| This study explores the impact of a teacher leadership institute conducted by a university-county office of education subject matter project, the Inland Empire Consortium for International Studies, on the long term capacity of school sites to implement state driven curriculum reform at the sixth grade level. Of the thirty-nine teachers who completed the three year institute on the content of the ancient civilizations curriculum reform in 1993, the thirty-one who were still teaching in Southern California from March to June of 1995, were the subject of this study. The reform involved fundamental change in both content and instructional practice at the sixth grade level. First, the content of instruction was reorganized from an emphasis on Latin American history to an indepth examination of ancient world civilizations including Mesopotamia, Egypt, Israel, India, China, Greece, and Rome. Second, instructional practice was changed to include a wide variety of active, meaning-centered learning processes with frequent use of projects and open-ended critical thinking assignments. Lastly, the discipline of history was integrated with the social sciences, such as economics and political science, and correlated with other other disciplines such as literature and the arts.; Three surveys with accompanying interviews were used to measure the progress of the curriculum reform in the 28 schools of these institute teachers. The surveys and interviews were given to the institute fellows, their principals or designee, and at least one sixth grade teacher colleague at the school site. Higher than expected levels of implementation were observed. Teachers had creatively adapted the institute materials to meet the needs of their students, and reported a sense of competence and professionalism that they had never experienced before.; The level of success of the teacher leaders in building the capacity of their schools for the reform correlated highly to three indicators: performance of key change facilitation leadership roles, administrative support of the reform, and school collegiality. More than 90% of the institute fellows had engaged in leadership roles which built the capacity of their schools to implement the reform. Most of the reform could be traced to the day-to-day interventions that were practiced by the institute fellows in sharing resources and providing technical assistance and coaching in the sixth grade curriculum to their colleagues. More than 80% of the project fellows also worked closely with new teachers.; Though this second level change leadership role carried the most significant correlation to school reform, strong or moderate administrative support and school collegiality were also important indicators. In 68% of the schools, the sixth grade History-Social Science curriculum reform was implemented to a very high level after two years.; This study was a type of action research in that its author was also the director of the teacher training institute. To correct for possible effects of this double role on the research process, specific criteria for classification and evaluation of data were developed in advance of the interview and site visits and followed closely in the tabulation of the results. |
