On Curriculum Adoption, Autonomy, And Agency
Rather than reinforcing narratives that curricular reform threatens autonomy, what if such efforts were positioned to enhance agency for teachers and leaders?
I used to deliver a professional learning session on the myths around using a common curriculum across a school or school system. One of the myths was that shared curriculum diminishes teacher autonomy. I argued at the time that this was false. As I had experienced it – both from a teacher and school/system leader perspective – having a shared curriculum didn’t reduce autonomy but rather enabled me and my colleagues to focus on the decisions that mattered most. Freed up from having to create year-long scopes and sequences or design rigorous and relevant units – day by day, lesson by lesson – teachers could instead focus their energy on the students in their care. What would make this particular lesson come alive for this group of students? What changes might need to be made to account for the range of talents and needs within this class?
I think this point still stands, but I wonder if the word autonomy was the wrong construct. Maybe what I had experienced was less about autonomy and more about agency: less about the ability to operate independently of others and apart from controls and more about the ability to operate with empowerment and the ability to influence what happened in my classroom, for and with my students.
The notion of autonomy in the context of schools and schooling has a long history, of course, and often has been positioned at odds with efforts to systematize or standardize how schools are led and managed and how students are taught. But is autonomy really what we’re after? Susan Moore Johnson (2019) illuminates the negative consequences of the particular way notions of autonomy are embedded into our schooling institutions, noting that the “egg-crate” model of schooling (a 40-year-old metaphor she attributes to Tyack and Lortie) has had “the unintended effect of stifling teachers’ growth and limiting their schoolwide responsibility and influence.” In this sense, autonomy becomes more synonymous with isolation than independence, more akin to constraint than collective efficacy.
Johnson argues that if our schools were more like “beehives” than “egg-crates,” both students and teachers would experience greater success. This also reminds me of what Karin Chenoweth (2021) calls “the most powerful question in education: Your kids are doing better than mine; what are you doing?” For schools operating in the egg-crate model, questions like this go unasked and perhaps even unpondered. But in the beehive, where teachers and leaders collectively engage in the work of school improvement, within a culture that supports collegial inquiry, powerful shifts in practice can occur. Furthermore, within schools where teachers are already operating from a shared curriculum, the potential responses to such a question are all the more pointed and purposeful, for the answer lies not in use of a particular program or selection of a particular text, but rather in the moves and decisions a teacher makes to support student learning. The conversation thus shifts toward what Fullan (2016) terms the “right” drivers for educational change: pedagogy over technology, people over programs.
All this said, if movements to adopt and implement common curricula across schools and school systems do so in a way that quashes or stifles teacher agency, significant problems arise. When teachers ultimately feel that they are no longer able to make decisions in their classroom that are aligned with their values and in the best interest of the children in their care, demoralization ensues. As Doris Santoro writes, “demoralization occurs when teachers cannot reap the moral rewards that they previously were able to access in their work.” This experience was exacerbated amidst the pandemic schooling but certainly long precedes it.
School and system leaders seeking to adopt shared curriculum while preserving teacher agency can address and even get out in front of these issues in a few ways:
Build the “infrastructure for instructional improvement:” curriculum, professional learning, AND leadership. As Woulfin and Gabriel (2020) write, too often curricular reform initiatives are enacted in isolation of other elements including professional learning and leadership. How teachers build capacity around such initiatives, and how leaders introduce and frame such initiatives matters. And if promoting and enhancing teacher agency is valued and seen as critical to the success of using shared curricula, then leaders can reinforce these messages before and during implementation and ensure they are a key element of professional learning.
Invest in the “why” to generate commitment over compliance. In a recent study of curriculum adoption processes enacted by schools across the U.S., researchers found that all too often teachers were not provided a rationale for such initiatives. In the absence of a clearly communicated vision or purpose for such reforms, “they told us we had to” became the common response for why they were making particular decisions in their classroom (Vaughn et al., 2021). When compliance supersedes commitment, it’s no wonder that teachers feel disinvested and disconnected. To respect and enhance teacher agency, it’s critical that teachers are invested in the purpose of curricular reform efforts and continue to view themselves as key decision-makers in their classroom. Anything less quashes their intellectual engagement in teaching and hurts their ability to best serve their students.
Emphasize “mutual adaptation” over “fidelity.” When teachers are told, “this will only work if you stick to the script” or are expected to adhere to rigid timeframes in the name of fidelity of implementation, their ability to make thoughtful moves in response to student needs is diminished. Rather than frameworks that emphasize fidelity, school leaders can instead focus on frameworks that embrace mutual adaptation – the notion that when implementing new curricular or instructional programs, teachers will adapt their instruction as they learn new approaches while simultaneously making adaptations that then influence the model itself (Berman & McLaughlin, 1977). Such approaches reinforce teacher agency, particularly within school cultures that value ongoing learning and dialogue about approaches that lead to student success.
Include teacher voice and perspectives in adoption, rollout, and feedback about ongoing implementation of curriculum. Doing “to” rather than “with” is a recipe for diminshed teacher agency. To enhance agency with rollout of curriculum initiatives, ensure that teachers not only have a seat at the decision-making table but also have mechanisms for sharing ongoing feedback based upon how things are going in their classrooms. When that key question of Chenoweth’s is asked (“your kids are doing better than mine, what are you doing?”) make sure to welcome responses where teachers are purposefully adapting the content to meet their students’ needs, rather than keeping those adaptations under the radar.
Efforts to invest in common curricula and teaching practices can have tremendously positive impact on students – but such efforts are undermined when they are rolled out and implemented in ways that diminish teacher agency. The good news is that school and system leaders, too, have the agency to lead such efforts in ways that elevate and even enhance teacher agency, all for the benefit of students and student learning.
References
Berman, P., & McLaughlin, M. W. (1977). Federal programs supporting educational change. Vol. VIII, Implementing and sustaining innovations. RAND.
Chenoweth, K. (2021). Districts that succeed: Breaking the correlation between race, poverty, and achievement. Harvard Education Press.
Fullan, M. (2015). The new meaning of educational change, fifth edition. Teachers College Press.
Johnson, S. M. (2019). Where teachers thrive: Organizing schools for success. Harvard Education Press.
Santoro, D. A. (2011). Good teaching in difficult times: Demoralization in the pursuit of good work. American Journal of Education, (118)1, 1-23.
Woulfin, S. & Gabriel, R. E. (2020). Interconnected infrastructure for improving reading instruction. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(1), 109-117.
Vaughn et al. (2021). Understanding literacy adoption policies across contexts: A multi-state examination of literacy curriculum decision-making. Journal of Curriculum Studies, (53)3, 333-352.
Very poignant for our work right now. Perfect timing and great reflections! Just the little pieces on framing are so critical.