Session Information
03 SES 02, Perspectives on Curriculum and Implications for Classroom Practice
Symposium
Contribution
With schools across England, Wales and Northern Ireland required to implement a new National Curriculum, it is timely to explore how other systems have approached such a large-scale undertaking. In the United States, schools have been working with a national curriculum, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), for the past 6 years. One of the challenges with the Math CCSS has been to move beyond the de facto national mathematics curriculum: the curriculum defined by school mathematics textbooks (Hung-Hsi Wu, 2011). Tyson-Bernstein and Woodward (1991) describe as ubiquitous the role of textbooks in American schools, and as a prominent, if not dominant, part of teaching and learning. Porter (2006) noted that curriculum can be divided into the intended, enacted, assessed, and learned curricula. For K-12 education in the U.S, the intended curriculum is captured most explicitly in the CCSS; statements of what every student must know and be able to do. The enacted curriculum refers to instruction (e.g. what happens in classrooms). So when planning the enacted curriculum, the intended curriculum (the CCSS) is an essential starting point. The purpose of this study is to explore the experiences of teachers in a district-wide Math CCSS professional learning initiative, where the teachers collaborated to enact the intended curriculum, while simultaneously working in an environment where the district mandates the use of a math textbook. The key research questions are: 1. How do the teachers perceive changes in their planning and teaching practices as a result of the professional learning initiative? 2. To what extent does teacher professional learning focused on planning with the intended curriculum influence teachers’ use of textbooks? Data for this quantitative study was collected from 345 teachers in an urban school district in California via an online self-report survey. The teacher’s participated in a mathematics professional learning project that required participants to attend four full-day learning workshops complemented by in-classroom coaching and planning support throughout the 2014-2015 academic year. Latent Growth Curve modelling was used to empirically test the extent to which the professional learning impacted teachers’ planning and teaching practices. Growth curve modelling was chosen to ascertain change over-time (Curran, Obeidat, & Losardo, 2010; Duncan & Duncan, 2004).
References
Common core state standards for mathematics. Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2012. Curran, P.J., Obeidat, K, & Losardo, D.(2010). Twelve frequently asked questions about growth curve modeling. Journal of Cognition and Development, 11(2), 121-136. Duncan, T. E., & Duncan, S. C. (2004). An introduction to latent growth curve modeling. Behavior therapy, 35(2), 333-363. Porter, A. C. (2006). Curriculum assessment. Handbook of complementary methods in education research, 141-159. Tyson-Bernstein, H., & Woodward, A. (1986). The Great Textbook Machine and Prospects for Reform. Social Education, 50(1), 41-45. Wu, H. H. (2011). Phoenix Rising: Bringing the Common Core State Mathematics Standards to Life. American Educator, 35(3), 3-13.
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