Chapter 15: Broadening Conceptualizations of the Intended and Enacted Curriculum to Inform Research Design: Learning About Conducting Curriculum Research

We outline a conceptual framework that supports our efforts to define our intended curriculum (Bridges in Mathematics) by identifying both core design features and essential elements. We discuss our conceptualization of the enacted curriculum, which intentionally prioritizes teacher responsiveness over fidelity of implementation. Together, these conceptualizations help us distinguish between implementations that are aligned with our intended curriculum from those that depart from our intended curriculum and they inform our research design. We share a suite of tools that measure the use of both the core design features, which are easily counted, and the essential elements, which generally require more complex measurement tools. Finally, we discuss how the measurement tools are designed to distinguish between enactments that are aligned and productive from those that depart from the intended curriculum in unproductive ways.