Investigating Teacher Learning Supports in High School Biology Curricular Programs to Inform the Design of Educative Curriculum Materials

Reform efforts have emphasized the need to support teachers' learning about reform-oriented practices. Educative curriculum materials are one potential vehicle for promoting teacher learning about these practices. Educative curriculum materials include supports that are intended to promote both student and teacher learning. However, little is known about the extent to which existing curriculum materials provide support for teachers and the ways they can be improved. In this study, eight sets of high school biology curriculum materials were reviewed to determine their potential for promoting teacher learning. Design heuristics for educative curriculum materials were adapted for use as evaluation criteria. From this analysis, several themes emerged. First, the materials tended to provide support for teachers' subject matter knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge for students' ideas (e.g., misconceptions) but rarely for their pedagogical content knowledge of scientific inquiry. Second, the materials contained several implementation guidance supports but far fewer rationales for instructional decisions, which are an important feature of educative curriculum materials. Finally, the quality of support varied widely, differing in its degree of relevance, pedagogical helpfulness, and depth. The article concludes with recommendations for the redesign of existing curriculum materials. 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 46: 977-998, 2009 biology; textbooks; teacher education-practicing teachers; teacher cognition; secondary Curriculum materials play a fundamental role in the design of instruction for students. These materials typically contain content and skills for students to learn, provide activities for teaching these ideas, and specify particular pedagogical methods (Remillard, 2000). Curriculum materials include a variety of different types of resources for students (e.g., textbooks, worksheets, science journals) and teachers (e.g., teacher editions of student textbooks, teacher guides, science kits). Teachers often use curriculum materials to guide their planning and enactment of lessons (Ball & Cohen, 1996). Teachers teaching outside their content area and teachers entering the field tend to rely extensively on such materials (Ball & Feiman-Nemser, 1988; Grossman & Thompson, 2004). ''Of all the different instruments for conveying educational policies (curriculum materials) exert perhaps the most direct influence on the tasks that teachers actually do with their students each day in the classroom'' (Brown & Edelson, 2003, p. 1). Using curriculum materials to convey educational policy in science education is not a new idea. In the 1950s and 1960s, content experts developed novel curriculum materials in an attempt to improve science instruction (Lazarowitz, 2007; Welch, 1979). While these materials were widely adopted, the curriculum reform efforts were largely ineffective. These materials failed to effect change, in part, because curriculum developers neglected to consider the role teachers play in enacting the materials (Stake & Easley, 1978; Welch, 1979). Even though these materials were designed to support student learning, they failed to help teachers use the materials in productive ways that would not misrepresent the core vision of the reform (Krajcik, Mamlok, & Hug, 2001).