Implementing ELT innovations:

a needs analysis framework

Alan Waters and Ma. Luz C. Vilches

Implementing an ELT innovation involves analysing a range of needs so that a

sound strategy for maximizing the potential for adoption and ownership of the
innovation can be developed. The quality of the implementation process,
therefore, depends on the picture of needs underpinning it. This paper presents
a model for trying to account for such needs as adequately as possible.
The model is in the form of a matrix. First, on the vertical axis, we distinguish
between two main levels of need: ‘foundation-building’ vs. ‘potential-realizing’
needs. Then, on the horizontal axis, and intersecting with the vertical
dimension, we identify four main interlocking areas of need, illustrated by
reference to a recent major ELT innovation project in the Philippines. We
conclude by using the model to locate areas of priority and neglect in current
innovation implementation practice.

Introduction The initial development of an ELT innovation, especially one involving

large-scale curricular reform, tends to take place via a process of high-
level discussions and agreements among ‘top management’. In this way,
for example, a Ministry of Education and a foreign aid agency may decide
to develop a new ELT textbook. However, in most cases those who will
actually design and implement the innovation, and those who will form
the majority of its ‘end-users’, are not involved in these consultations. As
a result, when the attempt is made to put the innovation into practice, it
cannot be assumed that ownership at these levels has already been
established. Rather, it will usually be necessary to build towards this
gradually, by catering appropriately to a range of innovation
implementation needs. This paper is concerned with identifying the
basic characteristics of such needs. The model we have developed for this
purpose is in the form of a matrix. We will first of all discuss its vertical
dimension, in relation to levels of need, and then its horizontal aspect,
with respect to areas of need.

Levels of need In the first instance, innovation implementation needs can be thought of
as forming themselves into a number of hierarchically-arranged levels
(see, for example, Maslow 1970: 39–46; Fullan 1991: Part I; Hersey and
Blanchard 1993: 473¤).
ELT Journal Volume 55/2 April 2001 © Oxford University Press 133
Familiarization At the most basic level, there is the need for familiarization. This involves
the innovation implementation team, on the one hand, in becoming
properly familiar with the innovation situation, and on the other, in the
potential innovation users likewise being adequately informed about the
background to, rationale for, and possible direction of the innovation.
Thus, for example, in a textbook development project, needs at this level
might be catered to by meetings in which the initial innovation concept is
explained and a proper needs analysis is conducted, involving a
representative cross-section of those who will use the textbook, as well as
those, such as heads of department, supervisors, and others, who will be
responsible for overseeing its use, and so on. On this basis, a ‘working
hypothesis’ can be developed about the shape that the innovation might
take in practice.

Socialization At the next level up there are the socialization needs. These involve
providing opportunities for the innovation prototype to be modified by
the same group that provided input into the needs analysis process, so
that the model at this phase of its development is checked for its match
with the prevailing socio-cultural educational preconceptions of this
group. At this stage in a textbook project, therefore, consultation
meetings could be held, in which the participants—teachers (and, ideally,
also learners), heads of department, supervisors, trainers, and the like—
are given a chance to provide feedback to the design team on how well
samples of draft materials do or do not fit in with and extend previous
approaches, and, as necessary, to suggest how they might be modified.

Application The third level up is concerned with the need for application. This is to do
with ensuring that the process by which the users actually test the
worked-out innovations is monitored and supported in such a way that
the necessary level of personal, practical understanding and expertise is
built up. To use the example of a textbook development project once
again, meeting needs at this stage might involve a programme of school-
based project work, in which teachers are supervised closely in their
attempts to put the new materials into practice, followed by further
support in the form of related trouble-shooting meetings.

Integration Finally, at the topmost level, there is the need for integration. Here, scope
should be given for the innovation to become the personal ‘property’ of
the users, through its further development, in ways determined as far as
possible by the users’ individual priorities. In a textbook project, this
could be done by linking teachers’ attempts to get the best out of the new
materials on an everyday basis to their schools’ and their own
professional development programmes, supported and supervised
directly by the host educational system.
The picture can be made clearer and simpler than this, however, by
conflating these four levels into just two basic, overall strata. Thus, needs
at the first and second levels can be seen as concerned with achieving an
initial conception of a proposed innovation, and its ‘ratification’. In other
words, they are to do with establishing a basis on which further
understanding and development can be built—what may therefore be

134 Alan Waters and Ma. Luz C. Vilches

 called foundation-building needs. Needs at the third and fourth levels, on
the other hand, can be seen as mainly to do with establishing ownership,
at first in a relatively generic manner, and then in a more personal way,
of the significant features of the innovation. These needs are thus
concerned with capitalizing on the potential for further understanding
and development created by the satisfaction of needs in the first main
stratum—or, in other words, what we might call potential-realizing
needs.
As the textbook development example also shows, innovation
implementation needs are sequential and hierarchical in nature. They
therefore have to be properly addressed at each of the two main levels,
starting with the foundation-building level, and then building on this
foundation at the potential-realizing level (see Fig. 1 below).

Potential-realizing
3 also at the
higher level.

2 then building on the

lower level

1 Needs must be
figure 1
addressed at this Foundation-building
Levels of need in
level first
the innovation
implementation process
In other words, there has to be a first phase concerned with establishing a
secure foundation for understanding and for the initial acceptance of the
innovation. Following on from this, there must also be a phase devoted to
helping the innovation user to capitalize on the prior phase by
establishing an ever-increasing level of personal ownership of the
innovation.

Areas of activity Having outlined the vertical dimension of our model, we will now map
out its horizontal axis. This consists of the core areas of development
activity, and, therefore, of need, which ELT innovation projects
potentially involve, namely curriculum development (including
evaluation), teacher learning, trainer learning, and ELT management
learning.

1 Curriculum We define ‘curriculum development’ as any form of innovation activity

development needs which is aimed at bringing about change in the way learners experience
the learning process, at the overall level of policies, goals, and so on,
and/or in terms of the syllabus, teaching materials, teaching methods,
and evaluation techniques.

Implementing ELT innovations 135

 This area of innovation activity can be related to the earlier discussion
about levels of need, as follows. ELT curriculum development has
traditionally involved two major but apparently opposing concepts of ELT
(see, for example, White (1987)). The first of these might be termed the
‘traditional’ approach to ELT ¡. Its stock-in-trade is a focus on form;
whole-class teaching; pattern-practice drills; ‘up-front’ error correction;
norm-referenced testing; and so on. These attributes help to create
structure, order, and a sense of belonging. Thus, from the perspective
established earlier, such an approach can be seen as catering mainly
(however implicitly) to the lower of our two main categories of need, i.e.
the foundation-building level.
The second of the main approaches might be termed ‘modern’. Such an
approach tends to focus mainly on meaning; much of the teaching is
done in a pair or small-group work mode; the predominant activity is the
problem-solving task; error is tolerated, or even ignored; testing is
criterion-referenced, and so on. Such features tend to favour the creation
of individualized opportunities for making learning personally
meaningful. This kind of approach is therefore geared mainly towards
the higher of the two main categories of need, i.e. the potential-realizing
level. The two approaches can thus be pictured as shown below:

Potential- ‘Modern’
realizing approach

Foundation- ‘Traditional’
figure 2 building approach
Curriculum
development needs
Now, many ELT innovation projects are concerned with attempting to
introduce elements of the ‘modern’ approach into a context dominated
by elements of the ‘traditional’ one. There is therefore a tendency for the
innovation development process to focus mainly on the higher level,
while ignoring or under-rating the importance of the lower one, i.e. to be
‘innovation-led’. However, it follows from the principles outlined in the
previous section that the key to satisfactorily catering to needs at the
higher level is to ensure that those at the lower level have first of all been
adequately attended to. Thus, for example, the confidence to
communicate meanings comes from a secure classroom environment,
and knowledge of language form. This is to cater to needs at the lower
level. However, there is an equal need for the classroom environment to
provide scope for individual creativity by learners, and opportunities for
them to manipulate language meaningfully. This caters to the higher
level. Rightly conceived of, therefore, a sound approach to the ELT
curriculum innovation process must be based on attempting to integrate
both main levels of need.

136 Alan Waters and Ma. Luz C. Vilches

The PELT Project We have attempted to adopt this approach in our work in the Philippines
English Language Teaching (PELT ) Project ™. We deliberately began the
project without any pre-conceived view of what might constitute a
desirable alternative to the local ELT paradigm. Instead, its
characteristics were first of all studied at first hand, in an attempt to
properly appreciate them. In the main, they were found to resemble
those of the ‘traditional’ approach just described. A consensus was then
established between the Project and its beneficiaries about how the
existing teaching methods might be minimally strengthened and
extended by integrating them with a range of supplementary teaching
methods characteristic of the ‘modern’ approach. The resulting
combination came to constitute the curriculum innovation focus of the
project.
In this way, the model of teaching being promoted by the project became
one which tried to ensure that learners’ foundation-building needs were
still being catered to, while at the same time, by building on this basis,
higher-level, potential-realizing needs were also taken into account to a
greater extent than previously (cf. Clarke 1989).

2 Teacher learning The second of the areas of activity on the horizontal axis—and, therefore,
needs of need—is teacher learning. Any attempt to change the curriculum—
whether indirectly through changes in teaching materials, for example,
or more directly, through changes in teaching methods—implies a need
for teacher learning, i.e. opportunities for teachers to learn about the
rationale for the new form of teaching, to critically evaluate it, and
understand how to get the best out of it.
The teacher learning dimension can also be mapped onto our emergent
matrix in terms of the two main levels of need, as follows: the first level
can be seen as corresponding to an ‘awareness’ need, i.e. the building up
of fundamental knowledge and skills by teachers about the curriculum
innovation in question, e.g. the new textbook, the new teaching
approach, etc., as well as the creation of opportunities for critiquing and
questioning it; the second level corresponds to needs associated with
‘ownership’ of the innovation, i.e. the acceptance by users of
responsibility for implementing, sustaining, and further developing a
personally meaningful version of the innovation.
Having described the two levels, however, it should be said that in our
experience there is a tendency in ELT innovation projects to focus rather
more on the first level than the second. The most common vehicle for
catering to teacher learning needs in such projects is a short course of
one kind or another. However, the ‘culture’ of a training course is often
very di¤erent from that of the normal teaching situation (Rudduck 1981:
164). In a course, removed as it usually is from the everyday pressures of
the work-place, it is all too easy for the ‘ideal’ to supplant the ‘real’. As a
result, while a course may meet the need for teachers to be ‘inducted’
into the innovation paradigm, it may not provide them with suªcient
opportunity to make the ideas personally meaningful in terms of the
realities of the context in which they normally work (cf. Joyce and
Showers 1980).

Implementing ELT innovations 137

 In order to try to overcome this problem, therefore, a further device is
required, one which addresses the potential-realizing level of need. In
other words, there is also a need for the innovation development strategy
to include a school-based teacher learning element (here the term ‘school’
stands for any kind of teaching institution), linked closely to the work
done at the foundation-building level.
In the PELT project, this component is known as the School-Based
Follow-up Development Activity (SFDA ) (Waters and Vilches 2000).
Under this system, teachers first of all attend a two-week course in which
the teaching methods the Project is concerned with are introduced,
evaluated, and tried out. However, this is not the main purpose of the
course, since its primary function is to prepare teachers for the SFDA ,
which follows.
The SFDA programme consists of the execution of teaching development
action plans prepared by the teachers during the training course. The
focus of the plans is on areas of teaching studied in the course which the
teachers want to attempt to apply in their home teaching situations. On
return to their schools, the teachers execute their plans, in consultation
with their school ‘ELT managers’ (i.e. Heads of Department, or
equivalent). In this way, the Project makes allowance for two levels of
teacher learning: one aimed at meeting ‘foundation-building needs’, the
other geared towards ‘potential-realizing’ needs. The two levels are also
closely integrated, with the latter building closely on the former. The
resulting situation can thus be pictured as in Figure 3:

Potential- School-based teacher

realizing learning (e.g. SFDA)

Foundation- Course-based teacher

building learning
figure 3
Teacher learning needs

3 Trainer learning As already noted, ELT innovation projects generate a need for teacher
needs learning. This, in turn, often creates a need to train a cadre of teacher
trainers, in order to facilitate the teacher learning process. In our
experience, however, as with aspects of the previous areas of need, the
full extent of the trainer training need is not always recognized, since
frequently trainers are only ‘trained’ in the sense of having attended the
teacher training course, which they are then expected to handle as
trainers.
We see the true extent of needs in this area as corresponding once again
to our two-tier model. A foundation of understanding on the part of the
trainers about the content of the innovation should be constructed first of
all, so that they have the necessary in-depth grasp of what the teachers are
expected to learn. In the PELT Project, therefore, this has become the
main focus of the first part of the Project’s trainer training programme.

138 Alan Waters and Ma. Luz C. Vilches

 However essential this foundation may be, the trainers’ role is not simply
to ‘teach’ the content of the innovation, but to maximize the potential for
ownership of the innovation by the teachers. The second part of the PELT
trainer training programme has therefore focused on preparing the
trainers for the latter role, by providing opportunities for them to gain a
practical understanding of the nature of real teacher learning, and how to
promote it, i.e. the methodology of teacher development. The situation
can thus be represented as follows:

Orientation to teacher
Potential-
development
realizing
methodology

Foundation- Orientation to
building innovation content
figure 4
Trainer learning needs

4 ELT manager To be implemented e¤ectively, an ELT innovation project must obviously

learning needs enlist the support and co-operation of the managers of the educational
system which is the host for the innovation. ELT manager learning,
therefore, is our fourth area of development activity, although, once
again, in our experience this category of need often tends to be under-
rated or ignored in the ELT innovation process.
We see needs in this area as existing at the same two main levels as the
other areas already discussed. In the PELT Project, foundation-level
needs of this kind are catered to in a similar manner as for trainers, i.e.
through a programme of ELT manager orientation meetings. The
potential-realizing level is addressed by devolving responsibility to the
ELT managers for monitoring and supporting teachers in carrying out
their SFDA s (see 2 above). This enables them to play their normal role
vis-à-vis their teachers, but in this case, with respect to the project
innovation. This has resulted in a good deal of ownership of the project
by the ELT managers, since they see themselves as joint collaborators in
the PELT innovation process. The provision as a whole can be pictured as
follows:

Devolution of
Potential-
innovation monitoring
realizing
and support

Foundation- Innovation
figure 5 building orientation
ELT manager learning
needs

Implementing ELT innovations 139

Conclusion We have tried to show that there are two main levels, and a number of
major areas of need, to be taken into account in the ELT innovation
implementation process. Figure 6 is intended to summarize what we see
as the current tendencies in this regard. The unshaded cells show the
areas of need usually identified, as indicated in earlier sections of this
paper. The shaded cells, as also indicated, represent the areas of need
that we feel tend to be overlooked, or under-rated. However, as we have
tried to show, they are nevertheless of equal importance.

Potential-realizing level ‘Modern’ School-based Methodolgy Devolution

Foundation-building level ‘Traditional’ Course-based Content Orientation

1 Curriculum 2 Teacher 3 Trainer 4 ELT manager

development learning learning learning
figure 6
ELT innovation
implementation needs:
areas of priority and areas of need usually focused on
neglect areas of need that tend to be under-rated or overlooked
We have also argued that it is important for the innovation dynamic to
follow the direction of the vertical arrow, i.e. to proceed in a ‘bottom-up’
fashion, from the foundation-building to the potential-realizing level, in
order to take into account the psychology of the innovation process. Of
equal importance, of course, is the proper horizontal integration of each
of the main categories of need, as indicated by the dotted vertical lines
between the areas of activity and the horizontal, two-way arrow. Of
course, implementing an innovation e¤ectively is not simply a matter of
accounting one by one for each cell in the diagram, (although this is very
important), but also of striving for adequate vertical and horizontal
integration of each constituent.
To conclude, we believe that by the use of a framework of the kind
described, a sounder picture of the full range of needs involved in the
ELT innovation implementation process can be taken into account. This
should result in projects which are informed by a deeper and more
comprehensive understanding of the innovation strategies that are likely
to be e¤ective in any given development situation. It is also to be hoped
that the potential for such projects to succeed will thereby increase.
Received July 1999

140 Alan Waters and Ma. Luz C. Vilches

Notes
1 The term ‘traditional’ is used here in a
chronological, rather than a qualitative sense.
2 The Philippines English Language Teaching
(PELT ) Project is an in-service teacher-training
project of the department ... etc!!!
References
Clarke, D. F. 1989. ‘Materials adaptation: why leave
it all to the teacher?’ ELT Journal 43/2.
Fullan, M. 1991. The New Meaning of Educational
Change. London: Cassell.
Hersey, P. and K. Blanchard. 1993. Management of
Organizational Behaviour (6th edn.). New Jersey:
Prentice-Hall.
Joyce, B. and B. Showers. 1980. ‘Improving
Inservice Training’. Educational Leadership 37.
Maslow, A. H. 1970. Motivation and Personality
(2nd edn.) New York: Harper & Row.
Rudduck, J. 1981. ‘Making the most of the short in-
service course’. Schools Council Working Paper
71. London: Methuen Educational.
Waters, A. and M. L. C. Vilches. 2000. ‘From
Seminar to School: Bridging the INSET Gap’. ELT
Journal 54/2.
White, R. 1987. The ELT Curriculum: Design,
Innovation, and Management. London: Blackwell.
Implementing ELT innovations
The authors
Alan Waters is Director of the Institute for English
Language Education at Lancaster University,
England, and was the Lead Consultant for the
Philippines English Language Teaching (PELT )
Project from 1995–9. His current main research
interests are teacher learning processes, and the
application of ideas from management to the ELT
classroom.
Email: A.Waters@lancaster.ac.uk
Ma. Luz C. Vilches is the Executive Director of the
Ateneo de Manila Center for English Language
Teaching, Ateneo de Manila University,
Philippines and was the Co-ordinator of the
Philippines, English Language Teaching (PELT )
Project from 1995–9. Her main research interests
include the use of literary texts in language
teaching, and the training, of teacher trainers.
Email: mvilch@admu.edu.ph
141