How Instructional Materials Are Used and Supported in U.S. K–12 Classrooms: Findings from the 2019 American Instructional Resources Survey

Abstract

As Deborah Ball and David Cohen wrote in 1996, "The design and spread of curriculum materials is one of the oldest strategies for attempting to influence classroom instruction." Unlike other educational reforms, which may depend on the talent and skills of the educators who lead them, a curriculum-textbooks or online materials composed of organized and scaffolded objectives, lesson plans, activities, and assessments constituting an entire course of studyis already written and static, seemingly ready to be scaled across whole states and school districts. KEY FINDINGS■ Most teachers do not use a single curriculum as it is written. Instead, they reported using multiple curricula, making substantial modifications, or creating their own curriculum materials.■ Most teachers agreed that their observations and evaluations take into account their use of curricula. However, fewer teachers reported receiving coaching or professional development workshops focused on curriculum use.■ How teachers used their curriculum was connected to whether they reported receiving evaluative feedback on curriculum use or more frequent curriculum-focused professional learning (PL).■ Teachers in eight states focused on curriculum reforms were more likely to report use of standards-aligned curricula andin some cases-more evaluative feedback and PL focused on curricula.■ Teachers in high-poverty schools reported more-frequent use of standards-aligned curricula for English language arts (ELA), digital materials, and supplementary materials. They were also more likely to report evaluative feedback and PL focused on curricula.■ The extent of teachers' curriculum-focused evaluative feedback and PL were connected with the number of standards-aligned practices in which teachers reported all their students engaging. However, whether teachers reported using a standards-aligned curriculum regularly-in itself-was not related to teachers' reports of their students' standards-aligned practices.

Identifying and Distinguishing Among Teachers’ Supplementary Curriculum Use Patterns Using the Lasso

“…), one or more reasons to supplement, one or more sources of supplementation, and one or more supplement features. However, our findings also suggest that teachers' supplement use patterns vary with high-level structural factors like US state or school charter status, indicating that such factors may occupy a more central place in teachers' real-world supplementation than they do in the theoretical framework and in current supplementation-relevant literature (e.g., Torphy et al, 2019;Tosh et al, 2021;Wang et al, 2021, with Kaufman et al, 2020 as a notable exception). Still, our findings suggest that teachers' curriculum supplementation is predictable, not random or idiosyncratic.…”

“…Teaching greater proportions of students who are Hispanic or who qualify for free or reduced lunch is associated with slightly greater frequency of supplementation. It may be that these groups tend to have more diverse needs, so their teachers may need to supplement more frequently to serve their learning needs (e.g., Kaufman et al, 2020).…”

“…Still, our findings suggest that teachers' curriculum supplementation is predictable, not random or idiosyncratic. Taken together, all of this suggests that the teacher curriculum supplementation may be a more multidimensional phenomenon than it has often been conceived (Kaufman et al, 2020), so TCSF's explicit framing of such supplementation as multi-dimensional may be a useful tool to frame researchers' thinking about it, with future work aimed at testing various relationships hypothesized in the framework.…”

A Theoretical Framework for Studying Teachers’ Curriculum Supplementation

“…For example, more-experienced teachers may anticipate student needs and do most of their supplementation before a lesson, while novice teachers may supplement after the fact, in response to misconceptions encountered during the lesson. Kaufman et al (2020) updated these ideas by explicitly accounting for virtual supplements, categorizing teachers as “by-the-book,” “DIY teachers,” “modifiers,” or “cobblers” with respect to their use of real-life and virtual curriculum materials. Although their profiles did not distinguish between school-adopted and teacher-adopted materials (so did not explicitly denote supplementation), the researchers found that only 26% of teachers in their 12 state-representative sample enacted their curriculum “by-the-book,” providing at least suggestive evidence that some of what they were measuring may have been supplementation.…”

Curriculum and Coaching: Maximizing our Investments in Teaching

“…Even with access to HQIM, teachers may continue to stitch together resources. After adoption, they will likely require comprehensive professional learning support which could come from a knowledgeable coach (Kaufman et al, 2020). We can smooth the transition to new curriculum and provide coaches a clear mandate if we plan with a theory of change in mind.…”