ This is a legitimate criticism, but only if the case study fails to demonstrate the issues raised or
 5

On a more general plane, Breen finds no fault with the mismatch between innovative
ideas as they feature in the syllabus and the process of language teaching and learning,
because the ‘syllabus is mediated by teaching and the encircling classroom context within
which instruction is only one element’ (1987: 159). Widdowson goes even further when he
suggests that the classroom is largely unaffected by ‘shifts of thinking’ (2004: 369).
The gap between advances in language syllabus design and slow progress in
modification of classroom practice has to do, among other things, with inadequacies of
teacher education. Most training institutions still fail to perceive teachers as facilitators of
change and to prepare them for this role (Allwright, 2005).

Hungary – a case study

To illustrate the process of curriculum development and the nature of curriculum innovation,
the rest of the chapter will present a case study. The country chosen to exemplify the
assumptions made in the previous sections is Hungary, the authors’ country of origin. After a
discussion of how political changes have influenced educational policy in the past decade, the
investigation will focus on the processes that have interacted in the development of a new
national core curriculum (NCC) in general and the foreign language syllabus in particular, as
well as the degree of impact these processes have had on classroom practice.

The political and educational context of curriculum innovation

By the mid-1980s, it had become obvious in Hungary, as in all the other countries of Central
and Eastern Europe, that the communist system was not going to improve unless the entire
political and economic system underwent change. As a herald of an imminent cataclysm, the
Education Act of 1985 undermined the communist educational system, while the 1990
Amendment, passed by the last communist government, gave it the coup de grȃce. By
reducing heavy administrative and political control over education, these two acts gave more
autonomy to individual schools, canceled the prescriptive control of the curriculum, and
restored teachers’ pedagogical sovereignty, offering them a free choice of methodology and
teaching materials (Medgyes & Miklósy, 2000, 2005).
Communism imploded in 1989. The first free election, held in 1990, brought a
conservative government to power, which, oddly enough, condoned a model of education
more centralised than the one adopted by its reform-minded communist predecessors.
Whereas the socialist-liberal government formed in 1994 was committed to liberalizing the
education system, four years later the pendulum swung back at the push of another
conservative government. The coalition government of socialists and liberals came back to
power in 2002 and was reelected in 2006. As a result, a number of laws that had been
abolished by the conservatives were reinstated, while several others were passed. A new law
concerned the school-leaving examination, which gave priority to instruction providing
practical skills rather than the rote learning of lexical knowledge. Incidentally, this shift of
balance hamornized with general educational trends within the European Union.
There are at least two lessons to learn from this political tug-of-war. One has to do
with the limited impact policy decisions taken by consecutive governments with differing
ideologies seem to have had on classroom life; apart from a growing feeling of insecurity
among teachers, no significant changes can be observed in their teaching practices. The

exhibit their relevance to the readers’ own concerns and environments. The authors hope to have avoided both
pitfalls.
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second lesson relates to the academic performance of Hungarian students in the light of
international comparative studies. Whereas Hungarian students did extremely well in the
1970s and 1980s, their results have gradually declined since the late 1980s, as evidenced by
both national and international surveys (Csapó, 1998, 2002; OECD, 2006), and no
government or political will has thus far proven capable of reversing this downward trend. In
addition, these two lessons are indications of the social lag, referred to earlier, with which
education responds to political, social, and economic changes.

Educational policy and the National Core Curriculum

These fluctuations in Hungarian politics are reflected in curricular innovation and can be
traced through the development of the NCC. The need to design a new curriculum had
already been recognised by the last communist government. Then, from the early 1990s on,
several versions followed one another in quick succession, until the final version came into
effect in 2007.
The curriculum designers involved in developing the NCC had been randomly
selected, and it was at the whim of policymakers that their services were retained throughout
the process or dispensed with at some stage. In accordance with the consensus-seeking ethos
of postcommunist democracies, specialists, including designers of local curricula, materials
writers, and examination experts, were also invited to comment on the different versions of
the NCC. Their suggestions, however, were often considered not so much on the basis of
their intrinsic professional value as on the strength of the political message they were judged
to carry. Furthermore, many schools, pedagogical institutes, and university departments were
also invited to provide feedback, but it is unclear what actually happened to this feedback. As
for teacher feedback, because teachers had not been asked to express views on curriculum
matters, the scope of their responses was rather limited, and their voices could hardly be
heard in the NCC.
From among the different versions of the NCC (1990, 1993; Hungarian Ministry of
Education, 1995, 2003, 2007), the one published in 1995 may be considered innovative on
several counts. To give an example, traditional subject areas were arranged in integrated
cultural domains, in an attempt to loosen up subject boundaries across the curriculum. This
approach came under heavy criticism on the grounds, on the one hand, that it was alien to
Hungarian educational traditions and, on the other hand, that there were no teachers available
to teach such integrated content areas. Despite the controversy, these cultural domains have
been maintained in subsequent versions of the NCC as well.
To make matters worse, the idea of introducing cultural domains was not carried
beyond the confines of the NCC, and the subsequent examination reform still structured its
requirements around traditional school subjects, rather than around cultural domains. In other
areas, too, although the NCC broke new ground, it was fraught with contradictions, which,
combined with protests from specialists professing conservative views, rendered its
implementation a daunting task. Confronted with both pragmatic and ideological constraints,
the second conservative government decided to slow down the process of introducing the
NCC and, simultaneously, to subject it to thorough revision. revisions, however, were stalled
until the second socialist-liberal coalition takeover in 2002.
Another controversy concerned the two-tier versus the three-tier curriculum hierarchy.
According to the original two-tier idea, local educational bodies, particularly schools, were
urged to develop (on the basis of the NCC) their own local curricula, which were intended to
give schools the opportunity to meet local needs and involve teachers in a worthwhile
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professional activity besides classroom teaching. As a result, hundreds of local curricula were
devised and implemented all over the country. However, when the new conservative
government came to power, it decided to insert centrally prepared frame curricula between
the NCC and the local curricula. Partly according to one’s political allegiance, a frame
curriculum could be regarded either as a helpful device to exempt schools and teachers from
the burden of extra work or, conversely, as a pretext to curb their administrative and
professional autonomy. Not long after the socialist-liberal coalition returned in 2002, the idea
of the frame curricula simply fizzled out.

Foreign languages in the National Core Curriculum

Modern languages, which represent one of the ten cultural domains, may be perceived as a
primary conveyor of innovation in the NCC. First, the most spectacular curricular change in
1989 ended the monopoly of Russian with the result that the study of other foreign languages
became accessible on a large scale (Enyedi & Medgyes, 1998; Nikolov, 1999a). Second, the
accession of Hungary to the European Union in 2004 increased the need to speak foreign
languages and adopt European norms. All the documents relating to foreign-language
education since 1989 have been designed to be “euroconform”; more specifically, they have
adopted the functional-notional syllabus and have advocated humanistic and communicative
principles of education. A milestone in this process was the integration of levels of
proficiency in the ‘Common European Framework of Reference’ (Council of Europe, 2001)
into the Hungarian reform of school-leaving exams and the later versions of the NCC.
In the following, five versions of the NCC will be analyzed within the framework of
foreign language education. Although all of them address the same political, linguistic, and
pedagogical concerns, the points of departure are different, and they exhibit divergencies in
language policy and specialist opinion. Most important, whereas the earlier version tended to
satisfy needs rooted in the national past, the recent versions emphasize what Hungary has in
common with contemporary European trends. To illustrate these differences, four issues will
be examined:

1. Native language versus foreign languages

Versions 1 and 2 emphasized the isolation of Hungarian among Indo-European

languages and elaborated on the role of foreign-language study in the learners’
native language development. Whereas version 1 explicitly stated that teaching
should shed light on similarities and differences between the first and the foreign
language, this contrastive principle was softened into “awareness raising” in
version 2, only to be pushed into the appendix in version 3 and ultimately to fade
into oblivion in versions 4 and 5. These alterations testify to shifts of focus both in
linguistic attitudes and in the political agenda.

2. Choice of languages

It is revealing how the role of Latin and English in relation to other foreign
languages has changed over time. Whereas in version 1 only English and German
were listed as examples of modern languages, and Latin was referred to only
indirectly, version 2 avoided specifying any languages. Perhaps with the purpose
of making concessions to conservative policymakers, version 3 mentioned Latin
 8

as a second foreign language in the introduction but then supplied examples only
for English, French, German, and Russian. In version 4 new categories were set
up: frequently taught modern foreign languages (English and German), less
frequently taught languages, languages of ethnic minorities, and dead languages.
However, achievement targets were identified merely for the first two categories.
Unlike in earlier versions, freedom in language choice in version 4 was declared,
with no priority given to English or any other foreign language. Version 5
witnessed a major change in that it obliged all secondary schools to offer English
for those students who requested it. Strangely enough, apart from a sheer mention
of this new regulation in the introduction, the rest of the syllabus fails to discuss it
at any length. This suggests that politicians had not bothered to consult
professionals before the decision was made – or since then, for that matter.

3. Starting age

Before 1989, students started learning Russian in grade 4 (age 9), but as the
regime became more liberal, so the opportunity for learning other foreign
languages improved. Despite pressing social and individual demands for foreign
language instruction after 1989, neither version 1, nor version 2 specified the time
when foreign language instruction should commence. To aggravate the situation,
version 3 pushed the compulsory starting age back to grade 5 (age 10), that is, a
year later than stipulated in the 1980s. Versions 4 and 5, however, not only set
grade 4 as the initial year of compulsory foreign language study, but allowed –
what has since become common practice – schools to launch language programs
even earlier.

4. Proficiency levels

Whereas earlier versions alternately articulated two or three levels of language

proficiency, versions 4 and 5 specified achievement targets at four levels out of
the six defined in the “Common European Framework of Reference” (Council of
Europe, 2001). A dual system was adopted, according to which students may take
their school-leaving exams either at level B1 or B2. Version 5 includes a further
specification: Students who participated in a year of intensive learning program in
grade 9 (Medgyes & Miklósy, 2005) are expected to sit the exam at level B2 by
the end of grade 10.

Foreign language classrooms

While the NCC has undergone several alterations during the past two decades, teachers have
kept teaching according to their own hidden curriculum, hardly affected by official dictates.
A classroom observation study involving 118 English classes from disadvantaged
backgrounds (Nikolov, 1999b) looked into what teachers and students were actually doing in
the classroom. In a large-scale follow-up study, questionnaire data on frequencies of
classroom activities in English and German classes, collected from representative samples of
Hungarian learners, were analyzed (Nikolov, 2003). Both studies reveal that language
teachers generally adopt an eclectic approach: Techniques of the grammar-translation method
and the audio-lingual method mingle with ones more characteristic of the communicative
 9

classroom. The most frequent tasks invariably include translation, reading aloud, question-
and-answer exercises, and the explanation of grammar rules in Hungarian – none of which
have been favored by recent versions of the foreign language syllabus.
To aggravate the situation, at the end of the twentieth century 65 percent of teachers
of modern languages in Hungarian primary schools were registered as retrained graduates,
who had previously been employed as Russian teachers (Halász & Lannert, 1998). Worse
still, 10 percent of English and German teachers have no teaching qualifications whatsoever
(Halász & Lannert, 2003).
Returning to the issue of curriculat reforms, it is no exaggeration to assert that the
majority of foreign language teachers in Hungary have paid little heed to the unreasonable
demands presented by the different versions of the NCC: They teach at the present time as
they always did. In some sense, the immobility may well be regarded as a positive trait
because teachers have thus managed to avoid falling victim to the effects of ill-considered
and rash political decisions.
In the light of findings referred to earlier, it is no surprise that in terms of language
proficiency, Hungary lags behind all the other member states of the European Union
(Europeans and Languages: A Eurobarometer Special Survey, 2001), It is a sorry fact that a
mere 19 percent of the Hungarian population claimed to know at least one foreign language
in the last national census (2002). Nevertheless, compared to 12 percent in the early 1990s
(Terestyéni, 1996), steady progress may be observed, and the 29 percent documented in 2005
(Europeans and Languages, 2005) gives sufficient reason for cautious optimism.
However, the growth of foreign language competence in Hungary appears to be
attributable to positive changes in learners’ attitudes and learning motivation, rather than to
progress in curriculum design, instruction methods, or teacher competence (Nikolov, 2003;
Nikolov & Józsa, 2006). According to large-scale longitudinal studies investigating eighth-
graders’ motivation, learning efforts, and language choice (Dörnyei, Csizér & Németh, 2006),
contemporary Hungarian learners were highly motivated and diligent to study modern
languages, and their attitudes were favorable toward native speakers of the language of their
choice. As for their choices, the majority studies English and German, but a pronounced shift
toward English has been observed over the years.

Conclusion

This chapter has attempted to show curriculum development as a process furthered by agents
who subscribe to different philosophies of education. Decisions made at policy and specialist
levels are seldom based on consensus, and changes are often instituted over the heads of
teachers and learners. The Hungarian National Core Curriculum (NCC) may be considered a
typical example of a reform curriculum. While extolling the merits of communicative
language teaching and setting ‘euroconform’ requirements, it disregards the genuine needs of
classroom participants and connives at the use of outdated classroom methods. In some sense,
perplexed by the ever-changing and often contradictory expectations of curriculum
requirements, teachers in Hungary and elsewhere may well be right in pursuing their own
hidden agenda, instead of jumping on the bandwagon. Even though teachers obviously
belong to various age cohorts with different political and pedagogical experiences over their
teaching career, the majority appear to find a gentle breeze in the form of a new technique
more refreshing than a gale of disparate ideas formulated in a reform curriculum.
On a more general plane, it has been argued in this chapter that if there is a gap
between policymakers and specialists, the gap between both groups and teachers is far wider.
 10

Hence, it usually takes a long time before curriculum innovation, even at its best, permeates
the thinking of those at the chalk-face and in turn rejuvenates their daily practice.

Acknowledgment

The second author gratefully acknowledges the support of the Research Group on the
Development of Competencies, Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA-SZTE
Képességkutató Csoport).

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