Curriculum Implementation
Curriculum Implementation
Three conceptions
- A delivery process.
- An engineering system that carries a design through channels to the teacher and classroom.
- An instructional or teaching process.
The contrasting view
- The aim is not to teacher-proof the process.
- Teachers are creators and adaptors of curriculum.
- Implementation is developing learning experiences from continuous interaction with learners, not following orders.
A curriculum on paper is not yet a curriculum in a child’s mind. Implementation is the domain that covers the gap: getting the plan off the page and into the classroom. How you picture that handover decides how much freedom a teacher has, and the field holds two very different pictures.
Three conceptions of implementation
The first three conceptions treat implementation as a transfer from plan to practice.
- A delivery process. The curriculum is something to be delivered, and implementation is the act of delivering it.
- An engineering system. Implementation carries the design specifications through various channels to the teacher and the classroom. The design is engineered elsewhere, and the teacher is the final channel that brings it to learners.
- An instructional or teaching process. Implementation is the teaching itself, the live work of instruction in the room.
The image running through these is of a map drawn by someone else that the teacher then traces in the classroom. The plan is fixed upstream; the teacher’s job is faithful delivery.
Delivery, engineering, and instruction
Implementation is seen as delivering the curriculum, as an engineered system carrying a design through the teacher to the classroom, or as the teaching process itself. All three locate the plan upstream of the teacher.
The contrasting view: teachers as creators
A sharply different conception pushes back. On this view, the purpose of a curriculum is not to teacher-proof the teaching and learning process. A teacher-proof curriculum is one designed so tightly that the teacher cannot change it, on the assumption that teachers cannot be trusted to. The contrasting view rejects that assumption.
Instead, teachers are seen as creators and adaptors of curriculum. Implementation is not the following of orders. It is the development of learning experiences built on knowledge that comes from a continuous flow of interactions with learners. The teacher reads the room, sees what is working, and reshapes the plan to fit the learners in front of them.
The difference is large. In the first picture, a good implementation is a faithful copy of the plan. In the second, a good implementation is a living response to real learners, and the plan is a starting point rather than a script.
Specified so tightly the teacher cannot change it
It assumes teachers cannot be trusted to adapt. The contrasting view rejects this, treating teachers as creators and adaptors whose responsiveness to learners is part of good implementation.
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