| This case study describes how developing and implementing a uniform curriculum in a lower-level Spanish program impacted foreign language faculty in a research-intensive university. Individual interviews, participant observations, and documents were used as data sources for this study. Analysis of the data involved the techniques of constant comparison, pattern matching and explanation building. The patterns found across data sources indicated that although the top-down, administratively-directed implementation of a uniform curriculum resolved the primary problem area of the lower-level Spanish program---student complaints about faculty variance in content, intended learning outcomes, and discontinuous emphasis, coverage, and---method it did not completely eliminate faculty variance. Instead, there was strong evidence that the mechanism devised to unify instruction actually led some faculty to depart from the curriculum in an attempt to assert their need for greater autonomy. There also was a strong indication that had the new curriculum been introduced, developed and implemented according to a collaborative, bottom-up approach, the result might have been very different. The fact that the curriculum was imposed on faculty without substantial effort to involve faculty in the process, led some faculty to either depart from the curriculum or implement the curriculum primarily for reasons of job security, a sense of commitment to the program or their colleagues, or fear of scrutiny by colleagues of greater rank. Despite the continued variance in individual implementation of the curriculum and disagreements about the value of collaboration versus autonomy among faculty, the data clearly indicated that some aspects of the uniform curriculum had positively impacted faculty and enhanced the degree of programmatic coherence. Primarily, uniform policies and assessments provided faculty with a justification for implementing policies or assessments in their classes that might be unpopular with students but were consistent with program directions. In addition, data in this study indicated that uniform policies and assessments served as facilitators for implementing the curriculum for some faculty, since they represented a level of accountability that had not formerly existed in the program. Recommendations for research in the areas of collaboration, curricular models, impact of curriculum on students, impact of leadership styles and integration of the ACTFL National Standards are presented. |
