Grossman & Thompson-2008-Learning From Curriculum Materials

8/6/2019 Grossman & Thompson-2008-Learning From Curriculum Materials

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Learning from curriculum materials: Scaffolds for new teachers?$

Pam Grossman a,, Clarissa Thompson b,1

a School of Education, Stanford University, 485 Lasuen Mall, Stanford, CA 94305, USAb Department of Secondary and Middle Education, University of Maine at Farmington, 186 High Street, Farmington, ME 04938, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 5 December 2006

Received in revised form

19 February 2008

Accepted 6 May 2008

Keywords:

Beginning teachers

Curriculum materials

Learning to teach

a b s t r a c t

This article explores how beginning teachers use and learn from curriculum materials. Aspart of a longitudinal study of beginning English teachers who teach in the Pacific

Northwest of the United States, the researchers tracked teachers responses to and use of

materials over time, and how these materials shaped their classroom practice. The

authors found that the teachers spent an enormous amount of time searching out

curriculum materials for their classes and that the curriculum materials they encountered

did, indeed, powerfully shape their ideas about teaching language arts as well as their

classroom practice. Based on their findings, the authors propose a trajectory for the

teachers use of the curriculum materials. New teachers begin by sticking close to the

materials they have at hand. Then, over time, as they learn more about both students and

curriculum, they adapt and adjust their use of the materials. The authors argue that new

and aspiring teachers need opportunities to analyze and critique curriculum materials,

beginning during teacher education and continuing in the company of their more

experienced colleagues.

&

2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

A curriculum is more for teachers than it is for pupils. If

it cannot change, move, perturb, inform teachers, it

will have no effect on those whom they teach. It must

be first and foremost a curriculum for teachers. If it has

any effect on pupils, it will have it by virtue of having

had an effect on teachers (Bruner, 1977).

Near the end of her first year of teaching, Nancy, a high

school English teacher, was asked if she could have

anything she wanted, what would it be. She replied

quickly, without equivocation, with one wordcurricu-

lum. A few moments later, she elaborated on her desire,

saying that without materials that would interest [my

students], and not knowing what materials would interest

them or what we have available that I could use that

would interest themthat would pull them in, I feel lost.

Nancys plaintive quotation speaks to one of the critical

issues facing beginning teachersfinding resources to

support instruction. As a novice, Nancy had not yet

developed the pedagogical content knowledge that would

help her have a good understanding of what would

interest her students. Perhaps more importantly, as a

novice, she had not yet learned what types of curricular

materials are available to her, materials that could in fact

help her develop knowledge about the teaching of English.

For new teachers, at the beginning of their careers with

much still to learn, curriculum materials might play a

pivotal role in helping them develop their practice. But

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tate

Teaching and Teacher Education

ARTICLE IN PRESS

0742-051X/$- see front matter & 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.doi:10.1016/j.tate.2008.05.002

$ An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting

of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, April

2002. We would like to thank Sheila Valencia, Kate Evans, Susan Martin,

and Nancy Place who were our collaborators and colleagues on the larger

research project. We would also like to thank Janine Remillard and

George Hillocks for their helpful responses to earlier versions of this

paper. This work was funded by the Center for English Learning and

Achievement at the University of Albany, through the Office of

Educational Research and Improvement. Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 650 723 0791.

E-mail addresses: [email protected] (P. Grossman),

[email protected] (C. Thompson).1 Tel.: +12077787192.

Teaching and Teacher Education 24 (2008) 2014 2026
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/tatehttp://www.elsevier.com/locate/tatehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2008.05.002mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2008.05.002http://www.elsevier.com/locate/tatehttp://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/tate


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what do new teachers encounter with regard to curricu-

lum when they enter their classrooms?

In this paper, we examine how three beginning

secondary English teachers responded to and used

curriculum materials in their early years of teaching. We

are particularly interested in how the different curriculum

materials they encountered afforded opportunities for

learning about teaching the language arts. We explore thefollowing questions:

How do these new English teachers perceive and use

available curriculum materials for teaching the lan-

guage arts? How does their use of curriculum materials

change over time?

What opportunities for teacher learning are embedded

in the curriculum materials new teachers encounter?

How are features of the curriculum materials related to

these opportunities for learning?

1.1. Teachers and curriculum

Curriculum materials in the United States can take a

wide variety of forms. Under the umbrella of curriculum

materials we include: curriculum frameworks or state

standards (which generally specify what students should

be learning); curricular programs, including those that

focus either on a full year of instruction or on a shorter

period of time or on a single unit (e.g. the College Boards

Pacesetter programmes, Slavins CIRC; Open Court); text-

books, including trade books and class sets of books;

teacher-created materials; and other resources, such as

professional publications that focus on curriculum and

instruction (e.g. Shakespeare Set Free, a book focused onteaching Shakespeare through performance and Writing

without Teachers (Elbow, 1998)).

Curriculum serves not just students; curricular materi-

als also provide potential learning opportunities for the

adults who teach them (Ball & Cohen, 1996; Davis &

Krajcik, 2005). Yet teachers, and teacher educators, have

long had an ambivalent relationship with prepared

curriculum materials, including textbooks. Teachers have

long been dependent on textbooks to help guide their

instruction (Freeman & Porter, 1989; Sosniak & Perlman,

1990; Stodolsky, 1989; Woodward & Elliott, 1990). Yet

researchers have found that textbooks are not necessarily

of high quality and can limit, rather than support,teachers learning and developing professionalism (Ball

& Feiman-Nemser, 1988; Woodward & Elliott, 1990). In

their work on beginning teachers, Ball and Feiman-

Nemser found that in both teacher education programs

they studied, the professors disparaged the quality of

textbooks and discouraged beginning elementary teachers

from using them. Instead they encouraged students to

create their own materials from scratch. Yet, once these

preservice teachers were in classrooms, various policies or

mandates necessitated the use of textbooks. Not surpris-

ingly, the researchers found these novices ill-equipped to

use textbooks; after all, most of their exposure to them

had involved developing critiques, rather than consideringhow to adapt them for wise classroom use. Ball and

Feiman-Nemser conclude that textbooks could contribute

to the development of subject matter knowledge for

novice teachers who do not have comprehensive knowl-

edge about certain topics necessary for teaching. Further-

more, the researchers hypothesize that textbooks could

serve as a scaffold, helping novice teachers learn to think

pedagogically about particular content (Ball & Feiman-

Nemser, 1988, p. 421).Remillard (2000) studied two elementary teachers and

the relationship between their use of a reform-oriented

math textbook and what they learned and how they

taught mathematics. She concluded that the textbook

and the teachers use of itdid offer them a variety of

opportunities for learning. At the same time, though, she

concludes that for the pedagogical change that would

support true reform of mathematics instruction, text-

books, such as the one she observed teachers using, need

to do more than just set out activities for students to do

and terrain for teachers to cover. She argues that as well as

being written for students, textbooks need to be written

with teachers in mind. In particular, textbook authorsneed to be more explicit about reasons and purposes for

certain content or activities, and to provide opportunities

for teachers to engage in decision-making, giving them

space to play out some of the introduced possibilities on

their own.

Ball and Cohen (1996) note the uneven role curriculum

materials have historically played in teachers practice and

argue for a new vision of the design and use of such

materials. As Remillard (2000) does, they point out the

important role curriculum materials could play in teacher

learning and the need to integrate such materials into

professional development programs so as to increase

teachers engagement with and learning from the materi-als. Like Bruner before them, Ball and Cohen argue that

curriculum materials should be designed as much for

teachers as for students and should be used as a site for

teacher learning.

Davis and Krajcik (2005) take a similar position,

referring to such curriculum materials as educative.

They set out what they call high level guidelines, which

indicate that educative curriculum materials should help

teachers anticipate student thinking and consider how to

relate units throughout the year, among other things. They

also create a set of design heuristics, which fall into the

arenas of subject matter knowledge and pedagogical

content knowledge. In their design heuristics they suggestwhat the materials should provide for teachers, how the

materials can help teachers understand the recommenda-

tions, and how teachers can use the materials in their

teaching. Davis and Krajcik also discuss inherent tensions

in the design of educative curriculum materials, such as

determining the right amount of guidance or prescription

and designing materials for different audiences, e.g., new

teachers versus experienced teachers.

More recent research on teachers and curriculum takes

two different directions, looking broadly at teachers

general experiences with the curriculum materials they

encounter (or the lack of materials they find when they

enter the classroom) as well as more specifically at whatthey might learn from their use of curriculum materials.

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In a study of new teachers in Massachusetts (Kauffman,

Johnson, Kardos, Liu, & Peske, 2002), researchers inter-

viewed 50 new teachersat all levels and in all subject

areasand found that these new teachers identified

curriculum as one of their central concerns. The authors

suggest that while these teachers sense the importance of

curriculum and are hungry for curricular guidance, they

often find little to help them; they end up overwhelmedby their responsibilities in terms of creating quality

curricular materials to use with their students. These

researchers conclude that one of the central problems

facing new teachers is finding curricular resources and

materials to help them with their work.

Given the increasing reliance on prescribed curriculum

programs and materials, including textbooks and pacing

plans that prescribe the pace at which teachers must

cover the curriculum, the significance of curriculum

materials in shaping both teachers practice and learning

has heightened as well. Researchers need to attend to the

kinds of curriculum materials novice teachers encounter

when they enter the classroom, and how they use thesematerials in their practice. While a number of authors

argue for the need for curricular materials that are

educative for teachers, as well as students, relatively little

research actually examines what teachers might learn

from the curriculum materials they encounter. Our study

attempts to chart this territory, in part by developing a

framework for analyzing the features of curriculum

materials and their embedded opportunities for learning

(Table 1).

2. Theoretical framework

This study draws on sociocultural theory (Cole, 1996;

Wertsch, 1981) to frame the research. As outlined in our

conceptual framework (Grossman, Smagorinsky, & Valen-

cia, 1999), we have focused on the different activity

settings in which beginning teachers learn to teach, and

how teachers acquire conceptual and practical tools for

teaching language arts. Given this framework, we are

interested in what teachers encounter and learn in

different settings, and how they make sense of the

discontinuities among settings.

From the perspective of sociocultural theory, learning

involves tool-mediated action; we believe that the

curriculum materials that teachers encounter represent

important tools for learning to teach. Embedded within

these materials are conceptions of what it means to teach

reading and writing, as well as practical tools to use inclassrooms. Our analysis tries to surface these embedded

conceptions of the subject matter and what it means to

teach it, as well as the kinds of strategies and guidance for

teaching language arts included in the materials.

Our focus is on how teachers engage with and use

these materials in the process of learning to teach.

Teachers use of these tools will vary, depending upon

their own beliefs and values, their knowledge of the

subject, and the contexts in which they teach, just as how

they use the materials will help determine what they

learn from them (Johnson, Smagorinsky, Thompson, & Fry,

2003). Teachers knowledge of their subject (Hashweh,

1987), as well as beliefs about teaching more generally(Richardson, Anders, Tidwell, & Lloyd, 1991) will affect

how teachers respond to and use the curricula available to

them, even as their beliefs about teaching are shaped by

district policy (Grossman & Thompson, 2002; Spillane &

Jennings, 1997). Our analyses have tried to take account of

the differences among individuals in their beliefs and in

their teaching contexts that help account for the different

ways in which they used, and learned from, curriculum

materials.

Because we were interested in curriculum materials as

tools for teacher learning, we developed a framework for

thinking about the characteristics and features of different

kinds of curricula. This framework included the scope,comprehensiveness, flexibility, and support for teacher

learning of the curriculum materials.

Because the subject matter of English/language arts is

broad, encompassing a number of different areas (e.g.,

reading/literature, writing, speaking/listening, drama,

journalism, and visual media), we considered what areas

of the subject matter the curriculum materials addressed.

For example, materials might focus only on writing or they

might include attention to both reading and writing. As

teaching itself is such a complex practice, we were also

interested in ways that new teachers learn about and

master the myriad tasks involved in teaching, including

planning, enacting particular pedagogies, and assessingstudent learning. Some materials might provide ideas for

classroom activities but provide little guidance in how to

assess what students learned from the activities, while

others might include resources for both instruction and

assessment. Curriculum materials also fall along a

continuum, from more prescriptive, specifying exactly

what should be taught, to more flexible, offering guidance

and ideas about what and how to teach, but leaving many

of the instructional decisions up to the individual teacher.

We were interested in where on this continuum particular

curriculum materials fell and how the flexibility of the

materials affected teachers engagement with the materi-

als. Finally, because of our interest in how new teachersknowledge about teaching language arts grows and

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Table 1

Study participants

Nancy Allison Bill

Taught 10th and 11th

grade in a suburban

school district

Taught 7th grade in

a suburban school

district

Taught 10th and 12th

grade in a suburban

school district

Used the multi-

paragraph essay

unit

Had a list of novels

available

State curriculum

frameworks

Used the multi-

paragraph

essay unit

Had a list of

novels available

State and

district

curriculum

frameworks

Teacher-created

units

Used the multi-

paragraph essay

unit

Had a list of novels

available

State and district

curriculum

frameworks

Pacesetter English

P. Grossman, C. Thompson / Teaching and Teacher Education 24 (2008) 201420262016


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develops over timethe trajectory they experience as

they go through their first few years of teachingwe

wondered what kind of support for teacher learning might

be built into particular curriculum materials. Thesevarying questions and concerns led us to identify four

dimensions of curriculum materials: scope of materials

with regard to content, comprehensiveness of materials with

regard to instruction, flexibility of materials with regard to

use, and support for teacher learning. In Table 2, we define

and elaborate on these dimensions.

The broader the scope of the materials, the more likely

there are to be opportunities for beginning teachers to

learn how to integrate the different components of the

language arts. Materials that are more comprehensive in

nature may provide more opportunities for teachers to

learn not only what to teach, but how to teach the

material. Materials that provide for some flexibility inhow they are implemented may also provide more

opportunities for teachers to actually interact with the

curriculum and make decisions about how best to use the

materials to support student learning. The flexibility of

materials may also result in greater variation in instruc-

tion. While beginning teachers may or may not take the

opportunities offered by the materials, and while some

teachers might learn from any curriculum with which

theyre presented, we argue that the characteristics of the

curriculum materials themselves matter to teacher learn-

ing.

Our analyses focused on how the curriculum materials

represented the language arts and embodied opportu-nities for learning about teaching the language arts. As

part of this analysis, we coded materials with regard to the

features of scope, comprehensiveness, and flexibility, as

well as for potential opportunities for teachers to learn

about subject matter, about teaching the subject matter,or about teaching more generally. For example, some of

the materials actually defined literary terms and gave

examples; we coded this as a potential opportunity to

learn about the subject matter. The same materials might

also provide ways of thinking about how to teach this

concept or term to students, which we coded as an

opportunity to learn about teaching the subject matter.

Finally, some materials introduced instructional activities

such as the jig-saw or formats for group discussion that

were not inherently tied to the subject matter. We coded

these as opportunities to learn more generally about

teaching.

3. Description of study

The analysis presented in this paper comes from a

larger longitudinal study, conducted in the Pacific North-

west of the United States, of beginning teachers as they

made the transition from their teacher education program

to their first 3 years of teaching. Our decision to follow the

teachers for several years came from an interest in seeing

if and how they appropriated tools from their teacher

education course work over time, and how the process of

learning to teach was affected by aspects of their school

and district contexts, including availability of professionaldevelopment activities, support from colleagues, and

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Table 2

Features of curriculum materials

Scope Comprehensiveness Flexibility Support for teacher learning

Definition The number of aspects of the

language arts addressed by the

curriculum materials

The number of aspects of

instruction addressed by the

curriculum materials and the

resources included within the

curriculum materials

How the materials are designed

to be used

How much and in what ways

the materials engage teachers

in tasks that contribute to the

development of knowledge

about teaching and the subjectmatter at hand

Analysis

questions

What aspects of the broad

territory of the language arts

are included in the curriculum

materials? Do the materials

focus on a narrow slice of

language arts (e.g., writing)? Do

they tackle more territory (e.g.

literature, writing, speaking

and listening)?

Do the materials focus only on

what to teach? Do they also

include information about how

to teach the content or how to

assess student learning? Are

opportunities for professional

development provided?

Do the materials require

teachers to use them as they

were written? Can teachers

adapt and change the materials

depending on their needs and

contexts?

Are the materials addressed to

teachers as well as students?

Do the materials include

questions that ask teachers to

figure things out for

themselves? Do the materials

include opportunities for

teachers to make their own

decisions about how to use or

what to do with the materials?

Do the materials provide

teachers with just the topics or

general content? Or, do they

also include lesson plans,

activities, worksheets?



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curricular and instructional policies. In particular, we

wanted to follow them beyond just their first year of

teaching, as the first 3 years of teaching are seen as a

critical learning period for new teachers. The larger study

followed 10 beginning elementary and secondary English/

language arts teachers. Our data consist of individual and

group interviews, classroom observations, and documents

from both the teachers classrooms and their districts.During the 4 years of the study, we observed and

interviewed the teachers regularly throughout the school

year. We observed the teachers at three points throughout

the year: near the beginning, in the middle, and near the

end of the year.2 Each time we observed, we focused on

two different classes that the teacher was teaching (e.g.,

one class of 9th grade English and one creative writing

class). Our first visit of the year was a 1-day visit, whereas

the second and third observations spanned 2 days of

instruction for each of the two classes that we were

following. During observations, we took extensive field

notes and collected copies of any curriculum materials or

resources the teacher was using. Prior to each observation,we spoke with the teacher about what we would be

observing, asking questions about what the class had been

doing prior to our visit, what the teacher had planned for

the days we would be observing, and what their goals

were. Following the observations, we conducted post-

observation interviews with the teachers, during which

we asked questions about what we had seen and the

teachers thinking behind what they had done; we asked

questions about the resources we saw the teachers using

and where they had acquired those resources, or where

their ideas for what they were doing had come from.

In addition to these classroom observations and the

related interviews, we also interviewed the teachersindependently of these observations. Again, we conducted

these in the beginning, middle, and at the end of the year.

While these interviews certainly focused on the classroom

experiences of these teachers, we also stepped back from

the classroom to some degree during these interviews,

asking questions about what was happening at the school

and district level, and what role the state reform played in

their work as teachers. When we met with our teacher

participants, we asked broader and more reflective

questions about what they had learned over the course

of the year, and questions based on themes or topics that

we had seen recurring in either the observations or our

interviews.We conducted group interviews on a yearly basis,

bringing all of the participants together to talk about their

experiences. Again, as with the individual interviews, the

group interviews ranged in focus, from more general

discussion about how things were going and what the

teachers were doing in their classrooms, to specific tasks

that we designed to elicit their thinking about certain

issues. For example, in one of the tasks, teachers were

asked to bring in samples of curriculum materials they

had encountered in their schools and to talk about them

with the group. In another group task, teachers were

asked to rank order the usefulness of various materials

they had mentioned in interviews and to talk about their

rankings. The group interviews were both audio- and

video-taped.

Data analysis was an iterative process. All the inter-

views were audio-taped and transcribed verbatim. Wealso summarized each interview and observation for all

participants in this study and wrote accompanying

detailed analytic memos. We engaged in extensive

analyses of the individual teachers and then conducted

cross-case analyses, looking for both commonalities and

differences among the teachers with regard to their uses

of curriculum materials. Our analysis focused on how

teachers made sense of and used a variety of curriculum

materials in their classrooms, and what teachers reported

learning from the materials. We also analyzed observa-

tional data for evidence of teachers learning about subject

matter or about teaching the subject matter. Finally, we

analyzed the curriculum materials according to theframework described above.

We focus simultaneously here on three secondary

teachers and their use of a variety of curriculum materials,

with a specific focus on their use of two sets of curriculum

materials. Three factors led to our focus on these three

teachers in particular. First, all three of these teachers

taught locally for at least 2 years, allowing us to follow

their practice across these crucial beginning years. Second,

packaged curriculum materials played a significant role in

the classroom practice of these teachers during their first

few years of teaching. Third, all three of these teachers

encountered and made use of one set of materials in

particular, Jane Schaffers Teaching the Multi-paragraphEssay unit. One of our participants used the second set of

materials that we chose for analysis, the College Boards

Pacesetter English curriculum. As researchers, we were

interested in looking at new teachers and their engage-

ment with and learning from curriculum materials in

general. However, the fact that three of our participants

used the same set of materials made it particularly

interesting to look specifically at that set of materials

and the ways they interacted with it.

As noted above, we chose these two sets of materials

for analysis in part because they were central to the

teachers practice but also because they represented a

contrast in scope and orientation towards the subjectmatter and were therefore a strategic site for analysis of

what teachers could learn from curriculum materials

about the subject matter and teaching the subject matter.

Jane Schaffers Teaching the Multi-paragraph Essay is a

unit plan designed to teach students how to write a basic

five-paragraph essay. The unit is intended to span nine

weeks and focuses primarily on writing and, in particular,

writing within one specific genre. By our definitions, the

materials are of rather limited scope. However, the

materials came with a complete set of lesson plans for

this unit, samples of student work, handouts and work-

sheets for students, and guidelines for how to adapt the

unit. In this sense, the materials were comprehensive withregard to instruction and designed for somewhat flexible

ARTICLE IN PRESS

2 During the time that they were student teaching, our three

observations were spread across their student teaching semester, ratherthan a full year.



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use. Pacesetter English, in contrast, focuses on many

aspects of the English/Language Arts (writing, reading,

speaking ,listening, etc.), rather than just writing; we

defined these materials as broader in scope. Also, the

Pacesetter materials cover a full school year, and are

comprised of five discrete units. The curriculum comes

with ideas for teaching the central concepts (e.g. voice,

perspective), as well as suggestions for specific texts foreach unit. The curriculum also has a well-developed set of

performance assessments, complete with rubrics; tea-

chers who adopt this curriculum also participate in a

national professional development institute and have

access to other teachers using this curriculum. In these

ways, Pacesetter English was even more comprehensive

than the Jane Schaffer unit plan.

We first describe briefly the individual teachers

included in this study and then turn to the cross-case

themes.

4. The teachers

We begin by introducing the teachers and their

backgrounds, including their shared experience during

teacher education. During their teacher education pro-

gram (a graduate-level program at a large university in the

Northwest United States), all three teachers took a 20-

week long language arts methods sequence that focused

on both the teaching of writing and the teaching of

literature. While the students created their own curricu-

lum materials during their teacher education course work,

including lesson and unit plans, they neither examined

nor had opportunities to critique or evaluate published

curriculum materials. All three of these teachers inter-nalized the broad principles that ran through their teacher

education program. For example, they felt strongly about

the importance of meaningful assessments, being clear

about ones goals and objectives, scaffolding student

learning and providing a constructivist learning environ-

ment. At the same time, they felt that one of the weak

aspects in their program had been their subject-specific

preparation for teaching. While they had been introduced

to some general ideas regarding the teaching of writing,

for example, they did not necessarily feel they had been

prepared to put these ideas into practice. As one teacher

commented: writing process theory was too much

learning about and not enough learning how to imple-ment. Referring back to her teacher education course

work, Nancy, one of our focal teachers, claimed, No one

has ever taught me how to teach essay writing, every

Methods class wasnt very good. (See Grossman et al.,

2000 for more detail on what teachers learned about

teaching writing.)

Nancy had an undergraduate degree in English, a

minor in psychology, and was hired to teach both of those

subjects when she took her first job. She felt that writing,

rather than literature was her strength in the teaching of

English/language arts and one of her goals for students

was that they not be afraid to try writing, that they feel

comfortable getting it down on paper so that they havesomething to work with. Of these three new teachers,

Nancy was the most anxious about and concerned with

curriculum and curriculum materials. Despite her dis-

tricts emphasis on curriculum, she felt that there was a

real lack of available curricular support at her school, and

said that she was quite overwhelmed and not quite sure

where to start. Although she originally resisted adopting

the unit on the multi-paragraph essay in her classroom,

she ultimately began to rely on it.Allison was originally a journalism major, but even-

tually switched to English. She had a plethora of materials

available to her and she took advantage of a variety of

resources around her (e.g., other teachers, the bookroom,

published and teacher-created materials, on-line re-

sources). She enjoyed developing curricular units for her

7th graders, but also relied on the multi-paragraph essay

unit for teaching writing. During the years we observed

her teach, Allison used this unit each year, with some

modifications.

Bill entered teaching as a second career and, unlike

Allison and Nancy, his undergraduate degree was not in

English but in anthropology. Bill had encountered the JaneSchaffer Teaching the Multi-paragraph Essay unit during

his student teaching experience, and had used it with his

9th grade curriculum. Once he began full-time teaching,

he no longer taught 9th grade, however, he still referred to

and spoke highly of the multi-paragraph essay unit

materials. Like Nancy, Bill did not seem to have all that

many resources available to him for teaching his sopho-

more English class, but he was also assigned to teach the

Pacesetter curriculum for seniors, a curriculum that

provided him with multiple resources for teaching.

The table below provides a brief overview for the three

teachers, noting in particular the range of curriculum

materials that were available to them.We turn now to an analysis of the experiences of the

three teachers, Nancy, Allison, and Bill, as they began their

first year of teaching.

5. Finding and using tools for teaching

As was true of the study of new teachers in Massachu-

setts described by Susan Moore Johnson and her collea-

gues, the teachers in our study were avid consumers of

curriculum materials. They actively sought out materials

from other teachers, from libraries, and from the internet.

On many occasions Nancy commented on the lack ofcurriculum available to her, I would beg borrow and steal

materials from other teachers. Hey, this is the theme

were working on, what literature do you have that reflects

that theme? The teachers also sought materials that

could give them concrete guidance on how to teach

material to students. Nancy complained, I would reach a

point where I find something and I was just so exhausted

by trying to find something that once I found something I

thought, ok, now what do I do with this.

The curriculum materials these beginning teachers

used in their first years of teaching seemed to have a

profound effect on how they thought about and taught the

subject matter. Even when they were aware of some of thelimitations of particular curriculum materials, their need

ARTICLE IN PRESS



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for concrete guidance often overcame their reservations.

Once they found materials, they were reluctant to part

with them and, in some cases, used them repeatedly.

The curriculum materials were also sources of learning

for these beginning teachers. We observed them using the

materials to develop ideas for how to organize and teach

literature and writing, as well as gleaning specific

strategies for teaching English. Teachers followed aparticular trajectory in their use of the curriculum

materials. They began by sticking closely to the materials

they had at hand. Then, over time, as they learned more

about both students and curriculum, they began to adapt

and adjust what they did, and their use of the materials

opened up, as they became more willing to play with and

take liberties with the materials.

However, as we explore below, while all of the teachers

learned something from their use of curriculum materials,

their learning remained very much within the imprint of

the original materials. Just as in following someone elses

footprints on the beach, another walker might impose a

different shape or size to the footprint while following thepath originally charted, so these teachers tended to tinker

with the details of the curriculum materials, while

remaining faithful to the original imprint and direction

of the materials.

5.1. The power of early encounters with curriculum

materials

The curriculum materials first encountered by these

secondary teachers were particularly powerful in shaping

their ideas about teaching language arts as well as their

classroom practice. All of the teachers in our study spent anenormous amount of time searching out curriculum

materials for their classes. When they found materials that

solved the pressing problem of what to teach, they quickly

latched on to them. The lucky ones worked in supportive

departments, where teachers shared their materials; the

less lucky ones floundered, seizing upon materials that

would help them solve the problem of what to teach. The

more comprehensive the materials, with respect to addres-

sing both what to teach and how to teach it, the more they

solved the problems these beginning teachers faced.

All three of the teachers encountered the multi-

paragraph essay unit early on in their careers, and for all

three, this set of curriculum materials became an indis-pensable part of their teaching. Bill first encountered the

writing unit during his student teaching experience. The

district hired Jane Schaffer to do a staff development day

with teachers, and Bill and his colleagues were hook, line,

and sinker taken with Jane Schaffer and her approach to

the teaching of writing. The district subsequently adopted

the multi-paragraph essay unit for teaching writing at the

9th grade level, the grade level at which Bill did his

student teaching. After graduation, Bill was hired by this

same district but since he no longer taught 9th grade, he

was no longer required to teach the writing unit. He

continued to be enthusiastic about the curriculum,

however, and aspects of this approach continued to be apart of his practice.

Bill passed along the multi-paragraph essay unit

materials to his peers during the teacher education

program and, for Allison, the unit became a mainstay of

her teaching practice. During the 3 years that we observed

her, she used the unit at least four different times. Her

initial use of the unit occurred in one of her student

teaching assignments, when she had to find something to

teach immediately; the unit plan, with its comprehensiveset of materials and day-to-day lesson plans, solved that

problem for her. Even though the unit was developed for

high school contexts, she decided to try to adapt it for her

middle school students.

I knew that immediately I had to start teaching

something and so it was something that was prepack-

aged, something I didnt need to do all that much

preparation for. I mean I did, but I didnt have to create

it from scratch, and so I figured I want to try this, I

want to play around with this and see if I can make it

work for middle school kidsy

Allison continued to use the materials in her first 3 years

of teaching middle school.

Nancy initially resisted using the multi-paragraph

essay unit, arguing that while the other teachers teaching

English tend to use Jane Schaffers write-by-numbers

technique, my philosophy is that no one writes that way.

However, in her first year, with few curricular materials to

draw on, she struggled with how to teach writing to her

students. It would be nice if the English department as a

whole had a set curriculum so you knew what you were

supposed to be teaching. As the year progressed and

Nancy continued to flounder, her initial resistance to the

multi-paragraph essay unit materials waned, and sheultimately decided that they would be useful for her

students.

Although she initially used the materials in her 10th

grade writing class, she also found herself drawing on

them in her 11th grade American literature class.

Im still not comfortable because there is no curricu-

lum for American Lit. Im making it up as I go along and

realize that these kids dont have a lot of the writing

skills that they need. Were going to start focusing on

writing in the context of literature so we will start

doing a little focus on some of the Jane Schaffer

elements. Yesterday was topic sentence.

Because Nancy was so unsure of what to do in her

American literature classes and because these materials

provide such clear direction and explicit day-to-day plans,

they helped solve Nancys problem of what to teach not

only in 10th grade, but in her American literature class as

well.

Although our primary focus here is on the multi-

paragraph essay unit, Jane Schaffer Publications also

produces curriculum materials for novels. As previously

noted, in her 11th grade American Literature class, Nancy

drew on the multi-paragraph essay unit materials she had

been using in her 10th grade class. In a school thatdesignated only what novels were to be taught at a

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particular grade level, Nancy struggled with how to teach

the specified novels.

Im still not very good at teaching novels. How do you

balance discussion, vocabulary, guiding questionsyI

have all these questions about these different novels

and Ive had no real training in ityso the only thing

that I have as far as how to teach these novels is I getthese Jane Schaffer packets from [a colleague]. Oh, I

have a Jane Schaffer packet on The Scarlet Letter or I

have one on Huck Finn, see what you can do with it.

The Jane Schaffer curriculum materials on particular

novels solved her problem of how to teach. The compre-

hensiveness of the materials gave Nancy a set of tools in

the form of concrete activities she could use in her

classroom. The materials also provided her with a

structure for how to teach writing, a structure she began

to use in other classes as well.

While all of our participants had access to and used the

Jane Schaffer materials, only Bill had the opportunity touse another significant set of curriculum materials: the

Pacesetter program for 12th grade English. The compre-

hensiveness of this program, as well as the fact that it was

quite congruent with Bills own visions for teaching and

learning, meant that it provided tremendous support for

Bill as a first year teacher.

I think that a lot of the Pacesetter philosophy was the

philosophy that I came out of the teacher ed program

with, in terms of how to approach material. That its

not book, test, book, test, book, test, chapter, test, unit,

test, final. That students have to experience text to

understand it and do it in a number of different ways

and from different approaches and thats a lot of what

Pacesetter is about. But [having Pacesetter] certainly

didnt hurt. They gave me a nice hefty bag of tricks. The

balls that Im juggling look really good. Theyre quality

balls that Im juggling, you know.

Bill happily used the ideas, materials, and texts that

Pacesetter provided, in large part because the curriculum

made sense to him in terms of what he had learned in

teacher education. In addition, as was true of the multi-

paragraph essay unit, the materials provided him with a

clear sense of what to do with his students, on both ashort- and long-term basis. While Pacesetter offers

teachers opportunities to substitute texts, Bill stayed

quite close to the original recommendations in his first

year of teaching.

Having the Pacesetter materials as a resource allowed

Bill to put his ideas into practice. While his vision for

those classroom practices came originally, in part, from

his teacher education experience, it was his access to

Pacesetter that helped him make his vision of classroom

practices into a reality. For example, when talking about

the assessment used in Pacesetter, Bill referred to the

instructor of his assessment course, a person whom he

very much respected. Erin Baker would love the assess-ments, theyre wholly authentic.

5.2. Learning from curriculum materials

In all of these instances, the new teachers grew quite

attached to the curriculum materials they used in their

first year of teaching and tended to adhere relatively

closely to the curriculum materials their first time

through. For example, prepared materials provided Allison

with the ideas for particular lessons and how to teachthem. In doing literature circles, she photocopied the roles

for students out of the Harvey Daniels book on literature

circles and used them verbatim as worksheets for

students. In the multi-paragraph essay unit, she copied

and used the peer review sheets and other handouts for

students exactly as written. Similarly, Bill remained quite

faithful to the Pacesetter curriculum, as originally de-

signed. As he commented to us, Its like going for a test-

drive in someone elses car. He taught the recommended

texts for a unit, even when he did not particularly care for

them, and despite the designers explicit charge to

teachers to substitute texts at their discretion.

Curriculum materials provided all three teachers withopportunities for trying out new ideas and learning new

pedagogical strategies. Both Allison and Bill used curricu-

lum materials to figure out how to teach particular topics

or skills. In this sense, the materials serve as a source for

new ideas and scaffold for teacher learning. Furthermore,

the materials often gave these new teachers confidence

about teaching particular topics or skills they hadnt

taught before. For example, Allison taught a unit on

Midsummer Nights Dream to 7th graders, a unit designed

around the suggested activities and lessons contained in

Shakespeare Set Free, a resource book for teachers on

teaching Shakespeare through performance. Her confi-

dence in tackling Shakespeare with 7th graders waslargely due to the support the Shakespeare Set Free

materials provided. Because she did not have to create

everything from scratch, the prepared materials freed

Allison to experiment more, something she was already

inclined to do.

Similarly, Bill appreciated the support the Pacesetter

curriculum providedparticularly instructional guidan-

ceand was able to experiment with different classroom

activities. Pacesetter defines text broadly and en-

courages the use of multiple types of texts. In particular,

film is one type of text that the curriculum materials

discuss and advocate the use of. Bill talks about his

understanding of film as text. The film is as rich amedium as a book is or a short story is. The writer has

different tools. The director has different tools that they

use, a writer would use an adjective in describing a

character, a director might use a light bulb or a mise-en-

scene which is everything you see in the frame. Bill

acquired this language and way of thinking about

how reading a written work and reading a film are

comparable from his use of the Pacesetter resources.

Working with these curriculum materials expanded his

thinking and understanding of how to look at and think

about texts.

Bill also benefited from the extensive set of assess-

ments that accompany the curriculum. His own beliefsabout assessment both predisposed him to like Pacesetter,

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and his use of the curriculum reinforced his beliefs about

the value of authentic assessments. The materials pro-

vided a scaffold for his initial use of classroom assess-

ments; they allowed him to build on what he had learned

in teacher education and gave him the support he needed

to actually enact the types of assessments he had learned

about in his course work. As was true of his use of the rest

of the curriculum, Bill generally used the assessment toolsexactly as they were designed, even though the curricu-

lum suggests modifying them for particular classes.

But the assessments are not mine, the assessments

belong to Pacesetter, and I can do other assessments as

I see fit, but they provide the rubrics-if it was bad, I

wouldnt do it, but theyve been so good.

While all of the teachers in our study appreciated the

assessment course they had taken in teacher education

and identified it as one of the most valuable classes they

had taken, only Bill actually implemented the kinds of

authentic assessments they had studied. As Bill himselfacknowledged, he used the Pacesetter materials to do so.

Bills comment, that they provide the rubrics, suggests

again the value of more comprehensive materials for new

teachers. Without these pre-designed assessments, it is

hard to imagine Bill creating this range of assessments on

his own during this first year of teaching. At the same

time, the materials shaped Bills practice in important

ways.

While much of this learning could be categorized as

the development of pedagogical content knowledge-

knowledge of how to teach the contentthere is also

evidence that the curriculum materials influenced tea-

chers understanding of some of the concepts and contentthey were responsible for teaching. For example, Nancy

talks about learning a clear definition of a thesis

statement from the Jane Schaffer materials, a definition

she could use with students. As Nancy told the group:

[JS] saved me when it comes to thesis statementsyI

was having a heck of a time teaching the thesis

statementyand now I can say, o.k. this is a good

thesis statement because she gave me the language I

needed to be able to articulate to students, and now

kids can say, its written right into my rubricya

phenomenal thesis statement has a subject and an

opinion on a very sophisticated levely

and then I canbreak it down, I have the language and the tools to do

that.

As an experienced writer and English major, Nancy

undoubtedly knew how to write thesis statements for

her own papers, but she may not have needed an explicit

definition. Yet as a novice teacher working with students

who are still novices in the arena of writing, having ready

access to definitions can make an important contribution

to her teaching. In fact, all three teachers appreciated

having definitions available that they could then use with

students to describe the elements of an essay. The shared

vocabulary for talking about essays became one of thetools that proved most useful to the new teachers.

In March of Nancys first year of teaching, we observed

her on a day when her students were at the rough draft

stage of writing an essay. While students worked in the

computer lab on their essays, Nancy circulated about the

room doing one-on-one conferences with them about

their essays. Nancy and a student had the following

exchange.

Nancy: The first area of concern is commentary.

Remember, its not a summary of the quote.

Student: It explains ity?

Nancy: It explains it, tells me why its importanty You

just said the same thing twice. Really what youre

talking about is the long journey and its importance.

Here Nancy used the Jane Schaffer term commentary

(which she then defined as explaining and telling why

the quotation is important) to try to help the student

develop her idea further, to move beyond simple sum-

mary of the quotation. The term and the definition have

become tools that Nancy employed when trying to help

students develop their writing. In her view, they give her aspecific way to direct students attention to the necessary

next steps in their writing.

On the other hand, this focus on the Jane Schaffer

terminology and the more structural elements of the

essay meant that Nancy did not engage in conversation

with this student about what the quotation might actually

mean to her and what her thoughts were about the

quotation, a conversation that might have helped the

student develop her own thinking about what ideas she

was trying to explore in her essay. Indeed, the new

teachers learning was very much shaped by the materials.

None of the teachers learned a definition of the essay that

might be described more fluidly, as the unfolding of a setof ideas, or as an excursion into an authors thinking.

Instead the teachers, and their students, learned a

definition of the school-based genre of the five-paragraph

essay, a genre that focuses more on form than on content.

In the end, both students and teachers opportunity to

learn a perspective on writing that focuses on developing

a set of ideas for a particular audience might be limited by

this attention to form over substance.

5.3. Building on and adapting curriculum materials

After teachers used a set of curriculum materials once,

they began to adapt the materials to fit their owncontexts. In their prior work with curriculum materials,

the teachers were learning more instructional possibili-

ties, the array of ways to teach something. As they became

more experienced, the teachers began to adapt the

materials to create their own way of teaching of the

subject matter, using the curriculum materials as a

scaffold that they then built on.

In her second year of teaching, Allison described

tailoring the peer revision worksheets from the Jane

Schaffer materials to focus her students attention on

more specific elements of the writing.

The essay unit, I cut out a couple of thingsy

I tooksome stuff out. I changed the peer revision. I did that

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much differently. I made a new worksheet that had

specific things that I wanted them to look for,

questions that they had to ask themselves as they

were reading the essay and then questions that they

had to answer and comments that they had to give

their partner. Like specific things that they were

looking foryStrong verbs, dead words like nice,

bad, good. Fragments and run-ons. So that therewere some specific things that they were looking for

as opposed to just looking at it holistically. (Int. 12/98,

p. 1819)

Based on her experiences the previous year, Allison

designed a new worksheet to guide the peer revision

process.

Nancy also borrowed ideas from curriculum materials

and used them in new ways. For example, she developed

what she calls a fill in the blank essay for her students,

an idea she took from the multi-paragraph essay materi-

als. I got that from Jane Schaffer. She has them outline

their essays in that form and I just expanded upon the

form as she had because she would do it for a paragraph

and I did it for a whole essay. Nancy also created an

extensive set of worksheets for her students to walk them

through this assignment; while she used the multi-

paragraph essay unit as a model, she created these

worksheets herself. Nancy also borrowed the idea of

providing students with thesis statements, which they

could choose to prove right or wrong, for another student

writing assignment.

Well, the assignment actually came out of something

that I got out of a Jane Schaffer book, where instead of

saying okay, heres a question, write a thesis, write a

paper on it, what she does is she gives basicallyy

acouple of different thesis statements and says choose

one of the following and prove it right or wrongySo

basically in some form shes giving them the thesis. So I

took and I structured [this assignment] in a similar

manner, well, the same manner, where I gave them

three different statements about the book and I said

choose one of the statements and prove it correct or

incorrect. And thats the basis of their paper.

In this instance, Nancy used the curriculum materials as a

model for creating writing assignments for her students.

Just as Nancy and Allison adapted materials the second

time they used them, Bill also made changes to thePacesetter curriculum, based on his first year experiences.

In a group interview, he announced that Pacesetter is my

starting pointybut my Pacesetter moves as I move. One

important occasion where this happened surrounds an

assessment (i.e., an essay) that is part of one of the

Pacesetter units.

Actually I changed it a little bit this year. [He describes

the trouble his students had reading a Baldwin essay.]

So I came up with some different strategies of having

them read it. They broke up in groups of 2 or 3. They

explored single paragraphs at a time, reading the

paragraph and then discussing what it was about, sothey would have a more solid sense as they moved

through ity. I think it was [more successful] also

because they knew what the assessment was. I had

more success with that than last year, letting them

know what the assessment is at the beginning of the

unit, so theyre working towards it, so they have some

sense of a purpose. Its not like, heres an assess-

mentdo it.

So what I did in this particular case, they were writingthis essay, so I broke the essay up for them in three

distinct parts: the event, the reflection on the event,

and its larger significance.

In this instance, Bill applied what he knew about

scaffolding student learning to this particular assignment.

By breaking both the reading and writing into more

manageable chunks, he was able to support students

comprehension of the passage and their ability to write an

essay of their own. This example represents how Bill was

able to bring what he already knew about teaching to this

curriculum in order to tailor it more effectively to his

students. When he decided that it was working well, he

went to the Pacesetter bulletin board and shared what he

had been doing and why it had been so effective, thus

leaving his own mark on the curriculum materials, and

enabling other teachers to learn from his experience.

6. Limitations to curriculum materials

Curriculum materials play an important role for

beginning teachers, by providing them with tools for

instruction and not forcing them to reinvent the wheel

each time they teach something new. By trying out

instructional approaches suggested by the curriculum

materials, such as writing a thesis statement or peerediting, the teachers had opportunities to experiment and

to learn from their experimentation. However, what they

learned depended heavily on the nature of the curriculum

materials and the opportunities for learning embedded

within the materials.

All three teachers appropriated approaches to teaching

essay writing from the multi-paragraph essay unit

materials. Yet how they used the materials, and the

opportunities for student learning that followed, were

sometimes problematic. They did not critique the materi-

als ahead of time or to try to tailor them for their

particular needs and purposes; this led to a number of

missed opportunities for both teacher and student learn-ing. The limitations of curriculum materials, if not

addressed by teachers, thus become limitations in what

students are able to learn from the enacted curriculum.

As noted above, in her efforts to adapt materials from

Teaching the Multi-paragraph Essay for her own con-

text, Allison created a new guide sheet for peer feedback

that was indeed more specific. Yet just like the model

guide sheet included in the packet, the revised guide sheet

did not focus students attention on issues related to

content or meaning. In fact, there is little in the unit plan

as written that would focus teachers attention upon

content. The unit focuses almost entirely upon the form of

the essay, rather than on meaning, presenting a forma-lized, and formulaic, approach to writing. In revising the

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peer revision worksheets, Allison did not think deeply

about the kinds of revision strategies that are most useful

for students, the different demands of particular genres of

writing, or how to teach towards these. Her revised

guidesheet, like the initial one provided in the curriculum,

asked students to attend to surface features of their essays

rather than engaging in substantive revision. The multi-

paragraph essay unit served the immediate purpose ofhelping Allison get started with the basics of teaching

writing, but never provided her with any opportunities to

consider what it means to teach writing in a way that

attends to students purposes for writing and their ideas.

In a similar attempt to adapt the multi-paragraph essay

unit materials for her own purposes, Nancy also ran into

the limitations inherent in the materials. As described

above, the materials do in some sense help Nancy learn

about writing assignments and how to construct them,

but, in the instance where she decides to create thesis

statements for her students (having seen something

similar in the materials), the materials do not simulta-

neously provide a framework for Nancy to think about thetrade-offs involved with providing students with ready-

made thesis statements. The materials teach Nancy how

to set up a procedure for helping students complete a

paper rather than a process for helping them think though

the issues in a literary text and then engage in writing

about those issues. While the provision of a thesis

statement provides a form of scaffolding for less experi-

enced writers, the materials do not help Nancy think

through how to engage students in developing their own

ideas about literature as part of the writing process.

Somewhat ironically, Nancy began as an outspoken

critic of the unit, for some of these very reasons. Early on

in our study, she commented:

The older teachersytend to use Jane Schaffers write

by number technique, where they do a paragraph

consists of a topic sentence and they write a topic

sentence till they turn blue and then it consists of a

chunk, and a chunk is one point of fact or a concrete

detail to two points of commentary and you do that,

three chunks, and then a concluding sentence, and

theres your paragraphyits like filling in the blanks

yMy philosophy is that no one writes that way. The

way youre going to become a good writer is to just do

it-writing is not something that you can necessarily

teach, writing is something that you do and then workwith from there.

Many composition scholars would echo Nancys original

critique (cf. Elbow, 1998; Wiley, 2000). But her critique,

alone, does not help her solve the problem of how to teach

students to write. The usefulness of the multi-paragraph

essay unit in solving Nancys immediate concerns out-

weighs some of what Nancy knows about writing. Having

adopted this approach to teaching the essay, how will

Nancy learn to teach writing in ways that respect the

centrality of ideas? How will both Nancy and her students

outgrow this formula and move beyond the limitationsimposed by adherence to the five-paragraph essay?

In their work, Johnson et al. (2003) explore a similar

dilemma facing another first year teacher. Faced with

pressure from many external forces (e.g., state assess-

ments, high school district standards, departmental

colleagues), the beginning teacher whose practice they

analyze spends a great deal of time teaching her students

the five-paragraph essay and having them practice using

it. Given the pressure to teach such essays, curriculummaterials that provide novice teachers with materials for

teaching the five-paragraph essay may prove irresistible,

even when new teachers understand the limitations of

such an approach.

On the surface, the Pacesetter materials do not seem to

have the same limitations as those we point to in the Jane

Schaffer unit. The materials embody a different concep-

tion of language arts instruction, one that focuses more on

meaning and the inter-textual nature of reading (cf.

Scholes, 1998, 1995). Yet these materials also pose

potential problems to the novice teacher. Like Nancy, Bill

is so taken with the materials and their apparent success

that he is not really prompted to critique them. In spite ofthe fact that Pacesetter does encourage teacher revision or

adaptation, Bill chooses not to take this route, in some

instances. Although he does play with the shape and

structure of one of the assessments, in other cases, when

given the opportunity to experiment, he does not. For

example, Bill does not choose to experiment with the texts

he uses, even though the materials encourage this. It is

almost as though the materials are so appealing that he

does not feel any need to adapt them for his particular

students. For Bill, who comes to the profession with an

academic background in Anthropology, rather than Eng-

lish and Literature, this may be especially problematic.

Because his knowledge of the field of literature is slightlyless deep, materials that might help him broaden his

knowledge base of what it means to teach English and

what materials are available for teaching English might

really contribute to his growth as a teacher. But, nothing in

the materials prompts or pushes him to do this sort of

work. So, in the end, his ability to learn from, to use the

materials as scaffolds to further refine and deepen his own

practice, is limited. There is a risk then, also, in materials

that are too comprehensive, that do too much for the

teacher, and do not leave them the motivation to think

critically and subsequently build on and move beyond the

materials, simultaneously deepening their own profes-

sional knowledge.

7. Implications

As Nancys original comments suggest, new teachers

are hungry for curriculumand the guidance it can

provide. High quality, comprehensive curriculum materi-

als can serve as a valuable resource for beginning teachers.

Such materials both solve the immediate problem of what

to teach and provide instructional activities that support

student learning in a content area. In a broad and

somewhat vaguely defined area such as English, well-

designed curriculum materials can also help beginningteachers understand how the various components of

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language arts are connected, and how to turn a vision into

daily lesson plans.

More comprehensive materials, which include more

facets of instruction (e.g. content, instructional ap-

proaches, assessment, etc.) are both more useful to new

teachers and may also provide more learning opportu-

nities. By using the Pacesetter curriculum, Bill not only

learned about how to organize content around broadthemes, he was introduced to both instructional and

assessment strategies that he was able to try out in his

classroom. In Deborah Balls descriptions of her encoun-

ters with the Science Curriculum Improvement Study

(SCIC) (Lampert & Ball, 1998), she describes how the

curriculum directed her to engage students in particular

kinds of experiments and then asks open-ended ques-

tions. As she describes:

The teachers guide offered me questions to ask and

provided glimpses of what students were likely to say.

It was scripted. The scripts offered me handholds for

what I could say and helped me develop new ways ofbeing in the role of teacher. The guides specific

questions helped me find new ways to talk about

mathematics with students (Lampert & Ball, 1998).

The prompts for questions provided her with a window

into students thinking that if she had controlled the

discussion more tightly, or not held a discussion at all, she

might not have had. By specifying not just content but

instructional approach, the curriculum provided opportu-

nities to learn about students thinking. Math curricula

that ask teachers to teach with problems and then engage

students in discussion around those problems provide

opportunities to learn about students mathematicalthinking. However, what teachers are actually able to

glean from these discussions again will depend upon their

own understandings of children and of subject matter. At

the same time, in solving the immediate problems of new

teachers, comprehensive materials may be difficult to

relinquish once teachers have adjusted to them, as was

the case with both Nancy and Allison and their use of the

multi-paragraph essay materials. As noted in Nancys case,

the curriculum materials begin to influence teachers

beliefs about language arts instruction, as well as their

classroom practices.

As our analysis suggests, the curriculum materials

teachers encounter early in their careers can leave apowerful imprint for classroom practice. In part because

of their immediate needs, new teachers initially may latch

on to curriculum materials uncritically. Even teachers

such as Nancy, who are initially skeptical of an instruc-

tional approach embedded within curricular materials,

may end up adopting these approaches to solve their

problems of what and how to teach. And because

secondary teacher education spends relatively little time

on analyzing and adapting existing curriculum materials,

novice teachers may not know how to adapt materials to

better fit their understandings of how to teach language

arts.

The combination of a lack of exposure to and analysisof prepared curriculum materials during teacher educa-

tion and the overwhelming nature of the first year of

teaching may make it difficult for teachers to adopt a

more critical stance in their first year of teaching. But no

curriculum is perfect, and new teachers need help

developing a more critical stance if they are to be able

to overcome the inevitable limitations of any curriculum

materials. As our analysis suggests, without guidance, new

teachers may adapt existing curriculum materials withoutnecessarily addressing problems, whether major or minor,

in the representation of content.

New teachers need opportunities to analyze and

critique curriculum materials in their early years, in the

company of more experienced colleagues. Such curricular

conversations become opportunities for teachers to

deepen their own understanding of the subject matter.

An analysis of the Teaching the Multi-paragraph Essay

unit, for example, could become an opportunity to

examine its assumptions about writing, and the tensions

between a focus on form and structure and an emphasis

on ideas in the teaching of writing (Grossman et al., 2000;

Johnson et al., 2003; Wiley, 2000). Such conversationsduring preservice education could provide opportunities

to examine both strengths and limitations in Schaffers

approach. Similarly, conversations about a curriculum like

Pacesetter could help teachers understand the underlying

principles of the curricula, as well as its relationship to

other capstone programs such as the 12th grade Interna-

tional Baccalaureate and Advanced Placement curricula,

and the different agendas or issues its creators were trying

to address when they developed the program (cf. Scholes,

1995). Conversations around the curriculum and about

some of the adaptations teachers may need or want to

make can help them think through facets of the subject

matter, as well as the consequences of instructionaldecisions for student learning. The goal of conversations

around curriculum materials is not to make teachers

technicians, but to help them understand that curriculum

materials are professional tools, tools that when used

thoughtfully and well can help them with their job. At the

same time, they can begin to understand the political and

historical characteristics of these tools.

If new teachers indeed follow a trajectory in their use

of curriculum materials in the early years of teaching, it

makes sense to build early professional development

opportunities around curricular materials. While oppor-

tunities for professional learning are embedded in all

curriculum materials, new teachers may have neither thetime nor the subject matter background to inquire into the

materials on their own. Such opportunities to learn from

and about curriculum materials should rightfully begin

during teacher education. While the design of individual

curricular units, a common assignment in teacher educa-

tion, is a wonderful way to develop pedagogical thinking

and curricular understanding, teacher educators may

unwittingly rob students of the opportunity to learn more

about the curricular materials they are more likely to be

using in their first years of teaching. Even when such

materials provide problematic representations of the

subject matter, they become the grist for discussions of

ways of adapting or supplementing the materials and, assuch, can serve as valuable scaffolds for teacher learning.

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Future research could investigate a wider range of

curriculum materials and how different features of these

materials affect teacher learning. In the United States,

there exists a myriad of different curricular materials,

which differ by state, district, and even school, which

makes curriculum-embedded opportunities for teacher

learning a diffuse problem. In countries with a national

curriculum, research might look at how features of thesenational curricula affect opportunities for teacher learn-

ing. In some countries, the curricula could be described as

more comprehensive, such as the National Curriculum in

the United Kingdom, which includes the content teachers

will be expected to teach, benchmarks for student learn-

ing, assessments at different stages, as well as approaches

for teaching content (see for example, www.ncaction.or-

g.uk/subjects/english/index.htm). In contrast, other coun-

tries may have national curricula that are less compre-

hensive in terms of instruction and narrower in scope.

While research efforts have tried to connect differences in

national curricula to student achievement, relatively few

efforts have been made to investigate the relationshipbetween the features of national curricula and teacher

learning.

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Grossman & Thompson-2008-Learning From Curriculum Materials