The Cyclical Nature of Curriculum: Refining a Curriculum by Examining Teachers' Roles in its Development

Project Kaleidoscope is a research project funded by the United States Department of Education. Project Kaleidoscope’s researchers are interested in the extent to which the provision of professional development to teachers, engagement of parents (and guardians and families) in informational sessions, and participation of identified students in summer intersessions can lead to the increased referral of historically underrepresented students to gifted education programs. For my capstone project, I examined a narrow aspect of this research project: the summer intersession curriculum and teachers’ enactment of it. My goal was to better understand both the extent to which the curriculum provided guidance to the teachers and the ways in which the teachers enacted the curriculum. In this capstone project report, I share the patterns of both guidance and enactment that I discovered. I conclude by making recommendations to the Project Kaleidoscope team regarding refinement of the curriculum based on those patterns, as well as discussing the implications of my study for curriculum and curriculum designers at large.