Intervening for Educational Improvement A Problem Based Methodology Approach to Understanding and Implementing Curriculum

Abstract

Ambitious curricula reforms have seldom translated into transformed teaching and learning because teachers are asked to implement approaches that are contrary to their values and beliefs about students and how to teach them. But the failure of reforms means the problems they were designed to address remain unresolved. If they are to be resolved, then teacher values and beliefs, as the barrier, must be addressed. The development of curriculum from statements of policy and their implementation in new classroom practices requires a means for engaging with those values and beliefs. In this thesis I positioned Problem-based methodology (PBM), a variation of action science from the literature on organisational learning, as a method for understanding and implementing curricula that provides the means for describing and engaging with teacher values and beliefs. I used it to investigate and intervene in the implementation of an innovative curriculum in the context of Japan. Japan provides an excellent context firstly because they have introduced ambitious reforms aimed at addressing student wellbeing and a perceived lack of skills that failed to make an impact on teaching and classrooms. Secondly, the different cultural-psychological context provides a stern test of the theoretical claims and assumptions action science and problem-based methodology are based upon. I have presented my investigation in four studies. The aim of the first was to establish if there was a need for interventions addressing teacher values and beliefs in Japan. I established that there was such a need. In the following two studies I described the problems a group of teachers were having implementing an innovative programme looking to adopt progressive active approaches to teaching and learning. I linked their problems to strongly held beliefs about their students and nature of teaching and learning that prevented them from enacting the progressive approaches they espoused. In the last study I detailed the intervention I undertook with the teachers in which we engaged with their beliefs in the search for practices that more resembled those they desired to enact. All of the teachers began a process of iterating principled and creative changes to their practice and seemed committed to continue doing so. Taken as a whole, the four studies demonstrate PBM to be a powerful methodology for understanding curricula, engaging with teacher values and beliefs, and implementing new practice. Moreover, PBM and by association action science appear to have cross-cultural application. As a result I advocate that we move from using the metaphor of ‘translation’ to understand curriculum development and implementation that we instead understand it using the concept of theories of action.