What Does Research Say About “Sticking to the Script?"

Like most things in schooling (and in life) . . . it’s complicated

Photo by Unseen Studio on Unsplash

“Should teachers customize their lessons or just stick to the ‘script’?” The question (posed in a recent Chalkbeat headline) is a vexing one. As the article notes, even as districts invest millions in packaged programs and system-wide instructional resources, teachers often continue to adapt, revise, supplement, and create alternatives for use within their classroom walls. Though common materials are intended to increase coherence and alignment across classrooms and schools, implementation often winds up remaining inconsistent and fragmented. And despite promises that pre-designed materials will save them time and reduce their workload, teachers report continuing to spend hours on customization and modification. 

Why is this the case? The article suggests several explanations. For one, it references the Teacher Survey of Curriculum Use from the Institute for Education Policy out of Johns Hopkins, which documents teachers’ dissatisfaction with the quality of the curricular materials endorsed by their districts. Whether misaligned to standards or misaligned to their students’ needs, it turns out that far too many “high-quality instructional materials” don’t live up to the label.

Data from the Teacher Use of Curriculum Survey

The article further illustrates these issues with the stories of teachers who detail the specific ways their curricula fail to meet the needs of their students, and what they do to make it work. When the curriculum doesn’t reflect their students’ identities, reinforces harmful biases, or wasn’t designed with their students’ learning needs in mind, these teachers express a moral imperative to make changes rather than merely staying the course.

When teachers make these changes, are they going against what research suggests is best practice? David Steiner (executive director of the institute at Hopkins mentioned earlier) thinks so, and shares this quote regarding teachers’ decisions to deviate from their scripted lessons: 

“The research is against them,” Steiner said. “The research is heavily in favor of following a script — not necessarily every last letter of that script, but following a really good curriculum that’s standards-based and content-rich.”

The article fails to include links to specific evidence, so the reader is left to take Steiner at his word that following a script = research-based. But what does the research actually say? Unsurprisingly, it’s a lot less straightforward than the soundbite would suggest. 

Steiner himself has authored/co-authored multiple reports on the research base behind the power of high-quality curriculum. There’s a 2017 report called “Curriculum Research: What We Know and Where We Need to Go,” a 2018 report called, “What we teach matters: How quality curriculum improves student outcomes,” and a 2019 report called, “High-quality curriculum and system improvement.” 

The reports provide a variety of citations, especially on the evidence-base behind making “the shift from a weak curriculum to a strong one.” These studies often compare the use of one program or textbook to another, and reinforce that students learn more (often much more!) when their teachers use higher quality materials. These findings are important – but they don’t speak directly to the issue of teacher use of curriculum (whether to “stick to the script” or modify as needed). 

Within the 2017 report, there’s a discussion around the importance of implementation fidelity, citing a paper by Stringfield et al. (2000) that says “[the existing] research ha[s] concluded that level of implementation is a significant predictor of student achievement gains.” But the discussion of “level of implementation” goes far beyond the degree to which individual teachers follow scripts – and illuminates a range of issues that speak to the infrastructure that surrounds implementation, including leader support, fiscal resources, dedicated planning time, ongoing professional learning, supportive school climates, etc. As succinctly summarized in a Rachel Gabriel tweet from earlier this year:“curriculum is a dependent variable. You can rate it, but its value DEPENDS on infrastructure, instructional context & human resources.” 

The Steiner reports also interrogate the issue from another angle: if high-quality curriculum is better than low-quality curriculum, how high-quality is what teachers create on their own? The 2017 report acknowledges that this is a hard, perhaps impossible, question to answer given the incredible variability in teachers’ skill level and how they approach curriculum development. Steiner is less concerned with the expert teacher who has honed their craft over time, and more concerned with the novice who is likely dealing with myriad concerns as they find their footing in the classroom. He writes: 

Given that novice teachers are considerably less effective, on average, than their more seasoned peers, common sense would suggest that asking them to construct their own curriculum in addition to honing the craft of teaching will only exacerbate their challenges.

I don’t disagree, and I’ll name that this certainly resonates with my personal experience. Going from the chaos of piecing together my own curriculum in my first year of teaching 5th grade to the coordination of using a structured program in my first year of teaching 1st grade was game-changing. I benefited tremendously from having a roadmap and resources in the form of a high-quality curricular program. So did my students – and it showed in the rapid academic gains they made. 

Still, none of this strikes at the heart of the dilemma of whether “following a script” is WHAT THE RESEARCH SAYS™. Interestingly, though, there is an extensive body of research on the positive effects of teachers being responsive to their students’ needs. I won’t attempt to summarize the whole of culturally responsive, culturally relevant, or culturally sustaining pedagogy in one newsletter post, but I will say that any of Gloria Ladson-Billings’s work is a great starting point. 

In her landmark 1995 article “But That’s Just Good Teaching! The Case for Culturally Relevant Pedagogy,” Ladson-Billings describes findings from her research into the practices of excellent teachers of African American students. As she discusses, culturally relevant educators embrace three imperatives: ensuring their students experience academic success, supporting them in developing and/or maintaining cultural competence, and developing their critical consciousness. Studying multiple teachers in the same district, she notes the way that teachers both “met and challenged” the curricular guidelines provided to them – critically analyzing these guidelines, “[building] bridges or scaffolds” to support students in mastering challenging work, and consistently bringing “enthusiasm and vitality about what was being taught and learned” to their classrooms. 

The practices Ladson-Billings describes are a foil to the strict regimentation suggested by the language of “sticking to the script.” And relatedly, there’s a large body of research on the negative effects of such regimentation. For example, a 2013 piece by Richard Milner examines the consequences of “scripted and narrowed” curriculum, interrogating the implications of over-reliance on scripts and under-reliance on teachers’ professional judgment, particularly when disproportionately employed in schools serving predominantly low income students of color.

So, building off the research, where do we go from here? I’d suggest that we ditch the binary posed in the initial question of whether teachers should “customize their lessons or just stick to the ‘script.” Ideally, teachers should make informed decisions to adapt their curriculum to meet their students’ needs, while starting from a baseline of using shared, high-quality instructional materials rooted in evidence of effectiveness and culturally responsive practice. School and system leaders should ensure that teachers have access to excellent instructional materials, set clear expectations for their use and modification (reinforcing the importance of teachers leveraging, not surrendering, their professional judgment), and provide the ongoing professional learning and infrastructural support to drive successful implementation. And perhaps most importantly, when teachers do adapt and modify a shared curricular and instructional program, they should do so in conversation and community with their broader team, engaging in regular dialogue about how student learning outcomes inform the shifts they make, and regularly reflecting on what’s working and what’s not. 

Shared, high-quality instructional materials have the potential to make an enormous positive difference – for both students AND teachers. But not if they sit on the shelf, and not if they are adapted so heavily they’re no longer recognizable, and not if they are expected to be implemented with rigid prescriptiveness that undermines teacher agency and common sense. Sure, this is a lot more complex than an either/or answer. But we owe it to our students to wade through the complexity to deliver the high-quality instruction they deserve.