ABSTRACT
The American education system is marked by serious and systemic inequalities including unequal impact of childhood poverty on students' opportunities to learn, an unequal distribution of qualified teachers throughout the nation's schools and, students' unequal access to content knowledge. The distinction between 'adopters' and 'adapters' was crystallised in the response of a first-grade teacher in an 'adapting' district who could not understand pacing that would require a teacher to move on from a lesson or topic before all children demonstrated understanding. Some teachers saw the modules as scripted lesson plans, which they felt challenged their professional identity. Much of the data for research on the reform of teacher practice more widely has been derived from self-reports. Eliciting data in this manner has been found to offer 'a low-cost and relatively accurate picture of classroom practice' suited to the purposes of this small-scale study on teachers' perceptions of the relationship between the implementation of a newly scripted curriculum and educational equity.
