The implementation of a national curriculum and teachers’ classroom thinking

Abstract

The implementation of any curriculum initiative at classroom level depends largely on teachers' existing ideas about their day-to-day teaching and the extent to which they regard the new policy as desirable and practical. Past records for curriculum initiatives show extraordinarily modest levels of pedagogical implementation, in part because curriculum innovators have failed to 'start where the teachers are'. The extent to which curriculum initiatives have an impact on teachers' thinking at classroom level is profoundly important given a world-wide trend towards the introduction of national curricula. In the context of research which has focused on teachers' classroom thinking against the background of Scotland's National Curriculum, the 5-14 curriculum development programme, this paper explores two broad issues, one methodological and the other substantive.The methodological concern is with difficulties in gaining access to teachers' classroom thinking. The paper argues that familiar interview approaches may well elicit teachers' reactions to conceptual frameworks presented by others (policy-makers or researchers), but they are inadequate for assessing the impact of initiatives on teachers' thinking. The authors offer an account of an open-ended, non-directive approach that is designed to access that thinking in the context of actual classroom teaching.The second issue concerns the impact of the 5-14 curriculum development programme on teachers' thinking in eight primary and secondary departments in Scottish schools. It is clear from the research that the concepts of the objectives-based initiative had been internalized hardly at all by the teachers. Where the ideas of attainment outcomes, strands, levels and targets were acknowledged, the teachers had subsumed these into their customary ways of construing their classroom teaching and their pupils.

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“…The research by Swann and Brown (1997) offers new evidence to the debate about situated cognition (Brown et al 1989). It supports the argument that an initial emphasis on decontextualised formal concepts, rather than on existing activities and perceptions of the learner, is unlikely to lead to learning or, in this case, the successful implementation of a national curriculum.…”

“…It can also be argued that policy, quite simply cannot be translated into practice in the straightforward manner often assumed to be possible, because implementation almost inevitably leads to unexpected or unintended consequences (Swann and Brown, 1997).…”

“…Thus, effective curriculum plans will not prescribe instructional procedure and materials; rather, they will describe alternative instructional models and suggest a variety of instructional materials. Swann and Brown (1997) found that in Scotland, teachers are accustomed to working in a centralised system, and generally, there has been a relatively high level of acceptance of a non-statutory national curriculum. According to them, evidence for teacher acceptance includes research findings from the official evaluation.…”

“…Also, Swann and Brown (1997) discovered that the 5-14 programme focuses on Scotland's traditional broad curriculum areas. It is much less a syllabus than a framework of curriculum and assessment concepts, with distinctive priorities which include:…”

“…Swann and Brown (1997) critically asserted that despite wide consultation and general levels of practitioner acceptance, 5-14 is still essentially a top-down initiative, and its translation from policy to practice will be subject to the difficulties apparent in the histories of similar schemes. Pratt and Silverman (1988) seem to support this assertion by Swann and Brown when they stated that:…”