Clarificative evaluation of resources for curriculum 'roll-out': The co-design of an empirical protocol

Curriculum is understood in a variety of ways underpinned by differing ideological orientations and grounded in social, political, and historical traditions. Acknowledging discrepancies between what is planned or intended and what happens in classrooms does not sufficiently capture the role of the teacher as a maker of curriculum, playing an active role in negotiating curriculum. Rather than delivering or implementing an inert imposed curriculum, teachers create and enact curriculum. Viewing curriculum as a complex social practice sits in tension with system desires for consistent implementation of curriculum reform achieved through the use of syllabus-specific practices promoted by the department. We describe the multi-method, qualitative protocol designed to evaluate the reform in a way that grapples with this tension; meeting the goals of the department while affording a critical perspective on the interplay between reform initiatives and the curriculum work and experiences of teachers.
The protocol includes a theory of change and program logic model to be designed with the department, along with the aims, methods, sampling design, data collection, and analysis processes, and final intended outcomes of the project. We describe the development of rubrics, interview guides, and artefact analysis processes designed to examine the ways in which teachers have used resources provided by the department. The significance of the protocol lies in its emphasis on co-design. Implications include insights aligning with the utility of such a protocol for meeting the needs of an educational governing body in concert with the agentic curriculum work of teachers.