The AAA curriculum
Leo van Lier · 2014
This chapter provides the basic ground rules for constructing a curriculum based on people knowledge of language learning and education, and on their values of language use in society. The curriculum is based on a triad of foundational principles or &s;constants&s; which themselves cannot be further reduced or grounded. These principles, awareness, autonomy, and authenticity, or AAA for short, are amalgams of knowledge and values, they are a unity of epistemological and axiological beliefs. The AAA curriculum presents the relevant to all branches of language education, native language, second language, and foreign language. The purpose of a curriculum is to guide the processes of teaching and learning. A source of principles is institutionalized demands, embodied in tests and quantified levels, generalized hierarchies of success, ladders of achievement, profiles of outcomes and lists of competencies, do-as-you&s;re told measurements of professional adequacy and in general the bureaucratic accountability which always threatens to take over when true principles are in decline.