Understanding middle leaders’ concerns in curriculum change: a missing perspective

ABSTRACT

This paper is a case study evaluating the concerns that middle leaders in Singapore schools had as they implemented a large-scale English language curriculum reform. Drawing on in-depth interviews, the study aimed to gain insights into middle leaders’ perspectives. Its findings indicated that middle leadership could exert a substantial influence on educational change within a school. Not only were they able to influence their teachers’ understanding, but they also held some sway over the teachers’ receptivity towards and enactment of the reform. In addition, there were commonalities among the middle leaders’ concerns about the curriculum reform. As reform policies tend to differ from school priorities, failure to address middle leaders’ concerns has wide implications for curriculum reform and implementation.

KEYWORDS:

• Language curriculum reform
• middle leaders
• curricular concerns
• Singapore

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The term “Head of Department” (HODs) is used interchangeably with “middle leaders” in this paper. As defined by Lipscombe et al. (2021), middle leaders are “formally appointed leaders, with accountable responsibilities, who operate between senior leaders and teachers, and lead in order to positively impact teaching and student learning” (p. 14). HODs in Singapore meet this definition exactly.

2. There were nine schools involved in the larger study; although M6 initially agreed to participate in the study, s/he subsequently declined to be interviewed.

3. The HODs are named H1-3, M4-6 and L7-9 to indicate the SES profile of the school they are situated in: H – high SES, M – mid SES and L – low SES.

4. The Reading Remediation Programme (RRP) supports the learning of P3 and P4 students who continue to face difficulty in reading even though they have been discharged from the Learning Support Programme (LSP) in P1 and P2.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Singapore Ministry of Education under the Education Research Funding Programme (OER 20/15 JL) and administered by National Institute of Education (NIE), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Notes on contributors

Jason Loh

Jason Loh is a Senior Lecturer and teacher educator at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University. He is an instructional researcher who studies teachers and teaching in primary and secondary classrooms, largely due to his own experiences as a teacher in primary and secondary education contexts.

Guangwei Hu

Guangwei Hu is Professor of Language and Literacy Education in the Department of English and Communication, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. His research interests include academic literacy, English for academic and specific purposes, language-in-education policy, second language writing, and English as an international language.