Teachers’ adaptations to and orientations towards an adolescent literacy curriculum

Abstract

This study examines teacher implementation of an adolescent literacy curriculum designed as an intervention for students reading two years below grade level. Specifically, this work focuses on the adaptations made by four experienced teachers in a single school that sustained implementation of this curriculum after the intervention trial had ended. Data were collected through observation and interview. An accounts of teaching practice methodology was used to define each teacher’s orientation towards the curriculum, and then to determine whether this orientation demonstrated assimilation or accommodation to intervention principles. I found that the vast majority of time spent implementing the curriculum included adaptations, and that each teacher’s adaptations were different, and reflected her pre-existing orientation towards literacy teaching. Although one teacher demonstrated assimilation and accommodation to intervention principles, the other three primarily demonstrated assimilation. These findings suggest the importance of understanding teachers’ orientations towards curriculum in order to provide more tailored professional development which may help teachers accommodate to the most critical pedagogical features of a curriculum. This may be especially significant in considering sustained implementation, after research-related supports have been withdrawn.

Keywords:

• Curriculum implementation
• adolescent literacy
• reading intervention
• teacher attitudes

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Mary Burkhauser for her assistance with coding, and James Kim, Nonie Lesaux and Catherine Snow for feedback on drafts. Most of all, I am grateful to the participating teachers, students and administrators.