Killing the textbook softly: From commercial textbooks to student-centered curricula

Abstract

This report retraces the 10-year evolution of a higher-educational French language program that went from using commercial textbooks to student-centered curricula through three main stages: from American commercial textbooks to French commercial textbooks, from commercial textbooks to OER) textbooks, and from OER textbooks to student-centered curricula. The gradual evolution illustrates a way to handle resistance to change through the progressive implementation of new research or practice-based methods: action-oriented methodology for the first stage, Second Language Acquisition research-based approaches for the second stage, and practices based on current pedagogical trends for the third stage. The report provides the pedagogical rationale for each transition, highlighting the discrepancy between the very concept of textbook and what current research and practice in foreign language pedagogy advocates and a first-hand experience of what it entails to break away from American commercial textbooks, commercial textbooks, and ultimately textbooks altogether.