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Chaptev 14Adrian HollidayACHIEVING CULTURAL CONTINUITY INCURRICULUM INNOVATIONIntroductionN THIS PAPER I AM GOING TO LOOK AT thc issue ofcultural continuitvI in curriculum innovation. My major point will be that a major obstacle to true culturalcontinuity is our own professional discour.which prevent us from seeing the real worldsof the people we work with. We therefore need to be critically aware of ourselves as culturalactors antl learn how to see the people wc work with in their own terms instead of in ourterms.I shall begin with the principle of cultural continuity and why it is important both inthe classroom and the wider domain ofthc curriculum and curriculum projects. I shall thcndemonstrate how professional discourses create obstacles to cultural continuity, and howthis might tie avoided.The principle of cultural continuityCultural continuity is achieved when meaningful liridges are built bctwcen the culture of‘the innovation and the traditional expectations of the people with whom w-c work. Thenotion of ‘cultural continuity’ is taken from Jacob (1996), who is interested in the way inwhich the teacher mediatcs hcthveen a ‘foreign’ lesson content and the ‘local’ orientationof her or his students. Homever, it can be used to refer to a broader aim which has becomecommon inTESOL in the last ten years ~ to be sensitive to the cultural expectations of the‘rccipients’ of innmation, whcther they bc students or tcachcrs encountcring new tcachingmethodologies, or stakeholders in curriculum projects. Phillipson (1992) antl Pennycook(1994) havc drawn our attcntion to the dangers of cultural or linguistic imperialism \\hendominant forms of professionalism in TESOL arc transported from one place to another,as has my own work on how to make classroom and curriculum project methodologies‘appropriate’ to social context (Holliday, 1994). The now influential phrase, ‘appropriatemethodology’ was introduced into TESOL by Rowers many years ago (Rowers andWiddowson, 1986).The plea for more attcntion to the sociopolitical environment of TESOL,w-as made by Swales several years earlier (1980). Coleman’s (1996) work on the influenccof socicty on what happens in the classroom is a more recent part of this movement, as isrecent critical thinking about how the paradigms of TESOL profcssionalism haw been