Research On Teacher 's Curriculum Leadership

The policies of education in our country endow schools with a rational and full right to fulfill their autonomy on curriculum. This right has provided guarantee for schools to creatively implement national curriculum, to develop school-based curriculum with school characteristics and features, and for students to effectively make options on curriculum. Yet, a new question that how this empowerment should be applied within school level has arisen. Principal is often considered as the only core aspect in curriculum leadership, the significant part teachers play in it being neglected. As a matter of fact, students’ academic performance is highly relevant to teachers’ teaching ability and skills. It is not unusual to find a lack of progress in students’ academic achievements, a scheme for effective communication and collaboration among teachers and implementation of teacher curriculum leadership. Thus, this research is conducted with a purpose of revealing an effective way to strengthen curriculum leadership for teachers of English Language Arts on the basis of outcomes analyzed in the case of an American Middle School.This paper is divided into four chapters. The background, purpose and significance are stated in the first chapter, meanwhile, definitions of main concepts closely related to this research are given in the same chapter. The second chapter illustrated the research carried out in the J Middle School in California, U.S. including the rationale, literature summary, question and hypothesis, methods and limits of it. As is revealed in the action research, teacher curriculum has been strengthened via grade-level teacher meeting to improve student academic achievement. In the next chapter, researcher analyzed the effectiveness of teacher curriculum leadership in J Middle School in terms of curriculum decision-making, curriculum development, curriculum implementation and curriculum evaluation. Last but not least, strategic approaches to promote teacher curriculum leadership in China have been drawn in reference to the findings of the research, which are establishing shared vision on teacher curriculum leadership, creating and improving a scheme on carrying out teacher curriculum leadership and upgrading teachers’ qualities required for building leadership.