Materials Development As Negotiation

As Belt and Road Initiative was put forward,more and more institutions or departments of Less-Commonly-Taught Language majors are being constructed at the higher education level.One of the fundamental problems the institutions face is the need for more quantity and quality of teaching materials and suitability.Some teachers have become materials developers based on their own teaching experience and have become teacher-materials developers;however,they do not have enough experience in materials development,and there is not enough relevant training in initial teacher education.Few previous studies have introduced teachers’ experience of the materials development process,and principles and methods of class-based materials development and textbook compilation need to be developed and established.Previous studies on materials development have focused on materials per se at a macro level;only a small number of studies have focused on materials development in a classroom at a micro level.The relationship between teacher-learner interactions and materials development at a classroom level needs to be revealed.Based on the research gap,this research aims to adopt an oral history approach to show how a Latin language teacher compiles a textbook via teacher-learner interactions and negotiations in a classroom setting.Different levels of negotiation were further described in the study.To achieve this aim,the researcher conducted four rounds of semi-structured oral history interviews of the teacher-materials developer,former students of the course,and students in recent five years to explore the System for Materials,the System for Teaching and the System for Learning and their relations and interactions under the upper Classroom System,and to reveal the effect of teacher-learner interactions and negotiations on materials development.The study also analyzed the whole textbook dynamically with oral history interview data of the textbook writer and the learners.As a result,it has been found that the three systems mentioned above are dynamic in nature;the System for Teaching changes in accordance with the System for Learning;the adaptation and rearrangement of materials for teaching and learning in class is the meta-energy that keeps the System for Learning and the System for Teaching in equilibrium;teacher-learner interactions and negotiations act as the energy in adaptation and development of materials,which help the teacher gain a more profound understanding of the System for Learning and made the most appropriate decisions in textbook compilation and materials development.The study also revealed that materials development should be viewed as a social practice in which teacher materials developers interact and negotiate with the learners to examine their real-time learning needs in constructing meaning in classroom contexts.The research gap of materials development of classical language is filled.The research revealed how Latin language materials for teaching and learning was actually used in class and how a Latin textbook was developed based on the materials used in class(Xu,2010),the research further described different levels and categories of negotiation to include more phenomenon of teacher-learner communications and interactions.The research is also innovative in the application of a multi-method with oral history as the main method.