Exploring Teachers' Fidelity of Implementation of Gifted Language Arts Curriculum

Fidelity of implementation (FOI) describes how well the delivery of an intervention follows a protocol or program model as the developers intended. FOI is an emerging area of focus in gifted education, where the primary interventions studied are curriculum units for use in both gifted and general education classrooms. Researchers have identified problems with teachers’ ability to implement units with fidelity that need to be addressed for the use of gifted curriculum to become more widespread. Results of the present study indicated that teachers provided usable self-report data on their fidelity of implementation, and that all teachers made adaptations to evidence-based gifted education curriculum by adding, subtracting, and modifying material. An exploration of the relationship between teachers’ level of fidelity and the modifications they made indicated that teachers with lower levels of fidelity had more difficulty balancing completion of the curriculum with other obligations.