Curriculum enactment in physical education a case of reinterpreting policy and pragmatic innovation

Scotland's curriculum framework gives teachers greater autonomy and freedom to interpret and design school curricula. This paper reports the findings of an interpretive study of nine schools within a single local authority.... [ view full abstract ]

Scotland's curriculum framework gives teachers greater autonomy and freedom to interpret and design school curricula. This paper reports the findings of an interpretive study of nine schools within a single local authority. The aim was to explore and understand the interplay between the nested layers of the education system, with a specific focus on how national and local policy had an impact on the curriculum design decisions teachers made. The study focused on the lead teachers tasked with designing a new curriculum for physical education within a newly formed curriculum area of health and wellbeing. The main sources of data were policy texts and repeated interviews with the teachers, exploring their interpretation of curriculum guidance and the curricula they planned to enact. Data were analysed by drawing on a form of critical discourse analysis advocated by Fairclough (2005). This approach sought to explore the connections between policy and teachers’ interpretation and reinterpretation of policy. Analysis of data indicated that, although government policy and curriculum frameworks focused on health and wellbeing can and do produce organisational effects, these are subject to a complex process of reinterpretation as they map on to local conditions. Ultimately, the form a curriculum takes within an individual school is dependent on the structural conditions and professional action of teachers. 'Pragmatic innovation' perhaps best describes the teachers’ collective efforts at curriculum enactment. The findings of this study appear to suggest that regimes of accountability at national and local levels exert a powerful influence on schools and teachers' responses. Discourses of accountability appear to have had the most prevalent influence in curriculum design decisions, overshadowing the discourses of health and wellbeing. This study suggests that if policymakers are seeking transformational change in physical education, regimes of accountability that shape decisions in curriculum design need more careful consideration.