David tried to design a "contextless" literature course for high school students. He initially thought that it would be easier to design a generic course, which he could later adapt to a specific high school context. He found the experience very frustrating.(Graves, 2000, p.17)
The very reason he had the very frustrating teaching experience is because he ignored the importance of the unique context information for the every different class situation.
Graves keeps saying that the more information teachers have about the context, the easier it will be for teachers to make decisions about what to teach and how.
I can't agree with her more.
It reminded me of my terrible teaching memory when I was teaching in high school for the first time. Since I had taught English in middle school for about 3 years before, I thought that teaching in high school also would be the same and I didn't consider the context such as class size, gender, and level. The class was listening class and the level was really low. From the beginning I just couldn't control them. They talked each other and didn't pay attention to class because I tried to teach them with a way to teach middle school students. It took more than a month for me to make a special lesson plan for them. If I had known the context information before I got started, I could have taught much better and wouldn't have had such a embarrassing experience.
Not to make the same mistake, I will definitely define the context first if I have a change to teach students somewhere. And I would keep problematizing my class for a better course design.
