The impact of school curriculum leadership on teachers' commitment to new curriculum reform: A case study of a primary school in Mainland China

As called New Curriculum Reform (NCR), a nation-wide curriculum reform has been implemented since the Guidelines for Curriculum Reform of Basic Education (trial version) issued by the Ministry of Education of The People's Republic of China in June 2001. Considering the background of the reform and cultural tradition, the importance of school curriculum leadership and teachers' commitment to the reform was notified. The purpose of the present research is to explore the impact of school curriculum leadership on teachers' commitment to NCR. The following three research questions have been formulated to guide my research: (1) What are the main reasons that influence teachers' commitment to NCR? (2) What strategies and measures do school curriculum leaders adopt in the process of implementation of NCR? (3) What is the impact on teachers' commitment to NCR of such strategies and measures?; Qualitative case study methods were adopted in this study. A primary school which started to carry out the reform in September 2001 has been chosen as the case. Three months has been spent in the field. Research methods include conducting participant observation, document collection and in-depth interviews. Grounded theory method was used to code and analyze data. And triangulation and participants checks were used to clarify the validity issue.; The present research shows that primary teacher's commitment to NCR is a strategic selection process with a deep-seated psychological mechanism of identity work. In such a process, teachers have to deal with the more complex working context and social context brought by NCR and the development of society. Only when they are able to cope with both contexts will they commit to NCR. Faced with contradictions and conflicts, school curriculum leadership will turn to impression management as a major strategy. However, there is a conflict between the school curriculum leadership aimed at impression management and teachers' commitment with a deeply psychological mechanism of identity work. Thus the school leadership makes very little positive impact on teachers' commitment to NCR as showing in the case study. On the contrary, some negative impacts have been identified.; The present study deeply analyzed the response of school curriculum leaders and teachers in the process of curriculum reform implementation in Chinese culture. How they interact in the reform also has been discovered and thus made the study significant in both theory and practice. Some knowledge-base for further study was also provided in the study.