MEDD8937 Chap.3 Factors Affecting Curriculum Implementation
Factors Affecting Curriculum Implementation
Two published schemes, and what the later one added
The session compares an earlier model, which organises implementation under characteristics of the change, local characteristics and external factors, with a later scheme that keeps the first two headings almost intact, renames the first as characteristics of the innovation itself, promotes organisation to a heading of its own, and moves government and external agencies to the end.
That promotion is the examinable difference. Once organisation is a group rather than a scattering of items, questions about timetabling, incentives, assessment procedures and culture acquire a home, and a plan can be asked whether it has addressed them.
The innovation is a factor in its own fate
The first group holds perceived need, clarity, complexity, and quality with contextual suitability and practicality.
Perceived need must be felt by the governmental apparatus, by the academics involved in initiating the reform and by the other parties implementing it, communicated as both ends and means. Clarity is about practitioners being able to state the goals and the means, which reduces the uncertainty a change process generates and makes evaluative discussion possible.
Complexity covers the skill development, belief change and material needs the innovation demands, and the published guidance is to reduce it and sequence the steps without distorting the reform.
Quality and practicality cover perceived possibility, coherence with existing measures, ease of understanding, availability of resources and suitability across the contextual levels from students to society.
Local, organisational and external factors
Local characteristics cover the regional administration, judged on what it has done before, whether it follows through, how well it understands the change and whether it actively backs it, community characteristics working through management committees, mass media and social media, and contextual stability, where societal change can disrupt an innovation either directly or by diverting resources and attention.
The actors group covers school management, teachers, and students together with anyone else taking part. The organisational group covers compatibility of the innovation goals with the organisation's long-term goals, structures and processes including workload and timetabling, incentive systems and career patterns, the interrelation of curriculum and assessment processes, and organisational culture.
The final group covers central and local relationships, which should be long-term rather than ad hoc, and resource support and training from government, academic or non-governmental bodies, with a caution that the supporting role should be protected from interference by the authoritative role of the same organisations.
What a good factor analysis looks like
A study of a mother tongue curriculum reform describes teachers exercising genuine agency between a policy set nationally and the bilingual reality of their classrooms, running two curricula in parallel and switching between languages, while inadequate training and examinations still held in the second language worked against the reform.
The account names a factor about the innovation, a factor about teachers and a factor about the system, and shows them interacting rather than adding up. That is the level the highest rubric band describes: an analysis with depth that identifies the influencing factors and explains them across several aspects at once.
What this chapter covers
- 01
The earlier three-heading model and the later four-group scheme
- 02
Why organisation becoming its own group changes what a plan must cover
- 03
Perceived need, and who has to feel it for the reform to move
- 04
Clarity and complexity, and why simplifying can distort a reform
- 05
Quality, contextual suitability and practicality at the site
- 06
Regional administration, community and contextual stability
- 07
School management, teachers and students as actors
- 08
Goal compatibility, structures, incentives, assessment and culture
- 09
Central and local relationships, and the support against authority tension
Six barriers, four groups, and who can act on each
- 3Assign each barrier to its factor group.
- 3Name the lever the group gives and who holds it.
- 3Identify the one barrier the panel chair can act on alone.
Key terms
- Perceived Need
- The condition in which everyone who has to act on a reform feels that it answers a real problem, communicated as both the ends being sought and the means proposed to reach them.
- Clarity
- The property of goals and means being easily understood by the practitioners implementing them, which reduces the uncertainty that change generates and makes evaluative discussion possible.
- Complexity
- The amount of skill development, belief change and material provision an innovation demands, which curriculum personnel are advised to reduce and to sequence without distorting the reform.
- Contextual Stability
- The absence of significant societal change or unrest that would disrupt an innovation, whether directly or by diverting resources and attention elsewhere.
- Goal Compatibility
- The requirement that the goals of an innovation agree with the established long-term goals of the organisation adopting it, rather than competing with them.
- Incentive Systems
- The appraisal and reward arrangements of a school, which should encourage the capabilities and behaviours a change initiative expects if the change is to be sustained.
- Organisational Culture
- Conditions that let collaboration, reflection and knowledge sharing go deep without intruding, while protecting staff autonomy and equity.
- Regional Administration
- The layer of educational authority above the school, whose history, follow-through, knowledge and active support shape implementation, and which in a small centralised system applies territory-wide.
Factors Affecting Curriculum Implementation FAQ
What is the difference between complexity and practicality?
Complexity is a property of the innovation itself, namely how much skill, belief and material change it demands of anyone. Practicality is a relation between the innovation and a particular site, namely whether the next steps match what is actually available there.
The same innovation can be complex everywhere and practical in one school and not another, and the two problems have different remedies: redesign in the first case, re-sequencing in the second.
Why does the course say regional factors can apply territory-wide?
Because where curriculum management is centralised and the territory is small, the regional layer is a single administration rather than one district among many with its own history. Its follow-through, knowledge and support reach every school simultaneously. For a school writing a plan that means the regional factor is a constant to be designed around rather than local context to be worked with.
How many factors should a scenario analysis name?
Fewer than most candidates use, and from more than one group. The criterion asks for attention to influence from different sources, so three factors drawn from three groups and traced through to a consequence score better than eight from one group listed without consequences. What earns the higher band is the explanation of how they interact, not the coverage of the taxonomy.
Assessment move
Take the last change that failed where you work and write each reason on a separate line, then label every line with its factor group. The pattern that emerges is usually a plan that addressed one group thoroughly and the others not at all, and naming that pattern is more useful than memorising the taxonomy.
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