Examining the Middle Ground of Curriculum

This study is about how teachers interpret and enact curriculum. It investigates how teachers interpret and enact new curriculum prior to classroom implementation: that is, an examination of teachers' enactment of a new curriculum document before they enter the classroom. Goodson (1994) refers metaphorically to this as the 'middle ground' of curriculum. Whilst Goodson introduced this term in the early 1990s, further interest in this field has been scarce. This study locates the middle ground of curriculum between the high ground of curriculum (the formal construction of the written curriculum) and its ground-level implementation in the classroom. It acknowledges the dynamic interaction between these varying levels of curriculum and the role of teachers as active participants in the interpretation and enactment of curriculum. The study reconceptualises the middle ground metaphor as a means of examining history teachers' interpretation and enactment of a new syllabus and a model of the middle ground of curriculum is subsequently presented.