We then read through the descriptive codes and applied the framework of the four features of adaptive leadership challenges to understand the adaptive barriers to implementing curricula. . When families understand the curriculum, they are better positioned to support their children at home. Culture is the shared pattern of espoused beliefs, underlying assumptions, and artifacts found across an organization (Schein, 2010), and it dictates the ways in which individuals behave with regard to reform initiatives. While a number of private schools had the resources, there was a near total lack in As described above, there are often profound alignment gaps between the curricula offered to teachers and the actual intent of state standards. These adaptive leadership examples might in turn cultivate a curriculum culture that is adaptive in nature. We argue that the leadership challenges associated with standards implementation and curricular reform can be better understood through the adaptive leadership framework developed by Heifetz et al. Atoll Education Centre in relation to learning resources, professional development workload of teachers and support from management. The curriculum also offered leveled texts, accommodations, or translated texts to help differentiate students’ access to, and learning of, the curriculum. C-SAIL examined standards implementation with a focus on curricular reform, PD, assessment and accountability, and supports for students with disabilities (SWDs) and ELs from 2015 to 2020 (see Desimone et al., 2019). Common challenges are described below, along with suggestions on how to address these challenges: challenges for teachers striving to implement the science curriculum. © copyright 2003-2021 Study.com. Atoll Education Centre in relation to learning resources, professional development workload of teachers and support from management. Get access risk-free for 30 days, The enacted curriculum refers to how teachers bring that content to life in their classroom. The curriculum in Cahill received some criticism from teachers in at least two schools who found the reading passages to be “extremely long and kind of dry,” or for only showcasing short excerpts from longer novels where students had “no idea where the character was coming from” because they had not read the whole novel. As Standholtz et al. Create a link to share a read only version of this article with your colleagues and friends. These included lack of resources, inadequate training and heavy workloads. What Can You Do With a PhD in Clinical Psychology? This study highlights the challenges to curriculum and instruction in U.S. public schools and analyzes both these 10. Online Library Challenges Of Curriculum Implementation In Kenyalems as intrinsic to the student.As a result, we are faced with the challenge of implementing the curriculum in the manner in which it is intended to be imple-mented, as well as providing corroboration that effective These data reflect prior trends where educators hold students and curricular programs responsible for low student achievement levels rather than teacher- or school-based practices (Desimone, 2013; Harris, 2012; Ylimaki, 2012). Sharing links are not available for this article. Technical challenges are those that can be solved through the application of existing solutions, procedures, tools, and expert guidance. Part of this challenge is that when implementing new curriculum, education leaders may too easily overemphasize the importance of implementing curriculum with fidelity and omit the importance of building relationships with students, understanding the impacts of trauma, and fostering student engagement through socioemotional learning (teacher focus group, Orrington). The districts within each state were purposefully chosen from a random sample of districts identified for a parallel survey study conducted by the Center (see c-sail.org). Project Gutenberg is one of the largest sources for free books on the web, with over 30,000 downloadable free books available in a wide variety of formats. It also helps to adaptively uncover some of the root causes behind teachers’ issues with these technical resources, as some of these root causes address teachers’ mindsets about student ability and cultural interests (i.e., the adaptive challenge of speaking the unspeakable) and the labor of differentiation (i.e., the adaptive challenge of oversimplifying complex problems). Instead, we are showing one example of how to apply adaptive leadership theory, which is widely used in sectors outside of education, to a lingering problem of practice in education—how to effectively support teachers’ practice using externally adopted curricula as their framework for teaching and learning. That’s what we’re really trying to get away from, and I think that that’s been for a long time. Common Implementation Challenges There are a range of different issues and challenges that need to be addressed for successful program implementation. Anyone can earn Because curriculum representatives who are traditionally in the position of providing PD to teachers do not have the authority to help shape the coherence of this messaging, educational leaders need to proactively craft this coherent messaging for their teachers (Penuel et al., 2007; Porter at al., 2015). He studies the design, implementation, and effects of standards, assessment, and accountability policies. These barriers reflect the presence of both technical and adaptive challenges to curriculum implementation (see Heifetz et al., 2009). We then provide an overview of how these challenges reflect adaptive issues that warrant adaptive approaches to leadership. Families sometimes surprise Mr. Simpson by having expertise of their own to contribute to his curriculum! The total number of interviews conducted in each district varied based on district urbanicity, which influenced the number of schools that participated. LAURA M. DESIMONE is director of research in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Delaware and a professor in the School of Education in Educational Statistics and Research Methods and in the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy & Administration. Mr. Simpson takes care to try to end units before vacations as well. Some of these challenges are particularly unique to rural communities. The second adaptive issue concerned the conflicting messaging around instructional practice when new curricula complicated teachers’ sense-making of previous instructional practices promoted by district administrators and principals. The barrier of identify-ing high-quality curricular materials reflects the technical - Definition, Doctrine & Effect, What is Medical Indigency? credit-by-exam regardless of age or education level. First of all, Mr. Simpson realizes that he will have to do some careful mapping, or determining how the curriculum will fit within the calendar of the school year. While co-teaching is not a new vehicle for differentiating instruction in inclusive classrooms, for the educational organizations that have not yet restructured their systems, structures, and beliefs around co-teaching models, shifting to this paradigm represents an adaptive shift. You can be signed in via any or all of the methods shown below at the same time. Palisades teachers similarly found fault with curricular texts specifically tailored to meet the standards, as they incorporated “snippets of text . It is a policy and technical agreement with the people as it consists of the expectations of the society (IBE, 2013). Some of the facilitators lack the needed skills to function at that capacity hence, they lack the skills of ensuring that school curriculum are implemented effectively or what I may call the most possible way for optimal res… Her research includes policy implementation, educational leadership, school improvement, and leadership for critical social change. The intended curriculum refers to a system-wide official curriculum, such as academic standards. We ultimately illustrate how the use of technical strategies for leading curriculum implementation often results in unintended adaptive challenges, which might have been mitigated had they been viewed adaptively from the onset. Patterns became themes when a relatively high number of district leaders, principals, coaches and teachers in the majority of the districts referenced a particular adaptive leadership challenge, or when the themes spoke to the connections between challenges or to the variabilities of district contexts. The first adaptive challenge feature reflects the difficulties that occur when there is a gap between values that are espoused by an organization and values that dictate the realities within that organization. Lean Library can solve it. The curriculum challenged teachers to raise the rigor of their instruction. Sciences, Culinary Arts and Personal KATIE PAK is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. For one, less rigorous curriculum is sometimes implemented for students who are believed to lack the ability to handle more challenging expectations. In our data analysis thus far, we focused on observations of challenges related to curriculum implementation, as well as interpretations of why adaptive challenges persisted. Keep in careful touch with families about your curricular work, and try not to let common challenges and pitfalls get in your way! These included lack of resources, inadequate training and heavy workloads. One persistent hurdle is the lack of reliable access to high-quality curriculum (Koedel et al., 2017), which was highly apparent during the No Child Left Behind era. Enrolling in a course lets you earn progress by passing quizzes and exams. Create an account to start this course today. One reason for this is the nested layers of leadership in this district. Challenges in Curriculum Implementation Curriculum is a political agreement; it outlines the government’s national agenda (IBE, 2013). While this technical knowledge helps to support teachers’ enacted curriculum, it is equally important to proactively address the adaptive issue of learning how to help teachers bridge critical gaps between the expectations of the intended curriculum (i.e., espoused values) and the expectations in the district’s written curriculum (i.e., actualized values), which is not always aligned to the standards (Polikoff, 2015). As he begins to implement his curriculum, he sees that some students will require modifications, or altered goals that are either more or less advanced than those of their average peers. Because of the time, skill, and attention it takes to differentiate effectively, many leaders and general education teachers described resorting to the intervention programs such as Lexia, iReady, or Corrective Reading as their differentiation strategies, despite the fact that these programs do not differentiate the general education curriculum. This principal noted that teachers, rather than striking a balance between the two approaches, followed the prescriptiveness with high fidelity, leading to the omission of student engagement strategies developed in prior years (reflected in lower classroom observation scores). Find out about Lean Library here, If you have access to journal via a society or associations, read the instructions below. All of the resources listed under Benchmarking and Design and Implementation Help provide inspiration, information and tools to assist in overcoming these challenges. (Teacher interview, Palisades). However, measures were suggested to limit the challenges towards curriculum implementation in order for the SMTs and teachers As teachers, we are sometimes tasked with implementing a curriculum that has already been developed. A nondiscussable that emerges throughout curriculum implementation processes is deficit-oriented beliefs about students, typically impoverished students of color, English learners (ELs), and/or special education students (Singleton, 2014; Valencia, 2010). The leadership goal is to surface these difficult conversations to move organizations forward, despite the likelihood of such conversations generating conflict (Heifetz et al., 2009). Even though district administrators believed that the messaging was, “Here are our grade level expectations, here are the resources, but if you want to use other resources, make sure those are best for your kids and you,” this messaging had become convoluted across the six schools in the study. A distributed leadership analysis of standards-based reform, What makes professional development effective? Yet this transition generated a new set of leadership challenges. Evidence from Florida, Toward an evolving conceptualization of instructional leadership as leadership for learning, Carnegie Foundation Summit on Improvement in Education, Towards a theory of standards-based reform: The case of nine NSF state-wide systematic initiatives, Alignment and accountability in policy design and implementation: The Common Core State Standards and implementation research, District policy and teachers’ social networks, Professional development as product implementation training, How to improve curriculum leadership: Integrating leadership theory and management strategies, Teacher and administrator responses to standards-based reform, Inside the black box: Examining mediators and moderators of a middle school science intervention, Successes and challenges of the “new” college- and career-ready standards: Seven implementation trends. Described above, there were a few examples of individual leaders establishing adaptive to! 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