Teacher's curriculum alignment and an analysis of the factors affecting curriculum alignment (the case of secondary school grade 5 science lesson)

The aim of this study is to examine the alignment between the teaching program prepared by the Ministry of National Education for Science Lesson of 5th grade of the secondary school, the annual plans of units and the curriculum used by the science teachers throughout the educational process and the factors influencing curriculum alignment. The study was carried out with the model of case study from qualitative research designs. The data was collected from four science teachers, three of whom are from the public schools with the highest, middle and lowest grade point avarage according to the TEOG exam results and one of whom was from a private school. Additionally, all of these four schools were located in Adıyaman city center. The data was collected by observing the video recordings of teaching procedures and semi-structured interviews. Descriptive analysis and content analysis were used for the analysis of the data. Considering the findings of the research, even if the teachers stated that they applied the curriculum as described by the Ministry of National Education, the observations and interviews indicated that the teachers from schools with different levels of achievement did not have a clearly information about the term of curriculum alignment and not teach in a harmonious way with the curriculum. Additionally, the teachers listed curriculum, school, teacher, student and other conditions as factors influencing curriculum alignment and made some suggestions regarding curriculum alignment in the interviews done after the observations. As a result, there were a number of recommendations about the case to define a policy on this issue for curriculum preparers, practitioners and researchers. Key words: Curriculum alignment, Factors influencing the curriculum alignment, Curriculum, Sciences lesson, Teacher