1 Collaborative Curriculum Design in Teacher Teams: Foundations 9

confirm the importance of external consistency in collaborative teacher design.

Walker’s views have also been used in smaller curriculum design studies. For exam-
ple, Boschman, McKenney, and Voogt (2014) used Walker’s approach to analyse the
design talk of kindergarten teachers when designing technology-rich activities to
foster early literacy. They found that pedagogical practical considerations guided
the design decisions of kindergarten teachers, and not so much up-to-date subject
matter knowledge. To conclude, in a communicative approach to curriculum design
the knowledge, beliefs and values of major stakeholders about the design task are
shared and efforts are undertaken to reach consensus. Teachers are actively involved
as major stakeholders in the design process, either as co-designers (in large-scale
projects) or collaborating in a teacher team to design school-based curriculum
innovations.
The essential starting point in the artistic paradigm is the individual process of
construction of meaning, often based on the expertise and experience of the con-
noisseur (Visscher-Voerman & Gustafson, 2004). In essence, this paradigm can be
assumed to be rooted in the theory of situated cognition (Greeno, 2011; Greeno
et al., 1998; McKenney et al., 2015). This theory claims that knowing is rooted in
social activities, context and culture. This view leads to questions such as how and
why the curriculum has developed as it has and how it could be developing (Marsh
& Willis, 2003). Eisner is a well-known representative of the artistic paradigm. He
emphasized the artistry of curriculum making and emphasized that the curriculum
is not static but dynamic, and constructed and reconstructed by those who enact it
(Marsh & Willis, 2003). Eisner does not differ much from Tyler with regard to what
must be addressed when designing curriculum, but in contrast to Tyler he did not see
the design process as a linear process, but as an open-ended process in which means
and ends are interdependent (Marsh & Willis, 2003; Visscher-Voerman & Gustafson,
2004). Eisner emphasized the complexity and the unexpected character of curricu-
lum design and realized that in the end it is the teacher who decides what is being
taught. In the artistic paradigm the teacher as designer of curriculum brings in his
practical knowledge, his ‘wisdom of practice’, which is often implicit and tacit
(Shulman, 1986). McKenney et al. (2015) argued teachers’ who are designing need
a basic understanding of what design and development work entails facilitates the
design process. Huizinga, Nieveen, and Handelzalts (see Chap. 7) discuss the need
for and scope of teacher design expertise. Thus, it seems important that teachers
who are involved in design and development practices learn to make their knowl-
edge explicit and relate it to the specific activities that are involved in curriculum
design processes.
Finally, we briefly discuss the pragmatic paradigm. The basic interest of this
paradigm is whether the design works in practice and is found useful by the end
users (Visscher-Voerman & Gustafson, 2004). The pragmatic paradigm emerged
from the practice of software engineering. Because of the increasing use of educa-
tional software in education, the pragmatic paradigm has increasingly influenced
recent curriculum design practices (e.g., Schmidt & Fulton, 2016; Veletsianos, Beth,
Lin, & Russell, 2016). An important characteristic of this approach is the limited
attention to analysis, and the quick turn-around of prototypical products that are
10 J. Voogt et al.

formatively evaluated by end users (Tripp & Bichelmeyer, 1990). It is a highly itera-
tive approach, which leads incrementally to the final design. These prototypical
products provide a concrete visual image of the innovation that is being developed
at an early stage of the design process. The deliberations about these prototypes
with teachers are important not only because of their knowledge of practice, but also
because in this way teachers actively participate in the design process. Cober, Tan,
Slotta, So, and Könings (2015) showed how teachers acted as co-designers through
commenting on prototypes and, in this way, actually contributed to the design of the
final product.
This section shed light on teacher roles in curriculum design. Four approaches to
curriculum design processes have been discussed. The instrumental paradigm, as
advocated by Tyler, has proved to be helpful in curriculum design processes because
it contributes to the quality of the design – also referred to as internal consistency
(Kessels & Plomp, 1999). In this paradigm the role granted to teachers is limited to
the implementation of the curriculum. The instrumental paradigm falls short in not
recognizing curriculum design as a process of interaction and negotiation. This
notion is much better recognized and acknowledged in the other three paradigms,
which have explicit and active roles for teachers as major stakeholders in curricu-
lum design. Such an active role for teachers is important, not only because consen-
sus and shared understanding about what the curriculum comprises is needed for the
implementation of the curriculum, but also because teachers’ wisdom of practice
results in curricula that are more realistic and practical to implement. In addition,
teachers’ active role in curriculum design contributes to their professional learning,
and both curriculum design and teachers’ professional learning determine the qual-
ity of implementation of a curriculum innovation.

The Interaction Between Teachers and Curriculum Materials

In the previous section we reviewed the roles teachers typically have in various
approaches to curriculum design. In this section we shift our attention to the interac-
tion between teachers and the tangible outcome of the design process: curriculum
materials. Curriculum materials are often considered an important means in realiz-
ing curriculum innovation, because they provide concrete support and suggestions
for the enactment of the curriculum in classroom practice (Brown, 2009; Carlson &
Anderson, 2002; Carlson, Davis, & Buxton, 2014).
Curriculum materials are tools that mediate teachers’ activity in the classroom
and can afford, but also constrain, the teacher’s actions (Brown, 2009). The primary
function of curriculum materials is to support teachers in enacting the curriculum.
However, it is the teacher who decides how to use the materials. The teacher-­
curriculum encounter is a complex one. Ben-Peretz (1990) distinguished between
the objective and the subjective interpretation of curriculum materials. The objec-
tive interpretation refers to the use of the materials as intended by the curriculum
designers, while the subjective interpretation refers to the interpretation of
1 Collaborative Curriculum Design in Teacher Teams: Foundations 11

c­ urriculum materials by the teacher. The objective interpretation suggests that cur-
riculum materials are used faithfully and serve as a means in realizing curriculum
implementation. The underlying assumption is that the curriculum is fixed and
should be implemented with high fidelity. In the subjective interpretation, curricu-
lum materials are seen as embodiments of the potential of curriculum, which may
be realized through teacher interpretation and professional imagination (Ben-Peretz,
1975). The subjective interpretation perceives curriculum materials from the per-
spective of teachers’ active interpretation and work with curriculum materials
(Brown, 2009; Remillard, 2005), and depends on experience, beliefs and context.
This perspective allows for mutual adaptation and an enactment perspective on cur-
riculum. Mutual adaptation refers to the evolution of the curriculum through the
mutual learning and reshaping of the curriculum by designers and teachers (cf.
Dede, 2006). The enactment perspective sees the teacher as a curriculum maker
(Clandinin & Connelly, 1992), with regard to both the design and the implementa-
tion of curriculum.
Brown (2009) advocated that curriculum materials should no longer be designed
as one-size-fits-all documents, but that they should be designed to support different
modes of use by teachers. The need for this was confirmed in a study of Shawer
(2010), who studied how experienced teachers interpreted and used curriculum
materials. She found three types of relationships teachers had with curriculum
materials: developers, makers and transmitters of curriculum. These three positions
aligned well with a mutual adaptation, enactment or fidelity perspective on curricu-
lum implementation (Snyder, Bolin, & Zumwalt, 1992). In each position, the teach-
ers used specific strategies to cope with curriculum innovations and use curriculum
materials. Most teachers in her study were curriculum developers. They adapted,
expanded and supplemented the curriculum when they saw a need. They did that by
using the curriculum materials as a framework for their teaching, adapting or skip-
ping parts of the materials and using other sources when needed. Curriculum mak-
ers started with a needs analysis, designed their own curriculum materials and
evaluated them. They referred to the curriculum, more than to specific curriculum
materials, as the basis for their decisions. Finally, curriculum transmitters strictly
followed the curriculum materials. Similar findings were observed in a study by
Remillard and Bryans (2004). Thus, teachers display different relationships with
curriculum materials, yet little is known about why these relationships differ and
how they may impact teacher practices and student learning.
Well-designed curriculum materials help teachers to enact the curriculum as
intended. However, research has shown that many textbooks and teacher guides
often fail to help teachers understand the rationale behind the suggestions they offer
for teaching and for monitoring student progress (Ball & Cohen, 1996; Valencia,
Place, Martin, & Grossman, 2006). A strand of studies has focused on the potential
of curriculum materials to help teachers to better understand the curriculum innova-
tion and to provide them with specific support for enacting essential, but vulnerable
elements of the curriculum innovation (Ball & Cohen, 1996; Davis & Krajcik, 2005;
Van den Akker, 1988). The assumption underlying these studies is that curriculum
materials designed with this purpose in mind can foster teacher learning and
12 J. Voogt et al.

c­ ontribute to the implementation of curriculum innovations. Findings have shown

that such curriculum materials indeed help teachers to change their teaching prac-
tice and provide a successful experience when teaching the innovative curriculum
(e.g., Davis, Palincsar, Smith, Arias, & Kademian, 2017; Pareja Roblin, Schunn, &
McKenney, 2018; Schneider & Krajcik, 2002; Van den Akker, 1988). However,
researchers in this strand have also acknowledged that materials alone are not
enough to realize the sustainable implementation of curriculum innovations. To
have an impact on teacher behaviour and student learning in the long run, teachers’
active involvement in their own professional learning is needed, so that they can
adapt materials to their specific context and needs, based on an understanding of the
intentions of the curriculum (Davis et al., 2017; Schneider, Krajcik, & Blumenfield,
2005; Thadani, Cook, Griffis, Wise, & Blakey, 2010).

 heoretical Conceptions Underpinning Collaborative

T
Curriculum Design in Teacher Teams

In the two previous sections we discussed different roles for teachers in the process
of curriculum design and we elaborated on the interaction between teachers and the
product of the design process, the curriculum materials. In this section we discuss
the importance of teacher involvement in curriculum design to produce curriculum
materials that support curriculum implementation. Based on theoretical concep-
tions, we argue that collaborative curriculum design in teacher teams is essential for
bridging the gap between curriculum intentions and realization, and for realizing a
curriculum innovation with an important additional effect: teacher learning. Our
work on collaborative design in teacher teams is informed by sociocultural theories
about teacher learning and change. Three elements characterize these theories:
learning is mediated through activity, learning is social in nature, and learning is
situated and culturally embedded. Below, we elaborate on each of these elements.
Curriculum design is characterized by the development of concrete curriculum
materials through active discourse. The joint feature of these materials is that they
incorporate a plan for learning (Taba, 1962) that is the result of negotiation among
involved stakeholders. These negotiations take place when teachers collaboratively
design curriculum for targeted learners with specific objectives and content. The
two basic elements of curriculum design, materials (tools) and discourse (speech),
make curriculum design capable of being seen as a mediated activity (Vygotsky,
1978). Vygotsky (1978) argued that such mediated activity, the interaction between
the curriculum materials (tools) and the articulated reflection on the purpose of the
materials through discourse (speech), leads to learning. Thus, when teachers are
actively involved in the process of curriculum design they develop a relationship
1 Collaborative Curriculum Design in Teacher Teams: Foundations 13

with the curriculum through the curriculum materials that leads to teacher learning
(Brown, 2009; Remillard, 2005).
The importance of collaboration between teachers during the design process is
grounded in the social nature of the learning that takes place in collaborative design.
Wenger (1998) introduced the concept of community of practice for a group of
people with shared interests in a specific domain. As a community, they develop
joint perspectives by sharing knowledge and experiences in solving problems they
encounter, and they learn from each other in this process. Collaborative design in
teacher teams is an example of a community of practice. During the process of col-
laborative curriculum design, teachers need to solve problems and make decisions
(Walker, 1971). They need to articulate their (often tacit) practical knowledge
(Verloop, Van Driel, & Meijer, 2001; Shulman, 1986) in order to develop a shared
understanding of the problem and its possible solution. This process of interpreta-
tion and negotiation is not linear but iterative in nature, and leads to individual and
collaborative learning (Clarke & Hollingsworth, 2002; Greeno, 2011; Wenger,
1998). Voogt et al. (2011) have shown that the interaction of teacher design teams
with the external expertise brought in by a facilitator positively contributes to the
quality of the design and to teachers’ learning. Such external expertise can also take
the form of existing curriculum materials, which can serve as examples to support
teams of teachers in articulating their understanding of the innovation and the design
task (Binkhorst, Poortman, & Van Joolingen, 2017). The importance of external
expertise relates to Vygotsky’s (1978) notion of the ‘zone of proximal develop-
ment’; a concept that Vygotsky (1978) used to describe the interaction between
learning and development. In his view, learning takes place when actual develop-
ment expands through interaction with experts and peers who bring in new knowl-
edge. This notion of the ‘zone of proximal development’ is also relevant when to
understand teacher learning when they interact with curriculum materials. Studies
on effective professional development confirm the importance of collaboration for
teacher learning (Garet, Porter, Desimone, Birman, & Yoon, 2001; Whitcomb,
Borko, & Liston, 2009).
The theory of situated cognition (Greeno, 2011; Greeno et al., 1998) postulates
that the behaviour of individuals can be understood from the behaviour of the social
system to which the individuals belong. Hence, the behaviour of individual teachers
is deeply embedded in the system called school (Sarason, 1996). The school as a
social system for the teacher becomes reality in the specific contextual experiences
of a specific teacher as well as in the accumulated experiences of all teachers. What
a teacher brings to the design process is thus mainly determined by the specific and
universal demands, opportunities and constraints of the school (Janssen, Westbroek,
Doyle, & Van Driel, 2013). This situative view implies that teacher learning and
change through curriculum design can only be meaningful when the culture and
context of the school are an integral part of the process. We argue that the process of
collaborative curriculum design by teachers is, by its nature, culturally embedded
and situated, and therefore offers a perfect environment for teacher learning.
14 J. Voogt et al.

Teachers bring their knowledge and experience to the design process, they negotiate
solutions for the design problems they face, they develop concrete curriculum mate-
rials and they (ideally) formatively evaluate these (interim) products through imple-
menting them in their teaching practice. These specific characteristics of
collaborative curriculum design thus guarantee a learning process that is situated
and culturally embedded. Several studies reflecting on effective characteristics of
teacher professional development have pointed to the importance of embedding
teacher learning in actual teaching practice (e.g., Borko, 2004; Darling-Hammond,
Wei, Andree, Richardson, & Orphanos, 2009; Penuel et al. 2007; Putnam & Borko,
2000).
Teacher learning and the consequent change processes taking place in collabora-
tive curriculum design activities are cyclical in nature. This type of learning is cap-
tured in the model of expansive learning proposed by Engeström (2006). According
to this model, the learning and change process consists of a sequence of epistemic
actions, going from questioning aspects of the existing practice, to analysing the
situation, modelling alternatives in a visible and transmittable medium, examining
the model, experimenting with it to grasp its actual contour and possible limitations,
implementing the model with enrichments and conceptual extensions, and then
reflecting on the process and consolidating it toward becoming a stable form of new
practice (Engeström & Sannino, 2010). This process, when done collaboratively,
brings about agency that is both collective and distributed. Expansive cycles corre-
spond to a learning process that includes both internalization and externalization.
When teachers are designing new curriculum or new learning activities, they need
to engage in reflective analysis of what exists (internalization) and to design and
implement new models (externalization). Thus, in collaborative curriculum design,
teachers have a key role in curriculum design and innovation. On the one hand, they
are participating in a social learning process that has an impact on their professional
learning and on their sense of ownership of the innovation. On the other hand, they
realize a high quality curriculum innovation through their participation as a com-
munity in a collaborative design process that aims at the design of curriculum mate-
rials that are relevant, consistent, feasible and effective (Nieveen, 2009).

This Book

In this book, we present studies that start from the perspective that teachers are cur-
riculum makers who actively design curriculum in collaboration with colleagues.
The conceptualizations above have shown that both the process and products of
curriculum design may contribute to teacher learning. We also showed that through
their active involvement in shaping curriculum materials, teachers assume agency
for how the materials transform their teaching and may contribute to student learn-
ing. When teachers collaboratively design curriculum, they share this agency. Voogt
1 Collaborative Curriculum Design in Teacher Teams: Foundations 15

et al. (2015) used the term shared transformative agency to describe this process.
They argued that teacher involvement in collaborative curriculum design increases
the chance that teachers as a team develop ownership for the design and that shared
responsibility contributes to sustainable implementation of the design in classroom
practice. The contributions in the present book aim to deepen our knowledge of col-
laborative curriculum design in teacher teams and its impact on teacher learning and
sustainable curriculum implementation.

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Chapter 2
Classic Design of Curriculum Innovations:
Investigation of Teacher Involvement
in Research, Development, and Diffusion

Natalie Pareja Roblin and Susan McKenney

Introduction

The improvement of educational practice through research is a topic of ongoing

debate. In education and other fields, the last decades have witnessed a renaissance
of interest in knowledge mobilization and research use, and particularly in the role
of empirical evidence in informing practice (Farley-Ripple, May, Karpyn, Tilley,
& McDonough, 2018; Levin, 2013; Nutley, Jung, & Walter, 2009). However,
despite this renewed interest, various studies have suggested that relationships
between research and practice in education remain rather weak (e.g., Hemsley-
Brown & Sharp, 2003; Vanderlinde & van Braak, 2010). Multiple reasons have
been identified in the literature to explain why these relationships are so difficult
to build (cf. Broekkamp & Van Hout-Wolters, 2007; Burkhardt & Schoenfeld,
2003; Kennedy, 1997). One reason pertains to the relevance of educational research
for classroom practice. It is often argued that the types of problems addressed by
educational researchers are typically different from the types of problems experi-
enced by teachers in their daily work, and therefore lack practical meaning
(Broekkamp & Van Hout-Wolters, 2007; Burkhardt & Schoenfeld, 2003; Kennedy,
1997). Another reason relates to different interests and goals between teachers and
researchers, which ultimately call for two distinct types of knowledge (McIntyre,
2005): while researchers seek for generalizable and abstract propositions, teachers
look for practical and concrete recommendations that can assist them in dealing

N. Pareja Roblin (*)

University of Applied Sciences, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
e-mail: [email protected]
S. McKenney
Faculty of Behavioral, Management and Social Sciences, University of Twente,
Enschede, The Netherlands
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2019 19

J. Pieters et al. (eds.), Collaborative Curriculum Design for Sustainable
Innovation and Teacher Learning, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20062-6_2
20 N. Pareja Roblin and S. McKenney

with the complexities and uniqueness of their classroom practice. A third com-
monly acknowledged reason pertains to the accessibility of research findings. The
literature has suggested that teachers rarely use research to inform their practice
because (i) academic journals are inaccessible to non-academic audiences
(Hemsley-Brown & Sharp, 2003), (ii) teachers lack the time to read research and
make sense of it (Burkhardt & Schoenfeld, 2003), and/or (iii) teachers experience
difficulties in translating the rather general and abstract propositions of research
findings into the specificities and peculiarities of their classroom practice
(Broekkamp & Van Hout-Wolters, 2007).
Different models to facilitate the diffusion and use of educational research have
been developed and adopted over time. Three such models have commonly been
identified in the literature: linear models, context-focused models, and interactive
models (cf., Bauer & Fischer, 2007; Landry, Amara, & Lamari, 2001; Nutley,
Walter, & Davis, 2007). Linear models, also known as “science-push” models
(Landry et al., 2001), emphasize the unidirectional flow of knowledge from research
to practice (Nutley et al., 2007). Central to these models is the need to make
research conceptually and physically accessible to teachers through various trans-
lation and dissemination efforts. Context-focused models, also known as “demand-
pull” models (Landry et al., 2001), focus on teachers’ needs and on the contextual
factors that shape the uptake of research. Although context-focused models allow
for some degree of interaction between researchers and practitioners, this interac-
tion is typically limited to the beginning (identification of needs and research prob-
lem) and the end (dissemination) of the research process (Bauer & Fischer, 2007).
Finally, interactive models emphasize the multidirectional flow of knowledge
between researchers and teachers, each bringing their own values and perspectives
(Nutley et al., 2007). Continuous involvement of teachers throughout the research
process and not only at the beginning and/or at the end is thus regarded as essential
(Bauer & Fischer, 2007).
Although recent calls for strengthening research and practice relationships
stress the need for new forms of collaboration and increased interaction between
researchers and practitioners (de Vries & Pieters, 2007; Farley-Ripple et al.,
2018; Levin, 2013; Penuel, Allen, Coburn, & Farrell, 2015), linear models have
remained predominant for many decades (cf. Blakely et al., 1987; Posner, 2004;
Schumacher, 1972; Thomas & Pring, 2004). In this chapter, we examine a linear
model that is prominently present in the design of curriculum innovations
intended for large-scale implementation: the Research Development and
Diffusion (RD&D) model. The ultimate goal is to gain a better understanding of
how research and practice relationships are shaped in RD&D projects, and to
ascertain whether and why the claimed benefits for and criticisms of this model
are (still) warranted.
2 Classic Design of Curriculum Innovations: Investigation of Teacher Involvement… 21

Theoretical Underpinnings

Characterizing the Research-Development-Diffusion Model

The RD&D model was conceived from the perspective of developing and imple-
menting research-based curriculum innovations (Gottschalk et al., 1981 Havelock,
1969). RD&D is generally characterized as being rationalistic, sequential, compre-
hensive and complex (Schumacher, 1972). It is rationalistic because it requires
deliberate and systematic planning; sequential because research, development and
diffusion activities follow a linear order; comprehensive because planning and
development typically occur on a large scale; and complex because it requires the
involvement of various participants and organizations. In the RD&D model, the
process of educational change is regarded as a systematic sequence of tasks that
begins with the identification of a problem on the basis of a perceived need, then
continues with the exploration and application of scientific principles for the devel-
opment and evaluation of a research-based solution to this problem, and ultimately
ends with the diffusion of the developed solution to the target group (Havelock,
1969; Posner, 2004).
Three distinct phases can be identified in the RD&D model: research, develop-
ment, and diffusion. The goal of the first phase, research, is to advance knowledge
in the field. Although the research may or may not be directly concerned with a
specific problem from educational practice, its results serve to inspire development
activities. The second phase, development, aims at translating existing knowledge
from research into the design of a solution for an actual problem. Along with design
activities, the development phase typically includes the systematic testing and eval-
uation of the developed solution to assess its quality, utility, value and feasibility in
natural settings. Finally, diffusion aims at facilitating dissemination and adoption.
This third phase is typically broken down into specific activities aimed at creating
awareness, demonstrating effectiveness and utility, and providing training and sup-
port (Clark & Hopkins, 1969; Havelock, 1969).
Guba and Clark (in Havelock, 1969) argue that it is through this cycle of research,
development and diffusion activities that the RD&D model contributes to building
stronger relationships between research and practice. Research utilization and dis-
semination play a key role in this process. Research utilization alludes to the appli-
cation of (scientific) knowledge. In the RD&D model, research utilization typically
takes place when curriculum developers make deliberate use of relevant evidence
from scientific research to inform the development of curriculum innovations. This
knowledge, once embodied in curriculum frameworks and/or materials, needs to be
communicated to the target users to facilitate acceptance and adoption through vari-
ous dissemination activities. Hence, the effectiveness of the RD&D model in
22 N. Pareja Roblin and S. McKenney

c­ onnecting research and practice is dependent on both, successful research utiliza-

tion and dissemination.
To understand the relationships between research and practice across RD&D
projects, three dimensions warrant consideration: (i) the participants involved
throughout the RD&D process and their roles, (ii) the types of knowledge used to
inform the design of curriculum innovations; and (iii) the activities undertaken to
facilitate diffusion and adoption. Taken together, these dimensions formed the ana-
lytical framework used in this study. In the next section we turn to each of these
dimensions.

 Framework for Analysing Research and Practice

A
Relationships

Participants’ Roles in RD&D-Based Projects

The core phases of research, development, and diffusion are often implemented by
multiple (groups of) participants and organizations. Havelock (1969) distinguished
three major roles in RD&D projects, each related to a specific phase of the model:
researcher, developer, and linkage agent. The researcher role consists of gaining a
better understanding of an educational phenomenon, and thereby providing a gen-
eral knowledge base that (potentially) can be used to inform development. The
developer role, sometimes also undertaken by applied researchers, encompasses the
design and evaluation of a solution to an identified problem. The linkage agent role
entails the diffusion of the developed solution through various dissemination and
training activities. Although the linear character of RD&D has remained, over the
years more emphasis has been given to involving teachers throughout the process,
especially during development (Blakely et al., 1987).

Types of Knowledge Informing Curriculum Design

In RD&D, one of the main sources informing the curriculum design process is the
knowledge generated through scientific research. Developers are expected to search
for and make use of relevant research knowledge (Brickell in Havelock, 1969).
Knowledge generated through scientific inquiry can be communicated to the devel-
opers explicitly (e.g., through books, research articles) or implicitly (e.g., through
personal interactions during coaching and supervision) (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995).
Besides the knowledge derived from the research literature, evidence collected dur-
ing evaluation studies aimed at testing and assessing the overall quality of the cur-
riculum innovation constitutes another key source of knowledge informing
curriculum design (Havelock, 1969). The results of these evaluation studies are
typically used to determine the utility and feasibility of the curriculum innovation in
real settings, and hence they contribute to further adjustment of its characteristics to