Teachers’ perceptions toward the implementation of cefraligned textbook in secondary school

Abstract

Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) has been introduced into our education over the past years and curriculum reformation has occurred following to this situation. The teachers now have to use a new textbook to replace the previous textbook in teaching English in ELT classroom. Teachers need adapt themselves with this new curriculum reformation and their perceptions toward this implementation must be taken into consideration as they are the medium between the textbook with the students. This study mainly seeks to investigate the teachers’ perceptions toward the implementation of CEFRaligned textbook according to their gender. Secondly, this study also aimed to study the teachers’ readiness to implement it. This study also intends to explore the challenges encountered by the teachers in the adoption of the PULSE 2 textbook in the classroom. One hundred fifty-five teachers from various secondary schools in Johor Bahru participated in this study. The data for this study were collected from questionnaire consisted both close-ended and openended items was distributed to the teachers via Google Form platform. The findings revealed that majority of the teachers had positive perceptions toward the implementation of CEFR- aligned textbook regardless their gender. The teachers also showed a high level of readiness in implementing the CEFRaligned textbook as majority of the teachers claimed to have broad knowledge about CEFR and received adequate trainings and courses related to CEFR. Despite the high level of readiness among the teachers, they still claimed to encounter challenges while implementing it. The challenges encountered by the teachers came from various aspects such as the workload increment, timeconstraint, insufficient CEFR-based teaching materials, lack of technological resources and students with low level of proficiency. In conclusion, the adoption of the CEFR-aligned textbook in Malaysia is seen as obligatory but sufficient training, teaching materials, time, and technological resources should be given to the teachers to make sure the framework can be implemented effectively.