A study of 488 teachers in six school districts reveals that teachers' self-reported inclination to follow or attend to curriculums formulated for their districts are highest when the district is the locus of decision making, followed by the school and the classroom as the locus of curriculum decisions. (MLF)

Investigated the implementation of a new geography curriculum in one Australian state's public and private secondary schools. Results indicate that the majority of teachers had attained "routine" levels of use but that few were involved in collaborating with others or experimenting with alternatives to produce more effective levels of…

The paper describes the role of teachers as mediators of the social studies curriculum. The first section summarizes the literature on teacher cognition and describes the hermeneutic, or methodological, turn in that literature. The second section describes teachers as curriculum agents--that is, as professionals who bring intellectual and moral…

Addressed to teachers, administrators, and researchers, this study discusses the philosophy behind collaborative school-based curriculum development and the results of an attempt to implement this type of curriculum development. This multi-disciplinary approach offers a way to combine the advantages of both centralized and localized decision…

Past researchers have claimed that it is possible to over-involve individuals in decision-making and that this saturation may result in a decrease in job satisfaction. This paper presents a synthesis of three studies that covered the kindergarten through 12-th grade spectrum and tested the curvilinear relationship between teacher involvement in…

The purpose of the study was to identify external and internal influences that affected the decision making of four secondary teachers regarding the content of a family living course and to describe their decision-making strategies. Because the course had been shortened and a new textbook and new state guidelines had been received, the teachers…

This article discusses problems with traditional top-down methods of disseminating educational innovations to teachers and proposes a conceptual framework in which teachers share a primary role with educational researchers in the development of innovative practices. Focus is on the critical dimensions of teacher change as they participate in the…

This study examined curriculum procedures and the roles, decision-making processes, and perceptions of central administrators, building administrators, and teachers in five school districts. Qualitative data collection included taped interviews using a focused indepth interview schedule, field notes, observation, and document collection. The study…

A curriculum project is described which illustrates the use of collaborative inquiry, a cooperative effort between university researchers and educational practitioners. Four tenets of collaborative inquiry are outlined. (1) Researchers and school practitioners work together on all phases of the effort. (2) The effort is focused on real world as…