MEDD8937 Curriculum Implementation and Leadership
The Complete Study & Assessment Guide · MEDD8937 Overview
- The University of Hong Kong
- First Semester, 2026-27
- MEd Curriculum and Pedagogy
- Eight three-hour evening sessions
- Three coursework tasks
What this course is actually asking you to do
This is a course in the Master of Education programme in Curriculum and Pedagogy at The University of Hong Kong, and its published aim is to develop the understanding of education professionals in curriculum implementation through a critical examination of the processes and stages involved, a critical analysis of the factors influencing implementation, the application of evaluation, the issues and challenges from multiple perspectives, and the strategies to address them, while highlighting the roles curriculum leaders play in leading curriculum renewals in school and government settings.
- Assessed by A group presentation on an implementation plan, an individual evaluation of another group's plan, and an individual case study essay.
- The skill being tested Connecting a named condition at a real site to a named mechanism in the literature, then saying what follows from the join.
- Hardest step Tiering support strategies to teachers at different stages of concern and levels of use, identified through your own formative evaluation.
- Where to confirm Deadlines, group size, the running time of the presentation and the submission settings are controlled by the course page.
How MEDD8937 is assessed
| Component | Weight | Format |
|---|---|---|
| Group presentation: Curriculum implementation plan (Task 1A) | 30% | Group work presented in the final session, no more than 15 minutes and no more than 30 slides, under three mandatory headings |
| Evaluation of a curriculum implementation plan (Task 1B) | 20% | Individual written evaluation of another group's presentation, 600 to 800 words, three mandatory headings, submitted to the Turnitin in-box |
| Case study: Working as professional curriculum personnel (Task 2) | 50% | Individual analytical essay on one of three given cases, 1,500 to 2,000 words, four mandatory headings, submitted to the Turnitin in-box |
The published course outline lists these three tasks and their weights total one hundred per cent, and the programme footnote states that all courses adopt continuous assessment by diverse forms of coursework. No examination appears among the tasks. The marks available shown on the two submission in-boxes agree with the outline, at twenty for the evaluation and fifty for the case study. Two published descriptions of the group presentation do not match: the outline states groups of three to five students and no more than fifteen minutes, while one slide set states three to four students and fifteen to twenty minutes. No hurdle, minimum component mark or attendance threshold is stated in the course materials, and the standards for allocating grades sit in the programme student handbook, so confirm the group size, the running time, the deadlines and any pass conditions on the course page.
Segment widths reproduce the published percentage weights and total 100%.
Current MEDD8937 dates
| Date | Item | Control |
|---|---|---|
| 4 September 2026 | Session 1, Curriculum implementation as a process | First of eight Friday evening sessions listed in the published schedule for this offering. |
| 13 November 2026 | Task 1A group presentation | Presented during the final session; one slide set shows the previous day, so confirm on the course page. |
| 23 November 2026 | Task 1B evaluation due, 23:59 | Stated in the outline and shown as the due date on the assignment in-box for this offering. |
| 14 December 2026 | Task 2 case study due, 23:59 | Stated in the outline and shown as the due date on the assignment in-box for this offering. |
Dates are as published in the published course outline and the assignment in-boxes on the course page for this offering. Confirm exact deadlines and submission settings in the live LMS.
What MEDD8937 covers
Eight chapters follow the published session sequence from the three approaches to implementation and the Concerns-Based Adoption Model through factors, educative materials, coaching and professional learning communities to organisational change and the roles of curriculum leaders.
Curriculum Implementation as a Process
where implementation sits in time and what it inherits · system and school level considerations · fidelity, mutual adaptation and enactment · materialised against thematic adaptationImplementation 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.
- Where implementation sits in time, and what it inherits from the framework
- The components a curriculum framework is expected to carry
- System-level considerations, and which of them a school cannot supply
- School-level considerations, and why documentation is the load-bearing one
- The axis from prior planning to on-site happening
- Fidelity: key concerns, features and the assumptions underneath them
The Concerns-Based Adoption Model
probing before intervening · innovation configurations and preferred variations · seven stages of concern · eight levels of use · the intervention menu attached to each positionProbe before you intervene
The model places a change facilitator between a resource system and a user system, and it separates two verbs that schools routinely run together. Probing gathers information about what users are actually experiencing.
- The facilitator between a resource system and a user system
- Probing and intervening as separate operations
- Innovation Configurations and what a component has to be
- Reading a configuration map from more preferred to less preferred
- Seven Stages of Concern grouped as self, task and impact
- Interpreting a concerns profile by its peak and its secondary peaks
Factors Affecting Curriculum Implementation
two published schemes and what the later one added · need, clarity, complexity, practicality · regional, community and stability factors · goals, structures, incentives, assessment and cultureTwo 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.
- The earlier three-heading model and the later four-group scheme
- Why organisation becoming its own group changes what a plan must cover
- Perceived need, and who has to feel it for the reform to move
- Clarity and complexity, and why simplifying can distort a reform
- Quality, contextual suitability and practicality at the site
- Regional administration, community and contextual stability
Educative Curriculum Materials
curriculum against instructional materials · the five stations of enactment · four stances towards materials · four design principles for an educative featureA material is not a curriculum
The session opens with two definitions held deliberately apart.
- Curriculum and instructional materials as two separate definitions
- Materials as mediator, and what changes in a centralised system
- The five stations of the enactment process
- The influence sets acting on each station
- What a teacher brings, from design capacity to tolerance for discomfort
- What a material brings, from structures to voice and look
Coaching and Mentoring
top-down, bottom-up and bottom-across · four provider types · five enabling factors of a coaching relationship · five coaching approaches · four levels of mentoringThree directions, and what each one can carry
Professional development is organised in this session by the direction the initiative travels.
- Top-down, bottom-up and bottom-across as three directions
- What each direction is actually able to move
- Four provider types and the direction each carries
- The learning organisation, defined as a specification rather than a compliment
- Five enabling factors for a coaching relationship
- The failure mode attached to each enabling factor
Professional Learning Communities
collaborative professionalism clause by clause · three core principles · individual against team · the inquiry cycle and its abandon condition · bureaucratic against professional routesA definition that reads as a specification
Collaborative professionalism names the joint work by which teachers and their colleagues change what happens in classrooms so that every student can build a worthwhile life.
- Collaborative professionalism, clause by clause
- Ensuring student learning as three questions a team must answer
- A culture of collaboration as an ongoing cycle of inquiry
- A focus on results, and what counts as evidence of progress
- Individual against team on five dimensions
- Leadership, activities and culture as success conditions
Organisational Changes for Curriculum Renewals
four possible fates of an innovation · eight depths of change with school examples · the seven-step renewal sequence · the climate for continual innovation · the risk of quasi-participationRenewal asks an institution to change what it exists to produce
Curriculum renewal is described in this session as asking an institution to remake the very thing it was set up to produce, so a leader is working on the design of a better curriculum and on the whole tangle of human and organisational behaviour at the same time.
- Renewal as transforming what an institution exists to produce
- Enacted, resisted, stalled or institutionalised as the four outcomes
- Eight contrasts between the older and newer readings of change
- The eight depths of change with their school examples
- Why the middle rungs are the ones that require judgement
- The seven-step renewal sequence and where plans skip
Roles of Curriculum Leaders
what the role is answerable for · capacity built through inquiry · the action research cycle · reading your own talk share as evidence · separating coaching from appraisalWhat the role is answerable for
The closing session names what a curriculum leader in a school actually does: advising and supporting the principal wherever the curriculum touches colleagues, resources or administration; supporting and urging teachers towards transformation for the sake of student learning and achievement; attending to teacher learning in the school and not only to student learning; and practising good curricular decision making by building a vision everyone shares, growing a culture of collaboration and spreading leadership out.
- What the curriculum leader role covers in a school
- The same role expressed as an order of operations
- Five outcomes of building teacher capacity through inquiry
- Three activities that make up curriculum inquiry work
- The action research cycle and its second turn
- What a workable inquiry question has to name
It runs as eight three-hour face-to-face sessions on Friday evenings, and all three assessment tasks ask the same underlying thing: connect a named condition at a real site to a named mechanism in the literature, then say what follows.
Curriculum Implementation as a Process
The opening session fixes implementation in time, as the stage that starts only once a curricular text has been written, and separates what a system can supply from what a school must supply for itself.
It then lays out the three approaches that organise the whole course, placed on one axis from a focus on prior planning to a focus on what happens on site. Fidelity asks how far an innovation was implemented as planned and what hindered it. Mutual adaptation asks for a narrative of the process and the organisational variables that shaped it. Enactment asks what experiences were created and what they did to students.
Each carries published features and assumptions, and the assumptions are what an evaluation question attacks.
The Concerns-Based Adoption Model
The second session supplies the diagnostic instruments. A change facilitator sits between a resource system and a user system, probing before intervening.
Innovation Configurations describe what the innovation looks like in practice, broken into observable components with their variations ordered from more preferred to less preferred. Stages of Concern describe what a person is preoccupied with, across self, task and impact bands. Levels of Use describe what she is actually doing, from non-use through mechanical use and routine to refinement, integration and renewal.
Every position carries a published list of interventions, which is what makes the model an action framework rather than a classification scheme.
Factors Affecting Curriculum Implementation
The third session compares an earlier three-heading model with a later scheme that promotes organisation to a group of its own. The innovation itself contributes perceived need, clarity, complexity and practicality.
Local characteristics contribute the regional administration, the community and contextual stability. The actors and the organisation contribute school management, teachers and students alongside goal compatibility, structures and processes, incentives and career patterns, curriculum and assessment procedures and culture. Government and external agencies contribute central and local relationships and resource support.
Sorting a barrier into its group is what tells you who can act on it.
Educative Curriculum Materials
The fourth session separates a curriculum from the materials that support it and models enactment as a chain running from the official curriculum through materials to what the teacher means to teach, what is enacted and what students take away.
It sets out four stances towards materials, each with its own theory and research question, from following or subverting through drawing on and interpreting to participating with.
It then defines educative curriculum materials as those that set out to teach the teacher at the same time as the class, and gives four design principles for building the features that carry that support.
Coaching and Mentoring
The fifth session is a menu and the skill is selection. Three directions of professional development carry three different commodities: information, attitude and field-tested practice.
Four provider types each bring a direction with them, from authority courses through university provision and in-house programmes to inter-school networks. Five enabling factors decide whether a coaching relationship works, and five described coaching approaches run from facilitative to transformational.
A further scheme grades the coaching conversation itself across four levels, each with the training need that lifts a coach off it.
Professional Learning Communities
The sixth session defines collaborative professionalism as joint work that is informed by evidence without being run by the numbers, then tests communities against three core principles: ensuring student learning, a culture of collaboration and a focus on results.
It contrasts what a team can do with what an individual can do, sets out an inquiry cycle whose final stage asks whether to adopt, adapt or abandon, and shows five implementation principles realised in a bureaucratic and a professional way, each with its own predicted pattern of teacher response.
Organisational Changes for Curriculum Renewals
The seventh session treats renewal as asking an institution to transform what it exists to produce, with four possible fates: enacted, resisted, stalled or institutionalised.
Eight depths of change run from smoothing an arrangement to challenging assumptions about knowledge itself, each illustrated with a school example.
A seven-step renewal sequence ends in formative evaluation and institutionalising, and three components of an organisational climate decide whether innovation continues after the first success.
Roles of Curriculum Leaders
The closing session names what the role is answerable for, including teacher learning and not only student learning, and describes capacity being built through inquiry rather than instruction.
Action research supplies the instrument, from a question grounded in practice through planning, action, observation and reflection to a second cycle. The session then turns the analysis on a leader, using a study of recorded co-planning meetings in which two speakers held more than eighty-six per cent of the time, which makes talk share one of the cheapest pieces of evidence a leader can collect about herself.
Worked example · free
Tier a support plan to what formative evaluation actually found
- 2Name the instrument you used and what it placed people on.
- 6Write one tier for each band of concern, with a concrete measure.
- 2Say what evidence would tell you the tiering worked.
Key terms
- Fidelity Approach
- A way of studying implementation whose object is the degree to which an innovation was carried out as planned, judged against the criteria set by its developers.
- Mutual Adaptation
- A way of studying implementation in which both the innovation and the site change, and the analysis looks for the organisational and contextual variables behind the result.
- Enactment Approach
- A way of studying implementation whose object is the experiences teachers and students create together, and what outside factors do to them.
- Innovation Configuration
- The pattern an innovation takes in practice, mapped component by component with the variations that occur for each ordered from more preferred to less preferred.
- Stages Of Concern
- Seven positions describing what a person is preoccupied with in relation to an innovation, grouped as self concerns, task concerns and impact concerns.
- Levels Of Use
- Eight positions describing what a person actually does with an innovation, from non-use through mechanical use and routine to refinement, integration and renewal.
- Educative Curriculum Materials
- Materials designed to support the learning of teachers as well as students, through features that help a teacher make decisions the material cannot make for her.
- Bottom-across Approach
- Professional development in which teachers at several schools carry a practice between them and trade the working knowledge that has already survived somewhere.
- Learning Organisation
- A body defined by three continuing activities among its members, acquiring knowledge, passing it on and adapting it, and by two results, group-level growth and a quick response when conditions shift.
- Collaborative Professionalism
- Joint work by which colleagues change classroom practice together under four stated conditions: rigorous planning, deep dialogue, frank feedback and inquiry without an end date, informed by evidence but not run by numbers.
- Inquiry Cycle
- The four-stage sequence of planning a change and its data, carrying it out, studying the results against a baseline, and deciding whether to adopt, adapt or abandon.
- Depth Of Change
- The rung an organisational change occupies, from smoothing an existing arrangement to putting in question what knowledge is taken to be and where one subject stops and the next begins.
- Institutionalisation
- The step at which an innovation is written into documents, timetables and appraisal criteria so that it survives the departure of the people who championed it.
MEDD8937 FAQ
How is this course assessed?
The published course outline lists three tasks whose weights total one hundred per cent: a group presentation of a curriculum implementation plan worth thirty per cent, an individual written evaluation of another group's plan worth twenty, and an individual case study essay worth fifty.
Each has its own rubric in the outline appendices with indicative weightings on every criterion, so the distribution of marks inside each task is visible before you begin writing.
Is there an examination in this course?
The outline lists three assessment tasks and names no examination among them, and the programme footnote states that all courses adopt one hundred per cent continuous assessment by diverse forms of coursework.
What that means for your preparation is that there is no single morning on which everything is decided; instead there is a presentation session and two submission points, each with a published date and time on the course page.
How should I choose an innovation for the group presentation?
Choose something modest that you genuinely know, because the rubric rewards specificity rather than ambition and the site description has to be concrete enough that support measures can be justified against it. One condition is published and absolute: a case provided for the case study task may not be used as the innovation here, and doing so is stated to produce a failing grade for the presentation.
Do the mandatory headings really matter?
Yes, and they are the cheapest marks in the course. Each task states the headings that must be used and requires them in boldface, and each rubric is written to follow them. Reorganising them changes the task you are being marked against, and it also removes the structural signal a marker uses to find the criterion she is assessing, which costs you twice for no benefit.
What is the difference between stages of concern and levels of use?
Stages of concern describe what somebody is preoccupied with, from wanting information about the innovation to worrying about its effect on students. Levels of use describe what she is actually doing with it, from no use at all to redesigning it. The two can diverge, and where they do the finding is usually about the conditions she works in rather than about her commitment, which changes the support you would offer.
How many references am I expected to use?
The outline states a minimum of three citations for a satisfactory evaluation and a minimum of ten for a satisfactory case study, drawn from scholarly journals and books. The rubric criterion asks that the literature effectively informs the analysis, so a citation attached to a sentence that would stand without it earns nothing.
Vary the sources as well as the count, since the top band mentions works that are appropriate, varied and highly relevant.
Am I allowed to use generative tools, and how do I declare it?
The outline states that where such tools are permitted in coursework you may use them in all assessment tasks of this course, that every use must be appropriately declared, and that excessive quotation from their output indicates a lack of understanding and is assessed accordingly.
For the case study the declaration is graded: a criterion worth twenty per cent covers reading, research and the critical use of these systems, including a clear statement of the ways they were used.
What happens if I submit late?
The outline states that late submission without a justified reason such as illness is penalised by a grade deduction if the work is late within three days, and by a failing grade if it is more than three days late. Applications for deferral go to the programme office, and all late submissions or requests for approval are handled within the framework set out in the assessment section of the programme student handbook.
Questions students ask in each MEDD8937 chapter
- 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. Chapter 01 · Curriculum Implementation as a Process
- Can a teacher have advanced concerns and basic use at the same time?
- Yes, and the course raises the question deliberately. Someone can be asking exactly the right question about student impact while still running the innovation mechanically, because concerns are about attention and use is about practice. When the two diverge that way, the finding is usually about conditions rather than about motivation, so the useful response is to remove an obstacle rather than to explain the innovation again. Chapter 02 · The Concerns-Based Adoption Model
- 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. Chapter 03 · Factors Affecting Curriculum Implementation
- What is the difference between drawing on materials and interpreting them?
- They differ on one question: whether fidelity remains coherent. Under drawing on, the teacher selects from a material she could in principle have used as written, so fidelity is a standard she chose not to meet. Under interpreting, the material only ever offers representations that somebody has to read, so there is no unmediated version to be faithful to. That is why an evaluation designed under the first can report deviation and one designed under the second cannot. Chapter 04 · Educative Curriculum Materials
- Is one coaching approach better than the others?
- The session asks that question directly and the defensible answer is no. The five approaches suit different situations, and choosing between them is part of the diagnosis rather than a matter of style. A teacher whose competence is settled and whose uncertainty is about impact needs a facilitative conversation; one who has never seen the practice needs demonstration. Stating why you rejected the other options is what earns the higher rubric band. Chapter 05 · Coaching and Mentoring
- How do I tell a professional learning community from a regular meeting?
- Look for the three principles rather than for the label. Ask whether the team has agreed what students should learn and how it will know, whether any change was tested and returned to, and whether a goal exists that evidence could bear on. A team can meet weekly for a year, keep excellent minutes and satisfy none of the three, which is a finding about design rather than about commitment. Chapter 06 · Professional Learning Communities
- How do I decide which depth a change sits at?
- Ask what has to move for the change to be real, and check whether the plan moves it. Smoothing an arrangement, reconfiguring authority, moving resources, changing how planning happens, changing who leads, changing the measures, changing the stated values and challenging assumptions about knowledge are eight different demands. The rung is set by the deepest thing that must change, not by how ambitious the language of the announcement is. Chapter 07 · Organisational Changes for Curriculum Renewals
- Should a curriculum leader also carry out appraisal observations?
- There is a case each way and the answer should be argued rather than asserted. The role explicitly covers advising the principal on curriculum-related collegial and administrative matters, and nobody has a closer view of the practice. Against that, coaching requires a setting free from external pressure, and a coachee who knows the same person writes her appraisal will manage the conversation. The reconciling move is to keep both roles and separate them in time and in writing. Chapter 08 · Roles of Curriculum Leaders
How to prepare for the assessments
Choose one real school, panel or district in the first week and carry it through all eight sessions, answering each session's question about that site before you read the session's own answer. Then rehearse the move every task rewards: name a condition at the site, name the mechanism from the literature that explains it, and write the sentence that joins them.
Twenty minutes of that on paper is worth more than a second pass through the readings, because it is the only exercise that practises what all three rubrics are actually reading for.
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