Chapter 9

Collaborative Curriculum Development

in Teacher Design Teams

Adam Handelzalts

Introduction

School-Based and School-Wide Curriculum Reform

The reform literature provides many motives for planning reform in a school-based
and school-wide manner. The school-based line of reasoning calls for a central role
for and commitment by teachers and other practitioners in the reforming of teaching
practice (Clandinin & Connelly, 1992; Skilbeck, 1998). As curriculum reform is
highly dependent on the teachers who will eventually realize it, they must be
engaged in the reform process. The teachers are also the ones with intimate knowl-
edge of everyday practice and the needs of their students. This knowledge is crucial
for the realization and success of any reform.
The school-wide line of reasoning is more concentrated on strengthening reform
by making it a shared practice across the school (Grossman, Wineburg, & Woolworth,
2001; Hord, 2004), and in doing so, realizing sustainable, significant, and coherent
educational reform in schools and between the teachers. The school-wide approach
is essential for transforming reform from an incidental and isolated process in one
part of the school, towards being a sustainable and coherent change for the whole
school. The proponents of the school-wide approach state that many innovation
plans fail at an early stage, and when an attempt does succeed, it is often an isolated
effort by a few teachers embracing a reform. In the long run, most curriculum inno-
vations and projects that rely on individual teachers’ voluntary commitments do not
last (Hargreaves, 2003). Therefore, there is a need to organize reform in a school-­
wide manner in which all teachers are somehow involved.

A. Handelzalts (*)
Teacher Education Department, Free University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
e-mail: a.handelzalts@vu.nl

© The Author(s) 2019 159

J. Pieters et al. (eds.), Collaborative Curriculum Design for Sustainable
Innovation and Teacher Learning, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20062-6_9
160 A. Handelzalts

An implication of the change in orientation (aiming at coherent and school-wide

sustainable reform) is that there is a need for synergy and productive relationships
at various levels (system, school, and classroom) between curriculum development,
professional development of teachers, and school development. This synergy of
processes is key for sustainable reform (cf. Fullan, 2007; Hopkins, 2001). Curriculum
development and reform can be seen as the central elements of this trio as they touch
directly on the learning of students, the daily work of teachers and their interaction
with the students, and the way learning is organized in the school as a whole. Policy
reform in Dutch lower secondary education is specifically aimed at changes in
schools’ curriculum. However, as curriculum reform, teacher development, and
school development interact, all of them must be addressed. This puts the teachers
at the forefront of curriculum improvement as they are central agents in all of these
areas of development. As it is, teachers have a central role as curriculum makers of
their school-based curriculum (Clandinin & Connelly, 1992; Skilbeck, 1998).
Additionally, focusing on improving the curriculum is also intrinsically motivating
to teachers. In contrast to broader organizational issues that are not always per-
ceived as relevant to their direct practice, planning the actual learning processes of
their students in their own subject matter domain is appealing to them (cf. Black &
Atkin, 1996; Grossman & Stodolsky, 1995). Moreover, Skilbeck (1998) argued that
teacher participation in curriculum development potentially helps to improve the
quality and relevance of what is taught and will strengthen teacher
professionalism.
Educational reform processes in which a large group of teachers are actively
involved that are focused on curriculum as a main driver of change in a school-wide
context seems to be the advisable move forward. But realizing this kind of work is
far from easy (as schools have reported) as it involves curriculum development
activities in collaboration between teachers, the participants’ learning process, and
changes at the school level. Although these types of integral activities have already
taken place in some schools on various levels, it is far from being a common phe-
nomenon and only a few schools have experience with it. Moreover, schools that try
this kind of work have reported many tensions concerning the work at the school
level, and the relationship between the school level and the various teams of teach-
ers within it. In view of its promise and growing popularity, the school-wide and
school-based approach in Dutch school-reform practice forms the context in which
this study was conducted.

Teacher Teams in Curriculum Reform

Insights from the reform literature support teacher collaboration in teams as a fruit-
ful means for educational reform. The recent literature has maintained that teacher
collaboration in the form of, for example, ‘professional learning communities’ is a
9 Collaborative Curriculum Development in Teacher Design Teams 161

central element in achieving sustainable school reform (e.g., Hord, 2004; Lieberman
& Miller, 2004; McLaughlin & Talbert, 2001, 2006). In fact, one of the problems of
school reform is that most teachers teach alone in isolated classes without having
(or taking) the opportunity to reflect together on their teaching practices, to intro-
duce new perspectives, to discuss new ideas, to give each other feedback on
improvement efforts, and to jointly develop new initiatives. Schools that aim at
innovation thus need to organize teacher collaboration centered on their teaching
practice (Little, 1990). Collaboration between teachers is expected to have an impact
on practice. There is considerable research showing that collaborative teacher teams
are beneficial for student learning, which is the bottom line of educational quality
(Louis & Marks, 1998; McLaughlin & Talbert, 2006). Collaborative teams have the
most impact on student achievement when the focus of the work shows a persistent
link to student learning and the initiatives taken are directly related to curriculum
and instruction (Sackney, Mitchell, & Walker, 2005; Vescio, Ross, & Adams, 2008).
Grossman et al. (2001) went even further and suggested that teachers need common
curriculum experience in their collaboration (either by teaching together or observ-
ing each other teaching) in order to achieve effective collaboration that influences
students’ achievement.
Teachers’ participation in development processes and in implementing the cur-
ricular products in practice can also be beneficial for teacher learning. When design-
ing their future practice, teachers build on their current practice and adapt it in
relation to their needs and wishes. By piloting the design product and by reflecting
on the experiences and results, teachers can become aware of the specific potentials
and problems of the reform. Based on such systematic reflections, they will gain
new insights for the design. This can lead to yet another cycle of design, evaluation,
and reflection. This learning process is an important part of the curriculum reform
and development process, because in many curriculum changes a shift in teacher
beliefs, roles, and methods is essential (Fullan, 2007). Adding these arguments to
the strength of the curriculum perspective in school reform discussed in the previous
section leads to a strong argument to concentrate teacher collaboration in schools on
curriculum planning.
Considering the potential and appearance of teacher teams that concentrate on
curriculum (design), there are only a few clear guidelines as to how these teams
should pursue their curriculum development task. Although there is much research
on teacher communities and teacher collaboration in the context of the school (cf.
Henze-Rietveld, 2006; Meirink, Meijer, & Verloop, 2007; Zwart, Wubbels, Bergen,
& Bolhuis, 2007), the focus is mostly on the forming of communities and the teach-
ers’ learning process. Little research is available on the curriculum design processes
of teacher teams within schools and the kind of activities and conditions that con-
tribute to the success of such processes. Moreover, most research deals with the
input and output of these kinds of collaborative teams and there is still little known
about how these teams get off to a good start and are sustained in their design work
(McLaughlin & Talbert, 2006).
162 A. Handelzalts

 chool-Based and School-Wide Curriculum Reform in Lower

S
Secondary Education in the Netherlands

During the early years of the twenty-first century a central element of the changes
in lower secondary education in the Netherlands was school-based reforms. Schools
were central in deciding on substantial elements of their reform. Influenced by this
expanded autonomy, by 2007, 93% of all schools for lower secondary education
were reported to be engaged in or about to start renewing their school-wide curricu-
lum and school-wide organization, led by their own curriculum preferences and
possibilities (Onderbouw-VO, 2008). Within this innovation trend there was great
variety, with some schools choosing modest pedagogical changes in the existing
subjects, others introducing interdisciplinary learning-projects, and some (newly
opened) schools going as far as to radically give up the division of learning into
subject areas by offering an alternative organization of the curriculum (Hendriks,
2004; Onderbouw-VO, 2007, 2008).
Many schools also approached their reform efforts from a school-wide perspec-
tive. In order to realize curricular coherence, they initiated reforms that concerned
the whole breadth of the curriculum in the school. This meant a departure from the
traditional and somewhat fragmented structure and work process of secondary edu-
cation in The Netherlands. Until then, secondary schools had been mainly organized
in vertical subject departments covering all grades (lower and higher secondary)
which to a large extent functioned autonomously when setting their educational
courses, with little substantive coordination with other departments.
Although these developments were evident in the Dutch context, schools encoun-
tered difficulties in engaging in these processes. The most noted difficulties were a
lack of time and resources for work on the reforms (57%); negative attitude of
teachers towards the reform (42%); and teachers’ lack of knowledge and therefore
difficulties in participation (27%). Another notable result was the reported differ-
ences experienced between what teachers aimed for and the more ambitious and
far-reaching goals expressed by the school management (26%) (Onderbouw-VO,
2008). All of these hindering factors were keeping schools busy as they tried to real-
ize the reforms in lower secondary education.
A strategy lower secondary schools in the Netherlands applied to realize curricu-
lum reform was organizing teams of teachers who are responsible for specific cur-
ricular domains (for example, ‘The Humanities’ or ‘Foreign languages’). In 2007,
59% of the schools reported that they had organized at least some of the reform
efforts in the form of these teacher teams from adjacent subjects who were respon-
sible for redesigning their common subjects or interdisciplinary learning-projects.
By the year 2012, 87% of schools were expecting to work in this manner
(Onderbouw-VO, 2008). This phenomenon was mainly driven by practical reason-
ing. First, these teams bridged the gap between the aspirations at the school-level on
the one hand, and the aspirations and practice of individual teachers on the other.
Working in teams can help teachers translate the school-level ambitions to concrete
materials, lessons plans, and eventually to teaching. Having an active role in c­ reating
9 Collaborative Curriculum Development in Teacher Design Teams 163

the reform also enables the teachers to enact their own wishes and plans in the
school curriculum. Second, the inclination for teacher cooperation was part of the
drive for achieving coherence, which was central to the lower secondary reform.
Schools and teachers were searching for ways to integrate parts of their curriculum
and create fruitful connections between subject domains. This manner of realizing
school-wide curriculum reform was a relatively new phenomenon in the Dutch edu-
cational policy field and called for further exploration.
The decentralized Dutch educational policy climate enabled schools and teacher
teams to take an active part in curriculum development and therefore made exten-
sive study of the work of the teams possible. The study reported in this chapter
aimed at describing the development of such teacher teams (hereafter referred to as
Teacher Design Teams), the type of curriculum design activities they undertake in
this context, and ways to support their efforts.

Defining Teacher Design Teams

The main focus of this study was a specific form of teacher collaboration in curricu-
lum design, the Teacher Design Team (TDT). A TDT is defined as a group of at least
two teachers, from the same or related subjects, working together on a regular basis,
with the goal to (re)design and enact (a part of) their common curriculum
(Handelzalts, 2009).
The defining characteristic of a TDT is its specific and central design task; the
main goal of TDTs is to (re)design their common curriculum. The teachers’ teams
usually described in literature (i.e., professional learning communities, communi-
ties of practice) mostly focus on improving their teaching process through the pro-
fessional development of the teachers. In the case of the TDT, the goals of
professional development or building of cohesion in the staff are seen as secondary
to the main design goal. These secondary goals play a role in the work of the TDT,
but are seen as contributing factors to realizing a better curricular product. In some
instances a TDT can also be seen as a professional learning community, but that is
not necessarily the case.
Another central element of the TDT is collaboration of several teachers con-
cerned with (re)designing their curriculum. Such collaboration effort is seen as a
crucial factor for sustainable change that is effective at the student level (McLaughlin
& Talbert, 2006). The characteristic of involving related subjects, in this respect,
emphasizes the fact that teachers need to have some common ground on which they
collaborate. The extent of the relationship can vary according to the perceptions of
the teachers in the specific context. They are the ones considering this, and if they
can see a relationship with another subject (for example, between geography and
history), then these are considered ‘related subjects’. This characteristic is related to
the research context, the reform in the Dutch lower secondary education. A large
part of the reform is aimed at creating more connections between different subjects
in order to create more coherence in the curriculum. Finally, TDTs develop their
164 A. Handelzalts

common future practice and enact upon it. This emphasis separates TDTs from
teachers’ teams that develop curricula but not for their own use (such as, for exam-
ple, teachers participating in the development of learning materials with publish-
ers). Collaboration in design of materials that the teachers themselves will use, and
that will therefore affect their practice directly, raises their stakes in the process and
the ownership of the product. This is also in line with a central tenet of this study:
reform efforts have greater effect when they are school-based.
A TDT is an ad hoc functional unit, meaning that it is not an organizational entity
on its own, but rather a description of how a team of teachers functions within a time
frame. For example, a subject department at a school can, during a certain period,
function as a TDT when they consciously redesign their common curriculum. As
soon as this task is no longer central in their work, they will not be considered as a
TDT anymore.
The focus in this study is specifically on teams in their first year of co-operation,
as it seems that patterns of collaboration in design and design-related decisions tend
to be formed in the initial stages of the work. These patterns are then perpetuated
during the rest of the design process. According to Romme and Endenburg (2006),
early choices and notions create boundaries around subsequent stages in the devel-
opment. The design process can be divided into ‘fluid’ and ‘crystallized’ states.
During the fluid state the problem and its solution strategy are still open to many
directions. Once it is crystallized, the ability to revise key elements of the design
without incurring extra costs (monetary or otherwise) is greatly reduced.

Research Questions

This study started from the premise that teacher collaboration in curriculum develop-
ment is well-placed in order to bridge the gap between school-level curriculum reform
and classroom-level practices. As teachers are at the forefront of all educational
reforms, they need not only to be involved in the implementation process, but also to
be active participants in the development process of the reform. It is assumed that
collaboration between teachers in these curriculum development efforts enables (1)
more coherent curriculum development across teachers and subjects, (2) teacher pro-
fessional development, and (3) development of the school organization as a whole.
This study intended to contribute to this knowledge base by studying TDTs in
their first year of development work. The main research question guiding this study
was as follows:
What are conducive (or hindering) approaches and conditions for collaborative curriculum
development by teacher design teams in view of school-wide reform?

This research question was further divided into three sub-questions: the first aimed
at describing the work of teacher design teams, the second concerned those activi-
ties that were specifically conducive or hindering to the teams in striving towards
their goal of a common curriculum, and the third aimed at exploring the school
conditions that promoted or hampered these efforts.
9 Collaborative Curriculum Development in Teacher Design Teams 165

Method

Collaborative curriculum design takes place within the context of schools. Therefore
this study was conducted as multiple case study research. According to Yin (2003),
case study research is suitable specifically when the borders between a phenomenon
and its context cannot be clearly drawn. The focus of the research was on the teacher
teams, who formed the cases in redesigning their common curriculum. Each case
was built around one of the teams followed in the study. The cases included the
activities and development in the team during this redesign, the organizational con-
ditions that they were confronted with, and their interaction with their professional
environment during the course of the reform.
Twelve teacher design teams in two different schools (seven teams in one school
and five teams in another school) were followed during their first year of collabora-
tion, the preparation year. The choice was made of teams that are neither very early
nor very late adopters of new practices. Teams were not experiencing very extreme
circumstances (such as very bad collegial relationships), as such teams will present
other challenges.
During this first year, many of the TDTs’ activities were documented, teachers
were interviewed and observed, both at the start and at the end of the study, and
(curriculum) documents produced by the TDTs were collected and analyzed. Based
on the data, a rich description of the teams’ work was obtained. This systematic
documentation process and the perspective of the practitioners formed the basis for
identifying activities and conditions that had a special (positive or negative) func-
tion for the teams. The analysis of the findings, based on the three sub-questions
guiding this study, was done on three levels: (1) an analysis of the individual cases
(the teams), resulting in detailed case descriptions; (2) a cross-case analysis of the
teams in each of the schools to find common and divergent patterns per school; (3)
a cross-study analysis, comparing the findings from the two school sites to detect
commonalities and differences between the school sites. By choosing these schools
and teams carefully and by comparing the findings with other studies, some analytic
generalization can be made to TDTs in other contexts.

Main Findings

How TDTs Addressed and Carried Out Their Development Work

With regard to the work of the TDTs, it became obvious that it was neither explicitly
planned nor organized by any player in the process (in most cases, not even by the
external coaches). Teams most often proceeded from one meeting to the next tack-
ling issues as they arose. This implied that only a (small) portion of their curriculum
materials were ready at the end of the preparation year for almost all the teams. Role
division in most teams was informal and not all teachers participated to the same
166 A. Handelzalts

extent in the curriculum development activities. Most of the joint work was concen-
trated on developing general design decisions. There was little joint work on con-
structing concrete teaching and learning materials. On those occasions where
collaboration on constructing concrete materials level did occur, this led to realizing
more significant changes in the team’s curriculum.
In the first phase of their work, teams were very much oriented towards the future
‘time’ and ‘place’ components of their curriculum. These issues needed to be some-
what clarified before the team was open to discussing more fundamental curricular
questions such as ‘content’, ‘teaching activities’, and ‘materials’. The major design
decisions that teams made in their curriculum development process were done
either during the first several meetings of the TDTs or even prior to the commence-
ment of the formal process in school (teams that had already some common plans
and had not yet had the chance to realize them took the opportunities provided by
the reform process). This underlines the importance of this initial phase.
The overall process of the teams included only a few of the ‘ideal’ steps in cur-
riculum development. While analysis activities were somewhat apparent (mainly
oriented towards the organizational aspects), design and construction seemed to
occur most often simultaneously. TDTs spent little time on the issues of ‘rationale’
and ‘goals’. These issues rarely come up in an unprompted discussion. Even when
a coach introduced those issues, teachers found this discussion difficult and abstract.
Teams conducted little to no explicit evaluation activity and judged the quality of
their plans and materials mainly on the basis of their practicality.
The teachers’ main substantive consideration in the development of their curri-
cula was the content that should be taught. Content was then defined as what the
textbooks contain. This was, however, not a critical discussion of content selection
but more an issue of content coverage. Cross-curricular teams were the only teams
in which content was more critically discussed.
TDTs displayed a clear pattern in which general design discussions were con-
ducted together, whereas construction of materials was an individual exercise done
at home with little feedback between the team members. The teams experienced
working individually on the construction of teaching materials as one of the most
efficient parts of the work, as it was related to a feeling of real progress in their
work. Joint work seemed limited to general issues and design statements.

Conducive or Hindering Activities

The most conducive activities were those that assisted in creating a visualization of
the future practice of the reformed curriculum. The activities (such as piloting,
school visits, and discussion of blueprints of design) were highly valued by the
teachers and led to pattern changes in the teams’ process.
Teams with a clear common reform ambition and a positive disposition towards
the reform started more rapidly with their design and were less dependent on the
clarity of the reform. Teams with vague reform ambitions and ambivalence towards
9 Collaborative Curriculum Development in Teacher Design Teams 167

the reform needed sufficient clarity about the organizational conditions of their
future practice before starting to work on their concrete plans. For these latter teams,
this led either to a long analysis and orientation phase followed by a brief design
phase or to a long period of inactivity followed by a brief burst of design and con-
struction activities. These activities then were mainly aimed at adjusting former
curricula to the organizational conditions of the school reform.
On the whole, it seems that the teams that shared clear initial ambitions often
realized explicit incorporation of the school-wide reform goals in their products.
Teams that decided to keep their former textbooks and to use them as part of their
reform chose in general to continue their existing teaching approach with little
change. Thus, this might be considered a hindering approach, as it meant that they
often did not even reconsider their former practice.
Teams with vague or no common ambition showed a greater dependency on the
level of clarity of the reform. These teams made, on the whole, less progress in the
production of new curriculum plans and materials. When the school-wide process
was more structured, this lack of clarity had less impact on the pace of the work of
the teams. In both schools, the school-wide process gave only few organized oppor-
tunities for interaction between TDTs. However, teachers often expressed a need for
such opportunities and when such activities did take place, they had a strong impact
on the teams. These kinds of activities gave teams an overview of the developments
at the school level. It also supported the commitment of the teachers to the process,
as it strengthened the impression of a shared endeavor and identification with the
work of other teams in the same school.

Conditions at School Level

Much of the TDTs’ work was accomplished during a brief period of time in which
the teams met on a regular basis, during which they made the most progress.
However, this is not the dominant pattern of work, as TDTs seemed to meet irregu-
larly. A centrally scheduled regular meeting roster and allocated time are necessary
but not sufficient for enabling meetings.
The perceived effectiveness of coaching was dependent on the ability of the
coach to cater to the main needs of the TDT, especially in creating or providing
concrete tangible teaching materials. The presence of a coach also had a crucial role
in triggering team meetings by making concrete appointments and suggesting dis-
cussion issues.
In both school sites followed in this study the work of the TDT was the responsi-
bility of a member of the school management team. In one case it was the innovation
manager, in the other the school section leaders. Findings showed little differentia-
tion in the manner in which these school leaders approached the different teams,
while the teams showed great variation in their work. The school leaders had only a
vague overview of the progress of the TDTs, as there was little interaction with the
teams concerning their work. The importance of this issue was demonstrated when
168 A. Handelzalts

the school management did actively inquire about the development of the TDTs’
work. This single incident had a positive impact, leading to increased curriculum
development activity and materials construction by the TDTs. It supplied teams
with information and had a relational function. All teams found the interest and time
investment of the leader important.

Overall Conclusions

Taking into account the findings along with the insights from other studies, several
conclusions can be drawn. These conclusions are related partly to how TDTs go
about the process of curriculum development and partly to the activities and condi-
tions that seem to be conducive for their work.

The Process of Curriculum Development

TDTs display a great variation of activities and experiences within a similar reform
context (see also Voncken, Derriks, & Ledoux, 2007). In large part, these variations
can be accounted for by the characteristics of the teams and their interaction with
the school-wide reform.
Teams with a clearer common reform ambition and a more positive disposition
towards the school-wide reform started more rapidly with the design and rethinking
of their curriculum. Teams that started off with a more vague reform ambition
needed sufficient clarity about the organizational conditions before starting to work
on their concrete plans. Therefore, we may conclude that the design process of the
TDTs is influenced by characteristics of the design team and in addition to the clar-
ity of the initial reform ambition.
The TDTs’ work process on the whole was neither explicitly planned nor struc-
tured. Irrespective of the context and support, TDTs’ work seemed to advance from
one meeting to the next without a clear overview of goals or structure. Teams
required one of two kinds of triggers initiating a meeting. The first kind of trigger
came from outside the team. This kind of trigger comes in the form of a coach or a
school leader. When teams have an external coach, the fact that the coach makes an
appointment to come and suggest discussion issues is enough to trigger a meeting.
Alternatively, when the school or school-section leaders give the TDT a concrete
assignment or summons a meeting, this too has the same effect. The second kind of
trigger was the internal trigger. This kind of trigger comes from within the team and
leads not only to holding a single meeting, but also to regular meetings. This trigger
has two possible sources. In some teams, when teachers concluded a meeting with
concrete decisions and appointments, this led to a following meeting based on these
decisions. This was not a common practice for TDTs in this study. The other inter-
nal trigger is a sense of urgency felt by the teachers. This arose mostly at the end of
9 Collaborative Curriculum Development in Teacher Design Teams 169

the preparation year when teams needed to complete some form of teaching materi-
als. This led to a burst of activities in TDTs. This urgency can lead to the team
reverting to older and less ambitious plans than those they had developed. However,
the more that team teachers own the development process the less need there is for
an external trigger for the work of the teams.
TDTs had a clear pattern in which general design discussions were conducted
together whereas construction of materials was an individual exercise done at home
with little feedback between the team members. Joint work seemed limited to gen-
eral issues and design statements. However, there are indications that cooperating
on the concrete materials is most effective for arriving at curriculum materials that
are more in line with the reform ambitions and represent a significant change from
former practice. The findings by Voncken et al. (2007) also support the potential of
cooperating on materials as an instrument for development of reform and the learn-
ing of teachers in the reform. They went even further and concluded that coopera-
tion in teaching activities and undertaking new experiences together can be even
more powerful.

Conducive Activities and Conditions

A first type of conducive activities share the characteristic of helping teachers to

envision their possible future practice. As was apparent in the discussion about the
development process, TDTs have a great need an operational image of the condi-
tions in which their teaching would take place. This guides much of their work.
Activities that contribute to this are conducive to the process by helping the teams
move further, make design decisions, and come closer to creating a common cur-
riculum. This relates to a variety of activities that also depend on the need of the
specific TDT during a specific time. In this context, pilots or implementation of
(part of) the materials have a positive effect on the teachers during the process. This
gives teachers a concrete image of how students interact with the materials. A simi-
lar function can be achieved by taking field trips to schools implementing a similar
reform or facing similar challenges. As already noted, the limitation of pilots is that
they often seem to concentrate on the practicality of the plans and not on their effec-
tiveness or validity, and their impact is also limited to those teachers that directly
participate in the pilots. Possibly, setting a clear evaluative goal ahead of time and
making it a team-wide endeavor can make pilots an even more effective
instrument.
A second type of conducive activities is the discussion of concrete plans or prod-
ucts. These design attributes make the discussion concrete and focused. Abstract
ideas are set on paper and that makes them tangible and accessible for discussion.
Besides structuring the discussion, this broadens its scope, as teachers must con-
sider all the implications of their decisions in the concrete. This finding is supported
by Ametller, Leach and Scott (2007), who experimented with design attributes in
170 A. Handelzalts

the course of reform. According to them, these attributes make design explicit and
also enable communication between teachers and designer.
A third type of conducive activities is explicit information on the school-wide
reform ambitions. Specifically, schools or school section leaders that interact with
the team in a direct manner during a meeting are seen as having significant potential
for helping the team make progress. They can supply new information, help review
the decisions already made at the school level, and hear ongoing questions.
A fourth type of conducive activities aim to tackle the apparent absence of infor-
mal interaction of teachers with members of other TDTs on issues related to the
reform, which calls for some structured instruments. Two specific types of activities
seem effective: presentations of teams’ progress and concentrated schooling about
relevant reform themes. First, the presentations of the teams’ progress give other
teams an overview of their development. It gives them insight into how far along
other teams are, what problems they encountered, how they solved them, and what
kinds of considerations other teams take into account in their work. This is informa-
tion teams can use and do use for their own work. The presentations also have a
relational function. Hearing how others struggle with and solve problems shows
teachers and teams that they are in a sense ‘not alone’ in the process. This seems
quite obvious in a school-wide process, but teams tend to see their problems as
unique. Creating a bridging function can help teams see other developments. The
second type of activity, study days, is aimed at providing clarity about the school-­
wide reform focus. Teachers often need additional information on different aspects.
A crucial characteristic in making these study days effective and appreciated is their
practical orientation. Such study days are only seen as relevant when they deliver
concrete products that teams can easily apply in their development work, such as a
framework for their work process and a framework for describing their curriculum
materials. When study days fail to meet this criterion, they have little explicit effect
on the development process.

Discussion

The study discussed in this chapter was originally carried out in 2004–2006. The
concept of Teacher Design Teams was relatively new and this study was one of the
first that discussed empirical characteristics of these teams. In this discussion we
briefly discuss some new insights and research that is related to teacher design teams.
In contrast to many curriculum development models, the development process
by the type of teacher design teams in this study does not begin by conducting
analysis aiming to produce guidelines for design. Analysis activities, when exe-
cuted, focus on organizational conditions regarding their future practice. In all
teams the major design decisions, as reflected in their curricular products, are made
very early in the process. Even when teams do not make conscious, ‘formal’, design
decisions, the ideas discussed in the first meetings become the design, without their
9 Collaborative Curriculum Development in Teacher Design Teams 171

being critically examined for their merit. This confirms the assertion that design
decisions tend to rapidly crystallize after the initial development phase (Romme &
Endenburgs, 2006).
The teams had great difficulty managing vagueness of the curriculum reform.
This seems similar to the instrumentality element of the practicality ethic of teach-
ers (Doyle & Ponder, 1978). Teachers tend to focus on procedural elements of the
reform at the cost of discussions on more substantive principles (cf. Jonker, Gijsen,
März, & Voogt, 2017). This issue was also evident in the fact that teams regarded
practicality of the plans and materials as the main quality criteria for their
products.
A difference In the development process is apparent between the two types of
teams (differing mainly in having or lacking a common initial ambition). Teams that
start the process with little direction, and are ‘held back’ in exploring organizational
conditions, get very little construction done during the preparation year. They com-
bine the design and construction phases mostly at the end of the year and often
recreate their former curriculum in the new school framework. Teams with clearer
ambitions display somewhat more distinct design and construction phases.
Construction mostly takes part at the end of the preparation year, under a great deal
of pressure. The more structure there is, the more construction gets done.
TDTs are not inclined to initiate evaluation activities of any sort. Piloting of part
of their curriculum materials is the only activity that somewhat resembles an evalu-
ation. However, the guiding perspective of the pilots is that of practicality. Other
issues of quality (such as validity and effectiveness) are hardly discussed, if at all.
The lessons learned from the pilots are also limited to the participating teachers
(often only one or two from the team). There is little transfer of the conclusions to
teachers not directly involved in the pilot.
As the study presented limited itself to the preparation year, few significant
implementation activities were documented. Findings from other research
(Huizinga, 2014) do point to the potential catalytic effect of implementation. During
implementation, teachers come across issues they did not foresee or activities that
turn out other than expected. This can be a powerful instrument to elicit more evalu-
ation activities. These evaluation activities need some support in order to make them
constructive and transcend organizational issues. Stressing the importance of evalu-
ation activities, Visscher and Witziers (2004) pleaded for concentrating teams’ work
on the evaluation of their practice, as this underlines the strong connection between
the teaching process and the learning results. In a ‘data-team approach’ the analysis
and compilation of data on the effectiveness of (parts of) the school are the starting
point and central thrust of the team’s work (Schildkamp & Kuiper, 2010). In conclu-
sion, implementation, analysis and evaluation activities were not an inherent part of
the development process of TDTs in this study. Design and construction were highly
interrelated and more often executed as an integrated activity.
Findings of this study concerning the role fulfilled by the school management and
the function of the TDTs lead to insights about the role that the relevant school leaders
could and should fulfill. It seems then advisable that the school management apply a
differentiated approach to teams, based on the teams’ characteristics and the develop-
172 A. Handelzalts

ment that they show. Certainly when a flexible and developing reform strategy is
applied with teams that have a vague reform ambition, a more proactive and involved
role for the school management is called for. This conclusion is in line with both
Nieveen and Handelzalts (2006) and Voncken et al. (2007).

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