Session Information
03 SES 01, School, Teacher and Student Involvement in Curriculum Development
Paper Session
Contribution
Curriculum innovation is the result of actual implementation of novel curricula. It is a complex process. Its success depends on the quality of two related processes: curriculum development and teacher development (Penuel, Fishman, Yamaguchi and Gallagher, 2007).
It is widely acknowledged that curriculum innovations cannot succeed when teachers are merely viewed as practitioners, who put innovations to practice that are invented by others (cf. Hargraeves, 2002; Verloop, Van Driel, Meijer, 2001). Recent insights in educational and curriculum innovations point at the necessity of increasing the active involvement of teachers in the process to promote ownership, commitment, successful implementation and even teachers’ professional development (for an extensive discussion on this: Handelzalts, 2009). In line with insights stemming from research on professional and teachers’ learning communities, the active involvement of teachers is often situated in a collaborative context.
Against this background, the phenomenon of teachers collaboratively designing curriculum materials seems to become more and more a trend in curriculum innovation projects. The large-scale curriculum innovations of science subjects in the Netherlands and in Germany for example all make use of so-called teacher design teams (Boersma et al, 2005; Driessen en Meinema, 2003; Parchmann et al, 2006). In these projects, teachers design innovative curriculum materials in co-operation with each other and often also with other experts, such as: educational design experts, educational researchers, and domain experts.
Several studies have shown a positive relation between curriculum implementation and the active involvement of teachers in the development process (Ben-Peretz, 1990; Clandinin & Conolly, 1992; Edelson, 2002; Davis & Krajcik, 2005; McKenney, 2005; Parke & Coble, 1997; Shulman & Armitage, 2005; Voogt, Almekinders, van den Akker & Moonen, 2005). These studies tend to focus on effects in terms of, for example, teacher professioinal development, but not on the characteristics of the teams and the processes involved and how these are related to the measured effects. Given the ambitions of the approach of teacher design teams and its apparent widespread use, it is important to examine this in a systematic way. The aim of this review is therefore to map what is known about design teams and the design and professionalization processes that take place in such teams, and especially their relation. The research question pertains to what team and process characteristics contribute to the reported effects and what factors might facilitate or hinder curriculum development processes?
A central and innovative element in this review is the explicit attention to colloquial evidence from the professional and not only research literature. This means that this review includes a systematic study of professional literature in order to access experiences of teachers as they report them to their colleagues. By doing this the voice of the practitioners and their experiences are taken seriously and are used to supplement the research perspective.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Penuel, W.R, Fishman, B.J., Yamaguchi, R., & Gallagher, L.P. (2007). What makes professional development effective? Strategies that foster curriculum implementation. American Educational Research Journal, 44(4), 921-958. Handelzalts, A. (2009). Collaborative curriculum development in teacher design teams. Enschede: University of Twente. Verloop, Van Driel, Meijer, (2001). Teacher knowledge and the knowledge base of teaching. International Journal of Educational Research, 35, 441-461 Driessen, H.P.W. & Meinema, H.A. (2003). Chemistry between Context and Concept. Designing for renewal. Enschede: SLO Parchmann, I., Gräsel, P. I., Baer, A., Nentwig, P., Demuth, R., Ralle, B. (2006). Chemie im Kontext – A symbiotic implementation of a context-based teaching and learning approach. International Journal of Science Education, 28, 1041-1062. Ben-Peretz, M. (1990). The teacher-curriculum encounter. Albany: State University of New York Press. Connolly, F & Clandinin, J. (1992). Teacher as curriculum maker. P. Jackson (Ed), Handbook of research on curriculum. New York: Macmillan Edelson, D.C. (2002). Design research: What we learn when we engage in design. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 11(1), 105-121. Davis, E.A. & Krajcik, J.S. (2005). Designing educative materials to promote teacher learning. Educational Researcher, 34(3), 3-14. McKenney, S. (2005). Technology for curriculum and teacher development: Software to help educators learn while designing teacher guides. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 28(2), 167-190. Parke, H.M. & Coble, C.R. (1997). Teachers designing curriculum as professional development: A model for transformational science teaching. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 34(8), 773-789. Verloop, N., Driel, J. van & Meijer, P.C. (2001). Teacher knowledge and the knowledge base of teaching. International Journal of Educational Research, 35 (5), 441-461. Voogt, J., Almekinders, M., Van den Akker, J., and Moonen, B. (2005). A blended in-service arrangement for classroom technology integration: impacts on teachers and students. Computers in Human Behavior, 21(3), 523-539.
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