Why being forced to precisely follow a curriculum harms teachers and students

Cara Elizabeth Furman, Associate Professor of Literacy Education, Hunter College

In teaching, “fidelity” refers to closely following specific procedures for how to teach a lesson or respond to student behavior. For example, following a curriculum to fidelity might mean a teacher is required to read from a script, use a certain tone or expression, or teach from a designated page in a guidebook on a specific day.

In the past 20 years, teachers have experienced diminished control over what and how they teach. Simultaneously, the idea of teaching to fidelity has increasingly become the norm. Today, policymakers commonly suggest that fidelity is synonymous with good teaching. While prevalent across the country, this kind of micromanaging is more common in urban and rural schools that serve low-income and minority students.

I’m a former elementary school teacher and I now study how teachers make ethical decisions. This includes how they observe their students and try to help them – regardless of whether their decisions align with a prescribed curriculum.

In a recent study, I interviewed 12 teachers, primarily in rural towns in the Northeast, about how they deal with problems that arise in the classroom every day. They discussed how they came up with responses based on best practices they had learned in school from resources such as books and videos. They also spoke of techniques they learned in professional development workshops.

Of the nine who worked in public schools or publicly funded child care centers, however, all but one of the teachers were influenced by pressure to follow a curriculum to fidelity. This pressure came from administrators in the form of threats of punishments and even job loss, as well as from colleagues who questioned when they taught a curriculum differently.

My study echoes previous research demonstrating that fidelity interferes with teachers’ capacity to best serve students. It also prompts many qualified teachers to leave the profession.

How fidelity affects teachers

The term “fidelity” comes from the sciences and refers to the precise execution of a protocol in an experiment to ensure results are reliable. However, a classroom is not a lab, and students are not experiments.

As a result, teachers and teacher educators have long decried fidelity and the impact it has on them and their students.

One participant in my study, a fourth grade public school teacher, described an oppressive environment at her school: “They were really driving the curriculum down our throats. We need to meet this at this date. And everyone should be at this lesson at this date.”

This counteracted what she was taught in college – every student is different, and every classroom is different. Not all teachers will be on the same lesson on the same day.

A kindergarten teacher in the study also described being “boxed” in and forced into a mold.

Students face the consequences of following a curriculum to fidelity. For example, this kindergarten teacher described how when she was teaching preschool her students who lived in a rural area did not understand references to crossing busy city streets in a book she was required to read as part of the curriculum. She brought her students outside to the parking lot to practice street crossing and listen to the noises of local traffic. This was not part of the curriculum. Had the teacher followed the curriculum to a tee, the students may not have been able to grasp the lesson from the book.

When teachers are trusted and given greater flexibility, they teach better. They also feel more supported. The fourth grade teacher in my study began to feel she could better meet the needs of her students only when she changed schools and principals.

Of her new placement: “My administrator is always saying, ‘If there’s anything that you feel your students need, then do it. If it doesn’t completely align with the expensive curriculum we’ve invested in, that’s okay,’” she said. “It’s been a weight lifted off my shoulders.”

A new path forward

Research shows that flexibility in teaching methods and curricula allows teachers and students to participate more fully in the learning process – and even promotes a more democratic society.

Instead of mandating that teachers stick to the curriculum word for word, schools can implement these more flexible approaches:

1. Trust teachers. Asked why they want to teach, prospective and current teachers say they care deeply about children and want to help them. Working with teachers should begin with the belief in their good intentions.

2. Follow the evidence. Learning is complex, and educators’ knowledge of how students learn evolves as new research comes out. When following a specific curriculum to fidelity, teachers are sometimes required to use methods that are no longer evidence-based. In fact, teachers have been forced to follow a curriculum to fidelity even when they have evidence that the curriculum is interfering with student learning.

3. Allow teachers to tweak curriculum to meet their students’ needs and experiences. For example, in most instructional materials, white authors and protagonists are overrepresented. Effective and ethical teaching requires that teachers support and incorporate their students’ cultures into their lessons, meaning they may have to make changes to a curriculum.