Introduction

In order to meet changing society’s demands, responsive development of curricula is vital. To do so, curriculum developers need to increasingly foresee and incorporate changes into their curricula in a thorough and timely manner (Vreuls et al., under revision). A responsive curriculum is open and authentic, and requires a continuous and iterative curriculum development approach (Vreuls et al., under revision). However, Bens et al. (2020) state that curriculum developers struggle adapting to the rapid societal and professional changes and argue that a major concern for professional educational institutions is that curriculum development often occurs at a pace that is too slow. Also, Vreuls et al. (under revision) argued that educational institutions attempt to incorporate the rapid professional changes into their curricula, and uncovered several social-political challenges that influence these attempts. Especially institutional conditions seem to hinder incorporating rapid professional changes into curricula. Curriculum developers seem to have a lack of knowledge how to deal with these institutional barriers and claim they need support. However, comprehensive research into (supportive) factors of the responsive curriculum development process is scarce (Bhat et al., 2017). The present study aims to provide innovative empirical insights about which (f) actors play a (supportive) role in responsive curriculum development processes.

Theoretical framework

Responsive curriculum development

Curriculum development is an ‘intentional process or activity directed at (re)designing, developing and implementing curricular interventions in formal or corporate education’ (Goodlad et al., 1979). Nieuwenhuis (2021) proposes a model for responsive curriculum development. In this model, the design starts from ‘the outside’ (the professional field) ‘inwards’. The interaction and co-makership between curriculum developers with one’s own regional professional field forms the core of the model (figure). In addition, Vreuls et al. (under review) point at the importance of dealing with various social–political (f)actors during the entire development process, such as dealing with different roles, responsibilities and frameworks, or the involvement of various stakeholders in each phase of the development process. They argue to include such (f)actors more prominent in the responsive curriculum development model by Nieuwenhuis et al. (2021).

Pieters et al. (2019) discuss the need for, and examples of, diverse types of support (e.g. teacher involvement, professional learning communities, facilitators). But thus far, there is no convenient practical support for responsive curriculum development, because it is unknown which guidance is needed both in schools and professional practice at all levels of the involved organisations (Leeman et al., 2020). This may be even more complicated because a common language for discussing responsive curriculum development (processes) is lacking (Nieuwenhuis et al., 2021). Especially, little is known about specific sequences, criteria and interdependencies, which are essential elements of a practical support approach (Kuiper et al., 2013). So in addition to the exploration of the contextual (f)actors, we investigated the importance and feasibility of possible solution paths that are useful in the design of supportive guidelines.

In this study, we used a Group Concept mapping (GCM) method, as presented by Rosas and Kane (2012). The study took place at a Dutch University of Applied Sciences. We selectively recruited participants (N=22-29 per research step; Ntotal= 77). The participants in all of these phases were educational experts (e.g., curriculum committee members, educational advisors, educational research group members), who played an important role in the development of various curricula educating for professional practice. An online environment (Groupwisdom©) was used for both data collection and analysis in five steps: Step 1: Preparation. The main activities (all carried out by the research team) in this step were: determining the 'focus prompt' (i.e., a cue based on the research question to generate and sort statements) and preparing the Groupwisdom© environment. The ‘focus prompt’ concerned: “Curriculum developers in (higher) professional education must be able to handle rapid changes in the relevant field of work. Generate as many statements as possible about the actors, factors and preconditions that play a role in development processes of such a curriculum by curriculum development teams”. Step 2: Brainstorming - Generating Statements. In this step, 22 participants generated as many statements about the focus prompt as possible. Step 3: Structuring - Editing the generated statements (by the research team). Step 4: Sorting the generated statements. In this step, 26 participants sorted the statements into groups and labeled each group. Step 5: Evaluation of the statements. After step 4, 29 participants rated (on a 5-point Likert scale) each statement based on two criteria: (1) how important the statement is (ranging from 1 = relatively unimportant to 5 = extremely important), and (2) how feasible the statement is (ranging from 1 = very difficult to implement to 5 = very easy to implement). Data analysis Data analysis (step 4) involved three steps: 1) Multi-Dimensional Scaling (MDS) to determine which statements were more often sorted together in groups and which were not (resulting in a concept map); 2) Hierarchical Cluster Analysis (HCA) to provide insights that support the decision on a suitable number of clusters; and 3) data of step 5 were analyzed. This analysis resulted in a ladder graph, presenting the correlation between ratings on importance and feasibility (i.e. whether something very important was also highly feasible, or if something very important was difficult to achieve).

Preliminary conclusions This study revealed six clusters with factors of influence on responsive curriculum development: (1) Curriculum vision; (2) Desirable characteristics and principles of curriculum development; (3) Desirable characteristics and principles on team level; (4) Involving stakeholders; (5) Conducive environment and conditions; and (6) Behavior. The results of our research underline the challenges that (higher) professional education faces when responsively developing curricula. A pattern was found of important factors mostly judged as less feasible, whereas factors that are less important are judged as relatively feasible. For the purpose of this abstract we will focus on the two extremes in this pattern (discussion on all of the factors will be covered during the presentation): 1. ‘Stakeholder involvement’ scored (lowest on importance and) highest on feasibility. Stakeholder involvement is challenging, though less challenging than many other factors reported in this study. Despite that research and participating experts consider it important to involve stakeholders, we emphasize the importance of not underestimating the challenges curriculum developers face when involving stakeholders during responsive curriculum development. 2. ‘Behavior’ is judged - by our participating experts - as most important, but quite difficult to achieve. Statements in this cluster included, among others, the following topics: self-efficacy, flexibility and flexible mindset, vigor, sustainability, willingness to change, leadership, the grit to go beyond sacred cows. We will refer to this behavior as ‘responsive behavior’. In line with Lambriex-Schmitz et al. (2020), our findings suggest that ‘behavior’ provides a crucial basis for dealing with institutional barriers that curriculum developers are facing during curriculum development. Despite that responsive behavior forms a strong and important foundation for responsive curriculum development processes to succeed, it is important to note that the participating experts also indicated that the statements in these clusters are relatively hard to implement and require a thorough support approach.

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