Teacher Adaptation of Document-Based History Curricula: Results of the Reading Like a Historian Curriculum-Use Survey
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Although most teachers adapt curriculum, we know little about teachers’ rationales for modifying materials, how these rationales align with actual modifications, nor whether any patterns exist in the modifications that teachers make. This is especially the case in history/social studies, where research on curriculum is scant and research on teacher adaptation of curriculum is virtually non-existent. This paper addresses that gap. We report the results of a large-scale survey on curriculum use with over 1,900 history teachers. The online survey focused on how and why teachers use and adapt lesson materials from a free online history curriculum and prompted teachers to upload examples of curriculum materials they had modified. We found that individual differences among teachers correlated with particular types of modifications. Moreover, we found that teachers were motivated to modify materials to address their students’ needs, and that their modifications rarely affected the core structure—or theory of content—of the lessons. We argue that such alignment between teachers and curricular materials represents an example of curricular fit. We discuss what curricular design features may have contributed to the high level of curricular fit among users as well as the implications of this construct for curriculum implementation efforts across subject areas.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | January 2019 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Fogo, Brad | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Reisman, Abby | |
| Author | Breakstone, Joel |
Subjects
| Subject | history education |
|---|---|
| Subject | formal curriculum |
| Subject | intended curriculum |
| Subject | disciplinary reading |
| Genre | Article |
Bibliographic information
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- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC-ND).
Collection
Graduate School of Education Open Archive
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- kerrd@stanford.edu
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