Implementing reform: Teachers' beliefs about students and the curriculum

This paper presents findings on how consistent teachers' perceptions of their students, their own role in the classroom, and the reformed curriculum are with the actual implementation of the reformed curriculum in the classroom. This study shows that the five participating teachers were consistent with their perceptions and their actual behavior in the classroom. The teachers who were engaged in designing the curriculum demonstrated consistent reformed teaching views and behaviors. The degree to which the teachers viewed the curriculum as useful to them and their students was an indicator of how reformed their teaching was as measured by the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP) [1][2]. Finally, it was determined that faithful implementation of a curriculum can mean faithfully implementing the theoretical foundation of the curriculum materials during instruction instead of implementing every component or lesson of the reformed curriculum.