Dr. Jian Wang is a full professor and Helen DeVitt Jones Chair in Teacher Education at the College of Education, Texas Tech University. His publications focus on teacher mentoring, teacher education, mathematics teaching and learning, and influences of curriculum on teacher learning. They appeared in the journals, such as Educational Researcher, Review of Education Research, Journal of Teacher Education, Teachers College Record, Teaching & Teacher Education, and Elementary School Journal. He was a secondary school teacher and policy analyst in China. He has worked on the TIMSS curriculum project, the teacher-mentoring project at the National Center for Research on Teacher Learning, and the design-based research project at the US Prep National Center. He has also served as a co-editor of Journal of Teacher Education and is a current co-editor of Educational Research and Development Journal.
Session Description
The workshop approach is often used as professional training to prepare curriculum officers to translate curriculum standards into curriculum packages and implement them in the school context (Little, 1993). It was suggested to offer participants opportunities for inquiry and collaboration, strategies to reflect on their questions and concerns, and access to successful models of curriculum development and implementation (Darling-Hammond & McLaughlin, 1995). In this presentation, we will examine the above suggestions using our experiences in offering the reformed workshop to 76 curriculum officers, school principals, and lead teachers from different Eastern Caribbean Islands. We will identify what participants have achieved in developing curriculum packages and implementation plans by analyzing our experiences designing and offering the above workshop and participants’ curriculum packages and implementation plans. We will also discuss the challenges we face in designing and implementing the workshop as outsiders of Eastern Caribbean States with limited knowledge of the curriculum standards, specific content knowledge, and local contexts of school, teaching, and students. Additionally, we will analyze various challenges participants faced in understanding and using curriculum standards and incorporating their subject content knowledge and relevant contextual understanding in developing curriculum packages and implementation plans. Finally, we will conclude the presentation with implications for future workshop design for such curriculum development and implementation.