Implementation of a Social Studies Curriculum in an Australian Elementary School

Abstract

This study examines the implementation of a new social studies curriculum by teachers at 1 elementary school during a 9-month period. Because the curriculum was developed centrally at the head office, fidelity-of-use attributes were important to education officials, and data on this were obtained by using the Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM) instruments developed by Hall et al. at the University of Texas. The results indicated that teachers had high personal concerns throughout the 9-month period, possibly because of the lack of explicit teacher guidelines provided by the head office. There was some movement from Mechanical-Use (LoU III) to Routine and Refinement Levels (LoU IVA and IVB) during the 9-month study period. It was evident that fidelity of use of the social studies curriculum at the case-study school was only partially achieved by teachers.