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This Paper aims to contextualize how Shangu Elementary School implemented its featured curriculum, identifying the factors for the curriculum development, the conundrums thereof, and the responses and understanding of the teachers’ professional growth after their curriculum participation. Accordingly, this Paper adopted a qualitative research approach; interviews and document analysis were conducted, and a comprehensive analysis was completed. The findings are shown below: During the 99th to 101st Academic Years, Shangu Elementary School developed its featured curriculum through three phases: "mechanical mimicry," "learning and adapting while doing," and "whole new paradigm." The success was because of a team of teachers with a good rapport, which borrowed the original framework of its featured curriculum and made the best use of the uniquely advantageous environment and resources. These teachers developed the curriculum incrementally, with the help of the teachers' professional learning community and their collaboration under effective leadership. With a budget plan to fund the curriculum, they accomplished the development of the featured curriculum focusing on experiential learning. Shangu Elementary School—located in a remote and rural area—faced innumerable conundrums in curriculum development: its distant location caused a high teacher attrition rate and inaccessibility of outside human resources. Further compounded by its inexperienced, unequipped, and overwhelmed teachers, the process of curriculum development was piecemeal, in the sense of the meager class preparation time, the difficulty in teaching mixed-age classes, the devoid of curriculum consensus, the insufficient emphasis on cultural identity, the smattering curriculum content, and the absence of bridge programs. Moreover, the development of the featured curriculum failed to complement the cultivation of academic aptitude—hampering one another. Not to mention the challenges of increasing budget reduction in curriculum development. In response, the School eventually came to a solution by adjusting the scale and number of classes of its featured curriculums. Notably, the teacher’s participation in the curriculum development gave rise to their improved professional competencies and their curriculum awareness, a transfiguration from curriculum implementers to curriculum designers. Also, female teachers—after acquiring ten-year teaching experience and professional capacity and experiencing “motherhood”—converted their teaching beliefs into student-center ones, reevaluating the featured curriculum from the perspective of curriculum theories. They witnessed their growth while realizing their past mistakes. No matter what type of curriculum, the curriculum development shall center on ushering students to retain their motivation and willingness to keep learning. Lastly, based on the findings, this Paper proposes specific recommendations for schools wishing to promote featured curriculums as well as for other future research. |