Curriculum Development Needs Evidence, Not Intuition

Authors with long experience of teaching translation and interpreting in the Arab world (Atari, 2012; Farghal, 2009; Taibi, 2016; Mehrash, 2003) have warned of a wide gap not only in curriculum design but in its development and implementation in translation and interpreting programmes.

In our review of literature and practice in the region, we found that curriculum work in many translation units and departments at Arab universities is carried out exclusively by committees whose core scholarship is rarely in translation studies, and who rarely possess the pedagogical know-how and know-what of their discipline-specific didactics. Arguing about moving, adding or deleting courses is an old pattern of curriculum development. In discussions with colleagues, you will notice how little reference is made to:

• what the scholarship of training, learning and teaching in a university context says;
• what the scholarship on translation and interpreting pedagogy says, including findings from recent studies on similar issues in other countries;
• what the profession or market needs (surveys, interviews, focus groups);
• student profiles and needs (surveys, focus groups, interviews);
• employer needs (surveys, focus groups, interviews);
• what translation pedagogy says about curriculum practice at every level of development, design and implementation across countries and cultures, and on what principles and criteria to base decisions about the how and the what in the classroom.

Our dear colleagues argue from inherited experience, intuition and ad hoc criteria. No frameworks, no evidence. Things need to change. Curriculum reviews must be taken seriously, and colleagues need proper training in the scholarship of teaching and learning, including curriculum theory and practice, so that their reasoning rests on evidence.

Curriculum practice in higher education can be divided into three models (see Calvo, 2011): the theoretical and academic model, which our universities have followed for more than 90 years; the professional model; and the eclectic model, which is what a university should adopt, with more weight on the professional side in postgraduate programmes.

Takeaway: when discussing curriculum, refer to the scholarly literature as well as to departmental and personal needs. Both matter.