Sense-making and structure in teachers' reception of educational reform. A case study on statistics in the mathematics curriculum.

März, Virginie [UCL] Kelchtermans, Geert [KU Leuven] Vanhoof, Stijn [KU Leuven] Onghena, Patrick [KU Leuven]

Implementing educational innovations is far more complex than the straightforward execution of policy prescriptions. The diversity in implementation variants reflects an inherent tension between stabilizing and change-driven processes in school organizations. This article tries to capture this complexity by focusing on how individual and collective processes of sense-making, as well as the actual structural factors (e.g., subcultures, roles and positions) and processes (e.g., legitimation) in the school, mediate implementation practices. Drawing on data from semi-structured interviews, this article reports on an exploratory study into the perceptions and implementation of the new statistics curriculum by secondary school teachers in Flanders (Belgium).