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Introduction/Purpose: Economics is a dynamic subject whose students use the contents to address real-life problems. Therefore, this paper examines the transformation of economics to tackle teachers' challenges in the teaching of economics. Design/Methodology/Approach: This paper used a qualitative research technique to collect information from teachers based on a phenomenological research design. A purposive sampling technique was used to select 12 teachers of economics in 6 selected schools in Buffalo City. A semi-structured interview was used to elicit information from the respondents and the data were analysed using a thematic approach. Findings: The study identifies certain notable issues including imprecise economics curriculum materials and learners' inability to demonstrate interest due to various statistics and data components of the subject. Teachers' participation in professional development activities such as seminars, in-service training and workshops for knowledge updates is one of the solutions offered to overcome these difficulties. Limitation: This paper uses only 12 economics teachers from Buffalo City metropolitan municipality. Larger samples can be used in another municipality. A quantitative approach can be used to accommodate representative samples. Practical Implications: Teachers are expected to be at the forefront of disseminating the contents of the subject appropriately because a teacher can only give what he or she has. Teachers should be proactive and current with the recent developments in the nation and be technologically compliant. Contribution to the Literature: This paper contributes to the literature by highlighting practical solutions to the challenges teachers face during the teaching of economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A case study of calculus instructional material (comprising of lecture notes and tutorial practice worksheets) designed by teachers from a Singapore pre-university is presented in this paper. As textbooks have not been available for mathematics at the pre-university levels, the instructional material was a product of the teachers' collaborative work based on their interpretation of the school mathematics curriculum. Through a study of the instructional material, the teachers' instructional goals and their alignment to the curriculum were examined. It was clear that the instructional material was more than a mere compilation of resources for the instruction; the teachers' effort was also in building the close connection within and across the concepts and sub-topics. The discrete parts of the content were organized under a "big idea" in the lecture notes. Anchor questions were used in the tutorial practice worksheets to facilitate students to recognize the similarity of the underlying structures of seemingly different questions. In addition to the teachers' articulated instructional goals such as covering all the key concepts, reducing students' cognitive load, or developing their algorithmic mastery, the study revealed the unarticulated goal as to raise the students' cognitive growth, which could be explained by the APOS cognitive growth model. In aligning to the school curriculum, it was observed that the teachers made judgement to tap on the advantage of the spiral curriculum to advance their students' understanding of calculus from the secondary level using a higher perspective, and to better their students' understanding of calculus concepts in addition to focusing on algorithmic mastery. The effort to engage their students in problem-solving and the use of technology to develop higher order thinking or enhance conceptual understanding remained implicit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Curriculum change is inevitable in schooling. For content areas such as mathematics that are already under the national spotlight, transitioning to new curriculum materials while concurrently enacting instructional reform creates both a challenge and an opportunity. This paper discusses how partnerships between two state universities and respective neighboring school districts resulted in the creation and implementation of graduate courses for teachers targeted at curricular and instructional reform specific to each district. Common course components between both university-district partnerships were identified in the areas of mathematics research, practice, and leadership advocacy and found to be instrumental in supporting instructional reform and fostering sustained development. Implications for collaborative partnerships, curriculum implementation and research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research demonstrates that mathematics teachers rely on a variety of curriculum materials and must make meaning and synthesize these materials for use in a particular place with particular students. While there are multiple theories about the nature of this work and the factors which influence this work, the field continues to lack a theoretical basis with which to understand this multifaceted and complex work. This paper seeks to illuminate the process by which teachers come to make meaning from curriculum materials by the daily practices of one team of teachers. Findings supports a transactional view of curriculum in which students, teachers, curriculum materials, and contexts work with and on each other as curriculum emerges. Using this theory as a framework, multiple understandings of teachers' work with curriculum can be synthesized as highlighting particular aspects of a larger curriculum system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Textbooks are a widely used educational intervention that can affect student achievement, and the marginal cost of choosing a more effective textbook is typically small. However, we know little about how textbooks get from the publisher to the classroom. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the ways mathematics textbook adoption practices vary and predict adoption decisions. We use interviews with district leaders in a stratified random sample of 34 California school districts. We find isomorphic, highly formalized adoption processes in most districts. However, we observe some differences along dimensions of district size, technological interest/infrastructure, and English learner concentration. We recommend states produce and update lists of high-quality materials early and often, and that they use a highly rigorous evaluation process. We also recommend states experiment with encouraging similar districts to partner on textbook evaluation and adoption to respond to district demands for information and capacity building around curricula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to test the efficacy of the Teaching Early Literacy and Language (TELL) curriculum package for improving the early literacy and oral language skills of preschoolers from low-income families. Method: In a randomized controlled trial (RCT), TELL was implemented in 30 TELL and 28 business-as-usual classrooms. TELL is a Tier 1 whole-class curriculum package that includes a scope and sequence of instruction, lesson plans and materials, high-quality books, curriculum-based measures (CBMs), and professional development training and coaching. Results: Implementation fidelity was high; however, due to COVID-19 school closures, we did not collect end-of-year data for our third cohort of teachers. Results indicated significant TELL effects on all code-related CBMs and two code-related distal measures as well as receptive and expressive vocabulary CBMs. No significant differences were found on distal measures of oral language/vocabulary or listening comprehension. Conclusions: Results of the present study, paired with findings from an earlier TELL RCT with children with developmental speech and/or language impairments, suggest that children enrolled in TELL classrooms achieve higher outcomes on a variety of code-related and vocabulary measures by the end of their final preschool year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The vast majority of U.S. teachers supplement their officially adopted curriculum materials with unofficial materials. Despite this, the body of supplementation-relevant literature tends not to focus on supplementation specifically, so lacks cohesion, and sometimes fails to capture all aspects the phenomenon. I systematically review supplementation-relevant literature from 2015 to 2020 and report seven areas of consensus in the literature around (1) who is involved in teacher-level curriculum supplementation, (2) important dimensions of supplementation, and (3) the educational value of supplementation. To provide future researchers a common starting point for studying teacher curriculum supplementation, I propose the Teacher Curriculum Supplementation Framework, a flexible yet testable analytical tool for systematizing scholarly inquiry around teacher curriculum supplementation and its effects on teachers and students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teachers' beliefs are very influential in the success of learning in the classroom. The teacher is the person who knows best how to successfully use learning materials to achieve learning objectives. This study aims to explore how teachers' beliefs in Javanese language learning materials in the local content curriculum, especially for the Central Java region. The method used in this research is qualitative method. Data obtained by questionnaires and Focus Group Discussion (FGD). Data analysis is carried out by grouping the teachers' beliefs points towards the Javanese language teaching material. The results show that more than 70% of teachers believe that the Javanese language teaching materials contained in the local content curriculum are too difficult for students both in terms of language and content. Meanwhile, based on the FGD analysis of curriculum documents and Javanese textbooks, it is also found that some teaching materials are not in order and are not in accordance with the development of students, thus making students find it difficult to understand the material. This causes the learning objectives of the Javanese language tend to have not achieved maximum results. The results of this study can be a recommendation for stakeholders to evaluate the curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Views about what writing is and how it should be taught have varied over the years as well as across contexts. Studies of curricula, teaching materials, and teaching practices have shown a strong focus on skills, genres, and processes, but few have asked teachers about their perspectives on writing. In this article we explore what views, or discourses, of writing are currently active among teachers in Swedish compulsory education, covering ages from 7 to 15. Sixty teachers answered a questionnaire with open and closed questions. Using Ivanič's framework for discourses of writing, the answers were analyzed holistically in order to define what main discourse, or discourses, each teacher represented. Results show that most teachers represent one main discourse, but that a combination of discourses occur, in particular among teachers from the earliest school years (1–3). The most common discourse was the process discourse, followed by genre, creativity, skills, and thinking. None of the teachers represented the social practice or the sociopolitical discourse. The results concur with findings from studies of curricula, teaching materials, and teaching practices both in Sweden and globally and are discussed in relation to what literacy skills may be necessary in the 21st century in order to participate in social and political life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Recent curriculum studies raise a number of questions concerning teachers' implementation fidelity, including the extent to which fidelity to multiple curriculum components is achieved and measured and the extent to which fidelity serves as a mechanism for impacting children's learning. Objective: Within the context of a language and literacy curriculum supplement designed for use at scale, we investigated (1) teachers' fidelity across the multiple dimensions identified in the literature (e.g., Dane and Schneider in Clin Psychol Rev 18(1):23-45, ) and interrelations among these dimensions and (2) associations between measures of fidelity and the language and literacy gains made by children. Method: We examined the fidelity of 74 preschool teachers implementing Read It Again!. Multiple measures of adherence, exposure, quality of delivery, and participant responsiveness were collected across the year of implementation, and children's ( n = 295) language and literacy gains were directly measured. Results: Descriptive statistics demonstrated generally high implementation fidelity across all dimensions. Correlational analyses showed few interrelations among fidelity measures and few associations with child gains. Conclusions: Findings suggest that teachers can exhibit fidelity to multi-componential language and literacy curricula designed for wide-scale use. Findings also support fidelity as a multidimensional construct and suggest that researchers utilize multiple measures to capture both within- and between-teacher variation in fidelity, while also pursuing additional studies to better understand the measurement and functioning of fidelity to inform future work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to identify evidence in student work of teachers' uptake of educative features in educative curriculum materials. These are features in curriculum materials designed with the specific intent of supporting teacher learning and enactment. This study was prompted by previous work on educative curriculum materials and the need to determine howteachers' use of educative curriculum materials can influence student learning. Student work from two fourth-grade teachers' enactment of an electric circuits unit was analyzed for evidence of teachers' uptake of educative features, which included characteristics of quality for particular science practices. Findings from the student work revealed that the teachers used many of the supports in the educative curriculum materials, especially those that could be used directly with students. The student work also reflected characteristics of high-quality science practices, which were only supported within the educative features. This study supports and extends other work related to how teachers' use of educative curriculum materials may influence student learning and has implications for supporting teachers' productive engagement in teaching that supports the integration of science content and scientific practices, as emphasized in current reform efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors examined the characterization of mathematical knowledge of teachers using educative curriculum materials. In particular, they investigated knowledge of change and rate of change (in the context of algebra and functions) of 12 teachers with differing levels of experience. Participants used a same set of curriculum materials that embed features that had potential to be educative for teachers. Data were collected using a mathematical task-based interview. The analyses suggest that context played an important role with regard to teachers’ ability to explore complex situations. Teachers with a high level of experience teaching the educative curriculum materials showed greater success in dealing with complex problems and recognizing similar and contrasting characteristics of different types of representations across contexts. The findings suggest that curriculum materials can be designed to assist teachers’ learning in ways that contribute to establishing contexts where teacher learning takes place. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]