MEDD8937 Chap.1 Curriculum Implementation as a Process
Curriculum Implementation as a Process
Implementation starts after the text exists, and inherits it
The opening session places curriculum implementation in time: it begins only once a curricular text has been written. That sounds like a definition and behaves like a constraint. Whatever the curriculum framework failed to settle arrives at the school as an implementation problem, and no amount of support at the site repairs a gap in the framework itself.
The session works through what a framework is expected to carry, from syllabuses and standards and the approaches they imply for teaching, learning and assessment, through assessment policy and practice, teaching and learning materials, teacher education and professional development, to the wider policy areas such as class sizes, language of instruction, monitoring of schools and staff recruitment.
Reading that list as a set of inherited conditions rather than as background is the first shift the course asks for.
Two levels of planning that cannot substitute for each other
Considerations at system level and considerations at school level are treated separately.
At system level the course names the understanding held by officers and teachers, the plans chosen for each separate area, the money and the people available, a structure that oversees and coordinates, and the support measures themselves. At school level it names training and support, licence to adapt, a record of the adaptations performed, solving immediate problems, and opportunities for sharing and mutual learning.
Most of the system list is beyond a school's reach, and most of the school list is about giving teachers permission to change something and then recording what they changed.
The item that is dropped first, documentation, is the one that later makes monitoring possible, because a school that adapts without a record has changed its practice and kept no evidence of it.
Three approaches, and the question each one is built to ask
Fidelity, mutual adaptation and enactment sit on one axis running from a focus on prior planning to a focus on what happens on site.
The fidelity approach asks how far the innovation was implemented as planned and what hindered it, and it assumes that implementation skills are specifiable and learnable, that experts can perfect materials so that they travel between settings, and that good implementation means practice meeting developer criteria.
The mutual adaptation approach asks for a rich narrative of the process and for the variables, especially organisational and contextual ones, that shaped it. The enactment approach asks what experiences teachers and students created together, what outside factors did to them, and what effect they had on students.
None of the three is correct in general; each is a decision about what will count as a finding, and a site usually needs more than one of them at once.
Adaptation has a visible layer and a hidden one
A study of professional development facilitators distinguishes materialised adaptation, the observable acts of omitting, modifying, re-sorting and creating, from thematic adaptation, the choices about which theory and which examples to emphasise or leave out.
The facilitators moved between knowledge for practice, knowledge in practice and knowledge of practice, and their decisions were driven by what they believed teachers needed, how difficult the theory was, and how much time they had. For a leader designing an adaptation log the lesson is practical: record the reason alongside the edit, because two teachers making the same change for different reasons need different support.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Where implementation sits in time, and what it inherits from the framework
- 02
The components a curriculum framework is expected to carry
- 03
System-level considerations, and which of them a school cannot supply
- 04
School-level considerations, and why documentation is the load-bearing one
- 05
The axis from prior planning to on-site happening
- 06
Fidelity: key concerns, features and the assumptions underneath them
- 07
Mutual adaptation: what changes in the innovation and in the site
- 08
Enactment: the experiences created, and the effects on students
- 09
Materialised against thematic adaptation, and the three forms of knowledge
Three reports, three approaches, three different follow-ups
- 3Name the approach that makes each report legible.
- 3State the follow-up question each approach licenses.
- 3Say what would be lost by answering all three the same way.
Key terms
- Curriculum Implementation
- The stage that starts only once a curricular text has been written, in which that text meets a site and its people. Problems with the goals themselves belong to an earlier stage and cannot be solved here.
- Fidelity Approach
- A way of studying implementation in which the object of measurement is the degree to which the innovation was carried out as planned, and the standard is the criteria set by the developers.
- Mutual Adaptation
- A way of studying implementation in which both the innovation and the site are expected to change, and the analysis looks for the organisational and contextual variables that shaped the outcome.
- Enactment Approach
- A way of studying implementation in which the object is the experiences teachers and students create together, including the effects of outside factors on those experiences.
- Curriculum Framework
- The document set stating what is to be learned together with the conditions that support it, covering syllabuses and standards, assessment policy, teaching materials, teacher development and related policy areas.
- Materialised Adaptation
- The observable acts a practitioner performs on a set of materials, such as omitting, modifying, re-sorting and creating, as distinct from the choices about emphasis that drive them.
- Thematic Adaptation
- The decisions about which theory and which examples to emphasise or leave out, which explain why a given edit was made and therefore what support the person making it needs.
Curriculum Implementation as a Process FAQ
Why does it matter that implementation comes after the curricular text?
Because it fixes what an implementer can and cannot repair. If the goals are unclear or the assessment policy contradicts them, those are properties of the framework, and support at the school will not resolve them. Saying so explicitly in a plan is not an excuse; it tells the reader which problems you have accepted as constraints and which you intend to act on, and the rubric rewards that distinction.
Is the fidelity approach outdated?
No, and treating it as the unsophisticated option is a common way to lose marks. An officer responsible for consistency across many schools has a real question about entitlement, and the fidelity approach is the one built to answer it. What is outdated is using it alone, because on its own it cannot see local improvement and so can support a compliance decision but not a decision about scaling something up.
How do I decide which approach my own plan should use?
Start from what you would have to be able to say at the end of the year. If you must report whether every site delivered, you need the prior-planning end of the axis. If you must explain why two similar sites diverged, you need the middle. If you must say what changed for students in lessons, you need the far end. Most plans need two, and naming both is stronger than choosing one.
Assessment move
Take a change you have lived through and write the same event three times, once as a fidelity finding, once as a mutual adaptation narrative and once as an enactment account. Doing that for twenty minutes teaches the distinction better than rereading the definitions, because it forces you to notice which facts each version has to leave out.
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