Collaborative curriculum development in teacher design teams

A strategy secondary schools in the Netherlands apply to realize educational curriculum reform is organizing teams of teachers that are responsible for specific curricular domains. The study reported in this chapter aimed at describing the development of such teacher teams in lower secondary education, the type of curriculum design activities they undertake in the context of a school-based reform ambition, and ways to support their efforts. Teacher design teams in two different schools were followed during their first year of collaboration. Their activities were documented, teachers were interviewed and observed and (curriculum) documents produced by teacher design teams were collected and analyzed. This systematic documentation process and the perspective of the practitioners formed the basis for identifying activities and conditions that had a special (positive or negative) function for the teams. These activities and conditions will be presented and discussed.