Taking Charge of Curriculum

How do teachers adapt to the demands of curriculum change and new educational standards? How do they learn what is expected of them? In this pathbreaking work, Jacob Adams examines how a promising new professional structure, the teacher network, helped teachers implement a novel and challenging high school mathematics curriculum and how it fostered teachers’ determination and ability to get the job done, when traditional staff development supports did not. Beginning with an in-depth examination of the demands of policy on practice, the author concludes with a practice-based model for professional development and curriculum implementation. An important contribution to the discourse on standards, school improvement, and professional development, this volume covers timely topics that are crucial to the understanding of how teachers can work most effectively in this time of curricular change.

Jacob E. Adams, Jr. is an associate professor of education and public policy at Peabody College, Vanderbilt University, and a research fellow with the Peabody Center for Education Policy. He also serves as chairman of the board of directors of the Kentucky Institute for Education Research.

“This important book engages us in many of the crucial educational issues of our day. Readers will find themselves asking, What is the relationship between policy and practice, and how does it get played out over time? How do teacher professional networks provide important alternatives to traditional staff development strategies? What are the connections among state, district, school, and teachers’ classrooms, and what forms do they take when curriculum implementation is the goal? ”
—from the foreword by Ann Lieberman