ELT teachers’ curriculum implementation approaches in teaching freshman English at Ethiopian public universities’ context

With continued effort since the early 1970s, researchers identified three curriculum implementation approaches: fidelity, adaptation, and enactment where they respectively based themselves on positivist, post-positivist, and constructivist paradigms. The purpose of the study was to explore university ELT teachers' curriculum implementation approaches based on those three models of curriculum implementation. A mixed-methods design was employed, in which qualitative design was the major data collection technique. That is, one-to-one interview, observation and post-observation interview methods were used. Five teachers were chosen for interviews using purposive sampling, and the two teachers were chosen for observations among the interviewed teachers using random sampling. The results from the interviews and observations were analysed using qualitative descriptions after categorising the issues into themes. However, some parts of the observation data were quantified using frequency and percentages. The result showed that ELT teachers were not adequately equipped to adapt the curriculum at the classroom level. Rather, they jeopardised the professional roles they could play in the classroom at the expense of meeting the interests of the institutions rather than meeting the needs of students and the requirements of the environment. Teachers' adherence to the intended curriculum contents arose as a result of institutional, personal, and student-related reasons. The implication is that teachers need professional development training. Matching institutional motives with individual freedom to adapt and modify contents based on students' needs and interests needs to be implemented. Individual teachers' autonomy in adapting and modifying curriculum contents based on students' needs and interests needs to be encouraged.