Curriculum, which Pinar et al. (1995) viewed as a context-specific endeavour, has epistemologically and ontologically reinvented and/or reformed itself incrementally on its legacy through an act of defining-redefining, constructing-reconstructing, and conceptualising-re-conceptualising process within its dynamic ecology. Corresponding to Pinar et al.’s (1995) perspective, Mulenga (2018) depicted curriculum as “the way we dice up the experience of the world into tidy but arbitrary packages until it is again recoded as it enters the ceremonies, structures, and rituals of schooling” (p. 1). Throughout the evolutionary journey of curriculum as a field, curriculum as a notion has been conceptualised-re-conceptualised in various contexts and ways. Adjoining to this journey, this study aimed to explore the English teachers’ curriculum conceptualisations working in different types of public high schools in Türkiye beholding a centralised system of curriculum development and putting into effect top-down curriculum implementation policies widespread without considering the contextual realities at almost all types of schools. In addition to the reality that the students’ English language competences in public high schools were found “rudimentary” in Türkiye and the researcher’s teaching experiences having worked in different types of public high schools, this study is based on the notion that curriculum might mean different things to different individuals in different settings. Instead of focusing on the concepts as were construed in the literature, this study aimed to unfold the reality of how the curriculum was conceptualised by English teachers working in two different types of public high schools through the teachers’ curriculum implementation practices.

According to Ornstein and Hunkins (2016), the majority of teachers do not have a firm grasp of the definition and the creation of the curriculum. As previously disclosed by Molla et al. (2022), the practitioners’ participation in the creation and execution of the crafted curriculum was deemed insufficient and they were unable to implement the curriculum’s practical concepts. In this regard, this study bears remarkable significance since teachers were put in the nucleus of the study which would allow scholars and practitioners to view the curriculum through the lens of the teachers who were identified as the primary agent of curriculum implementation by Stenhouse (as cited in Phaeton & Stears, 2017).

As a contextualised piece of work, this study in its ecology yielded considerable insights that could promote both the theory and the practice in the field of curriculum on sound grounds. Pinar et al. (1995) in Understanding the Curriculum urged the curriculum field to reinvent itself. Our endeavour to focus on comprehending teachers’ conceptualisations of curriculum through their practices, in a sense, could be considered as a response to Pinar et al.’s (1995) reach for an understanding of the concept of curriculum. Built upon the body of work in the field of curriculum, this study would bring new conceptualisations that instilled a fresh phenomenal perspective in the field, as well as assist curriculum scholars in identifying and comprehending the emerging conceptualisations within the existing conceptualisations. Moreover, the projection of the curriculum conceptualisations of English teachers as an umbrella term aided in understanding the state of concepts such as teaching, learning, and knowledge in two different settings that might ultimately lead to the reinvention of the concepts and revitalisation of the dynamism of the curriculum field. Finally, the study could also be regarded to have yielded new ways of thinking and communication among scholars in the field of curriculum which also could contribute to curriculum inquiry for a better understanding of the concept of curriculum.

The study used a multi-case design. The research sites were a Vocational and Technical Anatolian High School (VTAH) and an Anatolian High School (AHS). Türkiye’s public high schools cater to different purposes, with VTAHs aiming to raise technical personnel for businesses and AHSs educating highly qualified students for university entrance exams. In the identification of research settings criterion sampling method was used to ensure a basis for context-based differences and consistent results. This was because “a researcher should select a site that is intentionally biased toward information-rich cases” (Patton, 1990, p. 169). The criteria used to identify the research sites were being categorised as either an AHS or a VTAHS, being located in the central districts of the province of Sakarya - a city in the northwest of Türkiye, possessing a positive approach towards language education, having a good enough infrastructure in support of language instruction, and using the same 9th-12th Grades English Curriculum. In the identification of the teachers, typical-case sampling method was used. According to Patton (1980) sampling typical cases is defined as “useful in naturalistic research to avoid rejecting information on the grounds that it has been gained from special or deviant cases” (as cited in Cohen et al., 2007, p. 176). In line, to include all the typical cases and not to miss information coming from special or deviant cases teachers who were experiencing teaching English in the current space and implementing the current English curriculum updated in 2018 were included in the study. As a result, nine teachers representing those typical traits were included in the study only if they voluntarily gave their informed consent for participation. Data were collected through a semi-structured interview form prepared by one of the researchers, and data sources included interview transcripts. The general interview guide approach was utilized (Patton (1990). The data in this study were analysed through content analysis, using a four-step data analysis process: (1) data coding, (2) identification of the themes, (3) organisation of the codes and themes, (4) identification and interpretation of the findings (Yıldırım & Şimşek, 2018). For evaluating the integrity of the research, Lincoln and Guba’s (1985) framework of quality criteria was considered. To ensure the credibility of the study five methods were utilized: prolonged engagement, persistent observation, peer debriefing, member checking, and triangulation. Regarding transferability, thick description and purposeful sampling methods were used.

The case titles in this study represented the final states of reality in the contexts: AHS was referred to as Case Resonance because of a greater state of alignment, while VTAHS was referred to as Case Dissonance because of a lack of alignment between curriculum, audiences, and teacher practices. As a result of analyses, four different types of curriculum conceptualisations were explored. The analysis of the interview data in Case Dissonance revealed an understanding that was named as reduced idiosyncratic curriculum. This conceptualisation aims to reduce cognitive load, involving idiosyncrasies in the intended curriculum and school-level implementation practices of teachers. In Case Resonance, the analysis unearthed that there were three different curriculum conceptualisations which could be named as “transformative curriculum,” “curriculum in transition,” and “disconnected curriculum.” Transformative curriculum stood for a curriculum conceptualisation nurturing learning experiences that led to or catalysed the outcomes of the intended curriculum. As emerged in the analysis, the concept of transformative curriculum was detected within the confines of a critical evaluation of the components of the intended curriculum and implementing initiatives to enhance or replace them. On the other hand, curriculum in transition, as a “yet to be completed” curriculum conceptualisation, appeared to be moving away from previously synthesized mindsets towards a new mindset. Transition, in a sense, means to migrate into a different conceptual realm. Despite the unpredictable direction of a transition, the transition was moving towards the intended curriculum and a transformative curriculum understanding. Conversely, the disconnected curriculum conceptualisation reflected a detachment from both the intended curriculum, the participants and components of the environment in which it was implemented. Different from transformative curriculum and curriculum in transition which were found to thrive together, disconnected curriculum, in contrast, emerged drifting away from those conceptualisations.

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