CHAPTER 6: CURRICULUM DESIGN (Continued)
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6.5 Teacher development
The teaching pedagogy does not make the teacher or the programme (cf. section 7.2.2.2). This is not to imply that methodology is irrelevant, but that teacher training (in this case on TBLT principles) is essential for the running of a programme. In the pilot year of this study (1997) this meant offering training to teachers who had not applied to be members of a task-based team when they took their posts (prior to the setting up of the programme). As the programme expanded and progressed (1998, 1999) however, new applicants were able to browse the LC website (http://lc.andong.ac.kr/eng – cf. section 7.3.5) for information on the programme, and training grew into development. Both functions were carried out in a non-prescriptive manner, providing the opportunity for explanation and direction, rather than imposing it, and applying the main goals of the programme to the teachers themselves, by concentrating on confidence, motivation and independence (i.e. confidence in TBLT ideas and in their ability to use them, motivation to use them, and freedom to adapt them in their own ways).

Teachers who are fully aware of programme goals and recommended methods of achieving them are more effective in promoting foundational principles and more informed when discussing them. "Establishing the methods" (section 6.1) in this case therefore meant having a clear set of pedagogic and educational guidelines (cf. the "Mission Statement", appendix C-78; along with the Teachers' Resource Books for TMM, NYT & TWA, [Finch & Hyun, 2000b,d,f]) that teachers could use: i) to monitor what was happening in the classroom ("Are students becoming more confident/motivated/independent/ communicatively competent?"); ii) as a basis for reflection ("Am I effective in promoting the guiding principles?"); and iii) to feed back into course development ("Are these aims realistic and appropriate? Do they need to be altered/changed?"). Sample lessons, workshops and group meetings thus became indispensable additions to the teaching week.

Further discussion relating to practicalities of providing teacher support appears in section 7.3.5.

6.6. The curriculum and complexity theory
As the ANU programme progressed, the complex nature of the learning environment became more evident, and a view of the classroom as a complex dynamic system was seen increasingly (by the author) as a way of describing the learning and student/teacher attitude change that was occurring. This section therefore gives a brief overview of complexity theory and its implications for TEFL.

Van Lier (1996) suggests that: "it is useful to regard the classroom as a complex adaptive system" (1996:38) in which "details are all that matters" (Gould 1993) and that "it is fruitless to search for causal relations" (Van Lier 1996:38). Larsen-Freeman also draws a number of chaos/complexity parallels in the language class: "languages go through periods of chaos and order as do other living systems. Furthermore, their creative growth occurs at the border between these two" (1997:158). This borderline between "order" and "chaos", or the point at which the system is about to become chaotic (e.g. just before an avalanche) has been termed "the edge of chaos" by Waldrop (1992:198), who also coined the term "life at the edge of chaos" to describe the capacity for learning that complex adaptive systems have when they are neither settled nor chaotic - a concept with various implications for the language classroom:

The educational context, with the classroom at its center, is viewed as a complex system in which events do not occur in linear causal fashion, but in which a multitude of forces interact in complex, self-organizing ways, and create changes and patterns that are part predictable, part unpredictable. Such changes must be analyzed from the bottom up. (Van Lier 1996:148)

The mutually-influential, symbiotic nature of the complex and dynamic interactions represented in figure B-23) are instances of the "many striking similarities between the new science of chaos/complexity and second language acquisition" (Larsen-Freeman 1997:141). One of the major tenets of complexity theory is that it is "a science of process rather than state, of becoming rather than being" (Gleick 1987:5), offering an "alternative to the linear, reductionist thinking that has dominated science since Newton" (Larsen-Freeman 1997:142), and has been responsible for the "scientific" dissection of linguistics into static constituent parts (morphology, syntax, phonology, etc.), despite the fact that language use involves an active process (cf. Saussure's "parole" and Chomsky's "performance") and is "undeniably dynamic" (Larsen-Freeman 1997:147). Complexity theory allows us to view SLA as a dynamic, complex[1] non-linear process that is open[2], self-organising[3], adaptive[4], unpredictable, and sensitive to initial conditions and feedback:

A contingent view of language and language-education negates the causal determination of both, but is compatible with a view of development as chaos-with feedback, and a view of organisms as not self-contained but complemented by other organisms, in the way that genetic information is distributed across different genes which complement one another. (Dawkins 1976)

 ... we can neither claim that learning is caused by environmental stimuli (the behaviorist position) nor that it is genetically determined (the innatist position). Rather, learning is the result of complex (and contingent) interactions between individual and environment. (Van Lier 1996:170)

If we see the classroom as a complex, dynamic, open system, with input occurring all the time (not simply linguistic input, but also all the S-S, S-T[5] and T-S interactions in the L1 and L2), then we can expect not to be able to predict outcomes on the local level, since each student will react differently to different stimuli, and every class will be a totally different learning zone. However, using attractors (relatively stable reference points) such as the two CMI triads (figure B-23), global results can be observed and aimed for. Just as the weather cannot be predicted locally (e.g. in a school playing field), though the climate and the weather over a large area (e.g. a county/province/state) can be quite successfully predicted, conditions in any given classroom will not necessarily conform to the defined syllabus (whether negotiated or not), as unforeseen interactions and inputs cause changes of emphasis, but a course of study can follow a defined direction in the long term. Applying this concept to the two triads in the CMI curriculum (cf. section 6.2.4; figure B-23), the local triad is unpredictable and has only temporary assessment value, whereas the global one shows more consistent change and can be used as an indication of progress.

Another feature of complex dynamic systems is that continuing energy input can result in exponentially expanding interactions, and minor differences in initial conditions can result in completely different outcomes (e.g. the "butterfly"[6], "camel's back"[7] and "avalanche"[8] analogies; cf. Kirshbaum 1998). Thus seemingly insignificant interactions in the classroom are part of the whole process of growth, setting off further interactions and learning experiences, and learning outcomes can diverge enormously (Gleick 1987:8):

Different perspectives, knowledge and strategies create cognitive conflict in the participants, and in the resolution of such conflict, in the context of social interaction, new perspectives, knowledge, and strategies are created. (Van Lier 1996:191)

The concept of a classroom "on the edge of chaos" (i.e. in a maximum state of learning),  sensitive to every variation in input (e.g the difference between a smile and a shrug of the shoulders on the part of the teacher), "open" to new input (interactional, linguistic, affective, socio-cultural), "adaptive" to changing learning needs and preferences, and with new learning structures "emerging"[9] from the "connectivities"[10] between participants, was seen as inherent in the CMI curriculum, the programme methodology, the materials which were developed for the programme, and the training that was given to the teachers.