Differences in state- and district-level stakeholders’ perceptions of curriculum coherence and school impact in national curriculum reform

Journal of Educational Administration Differences in stateand district-level stakeholders’ perceptions of curriculum coherence and school impact in national curriculum reform Jenni Sullanmaa, Kirsi Pyhältö, Janne Pietarinen, Tiina Soini, Article information: To cite this document: Jenni Sullanmaa, Kirsi Pyhältö, Janne Pietarinen, Tiina Soini, (2019) "Differences in stateand district-level stakeholders’ perceptions of curriculum coherence and school impact in national curriculum reform", Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 57 Issue: 3, pp.210-226, https:// doi.org/10.1108/JEA-08-2018-0153 Permanent link to this document: https://doi.org/10.1108/JEA-08-2018-0153 Downloaded on: 06 June 2019, At: 03:16 (PT) References: this document contains references to 56 other documents. 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Downloaded by Tampere University At 03:16 06 June 2019 (PT) Differences in stateand district-level stakeholders’ perceptions of curriculum coherence and school impact in national curriculum reform Jenni Sullanmaa Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland Kirsi Pyhältö Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland and Faculty of Education, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland Janne Pietarinen School of Applied Educational Science and Teacher Education, University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland, and Tiina Soini Faculty of Education and Culture, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland Abstract Purpose –Shared understandings of curriculum reform within and between the levels of the educational system are suggested to be crucial for the reform to take root. The purpose of this paper is to explore variation in perceived curriculum coherence and school impact among stateand district-level stakeholders. Design/methodology/approach –The participants (n¼666) included stateand district-level stakeholders involved in a national curriculum reform in Finland. Latent profile analysis was employed to identify profiles based on participants’perceptions of the core curriculum’s coherence and the reform’s impact on school development. Findings –Two profiles were identified: high coherence and impact, and lower consistency of the intended direction and impact. State-level stakeholders had higher odds of belonging to the high coherence and impact profile than their district-level counterparts. Practical implications –The results imply that more attention needs to be paid in developing a shared and coherent understanding particularly of the intended direction of the core curriculum as well as the reform’s effects on school-level development among stateand district-level stakeholders. Originality/value –The study contributes to the literature on curriculum reform by shedding light on the variation in perceived curriculum coherence and school impact of those responsible for a large-scale national curriculum reform process at different levels of the educational system. Keywords Curriculum reform, Latent profile analysis, Curriculum coherence, School impact Paper type Research paper Introduction It has been proposed that in order to promote curriculum reform implementation and educational practitioners’ownership over the reform, the curriculum developers and stakeholders need to build a sufficiently shared understanding of the functions of the Journal of Educational Administration Vol. 57 No. 3, 2019 pp. 210-226 Emerald Publishing Limited 0957-8234 DOI 10.1108/JEA-08-2018-0153 Received 4 September 2018 Revised 5 December 2018 14 February 2019 1 March 2019 Accepted 5 March 2019 The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: www.emeraldinsight.com/0957-8234.htm © Jenni Sullanmaa, Kirsi Pyhältö, Janne Pietarinen and Tiina Soini. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial & non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode This work was supported by the Ministry of Education and Culture under Grant No. 6600567; and the Academy of Finland under Grant No. 295022. 210 JEA 57,3 Downloaded by Tampere University At 03:16 06 June 2019 (PT) curriculum and its meaning for the schools’mission (see Fullan, 2007; Ornstein and Hunkins, 2004; Pietarinen et al., 2017). At the same time, there is evidence of educational administrators, stakeholders, principals and teachers often differing in their understanding and response to educational change and curriculum reforms (Desimone, 2006; Louis and Robinson, 2012; Ng, 2009; Spillane, 1998; Timperley and Parr, 2005; Yuen et al., 2012). Perceiving the curriculum as a coherent whole is particularly important for those in charge of developing and implementing the curriculum because it provides grounding for sustained goal setting and reform implementation. While coherence in terms of alignment and continuity within and between the elements of the curriculum (e.g. Newmann et al., 2001; Schmidt et al., 2005; Smith et al., 1998) and in terms of providing a coherent basis for constructing shared understandings of the curriculum’s aim and shared principles and values for teaching and learning (e.g. Bryk, 2010; Hallinger and Heck, 2002; Newmann et al., 2001) is suggested to be crucial to support pupil learning and school development, research on how curriculum coherence is perceived by different stakeholders is scarce. A few studies have implied that teachers’perceptions of school-level coherence are related to pupil achievement (e.g. Newmann et al., 2001) and that perceptions of coherence between policies, goals and activities within and between schools and the educational system are important for reform to take root (e.g. Allen and Penuel, 2015; Louis and Robinson, 2012; Russell and Bray, 2013). Our earlier studies suggested that stateand district-level stakeholders’ perceptions of core curriculum coherence are related to the expected school-level impact of a curriculum reform (Pietarinen et al., 2017; Sullanmaa et al., submitted). This implies that perceived curriculum coherence is an important determinant of facilitating change in schools. Stateand district-level stakeholders do not, however, comprise a single entity, and differences are likely to occur both within and between the groups. The present study aims to contribute to filling this gap in the literature by exploring how stateand district-level stakeholders involved in Finnish national core curriculum reform have perceived curriculum coherence and the reform’s impact on school-level development. Variation in the stakeholders’perceptions is examined by discerning latent profiles, that is, detecting subgroups of educational stakeholders based on their individual patterns of perceived curriculum coherence and expectations of the reform’s school-level impact. Examining similarities and differences in perceived curriculum coherence among the stakeholders at different levels provides a systemic understanding of how such coherence is achieved in a large-scale curriculum reform process. Accordingly, the study contributes to the literature on curriculum development by providing a novel understanding of the variation in the perceptions of stakeholders in charge of the development work. Curriculum coherence A coherent curriculum entails unity and connectedness among the aims, content, instructional practices, learning experiences and assessments (Beane, 1995; Kelly, 2009; Smith et al., 1998). It entails a holistic and integrative approach to curriculum development, focusing on the learners and their purposeful learning experiences (Beane, 1995; Ornstein and Hunkins, 2004). Curriculum coherence also includes a structural approach focusing on the alignment and the coherent organization of subject matter (e.g. Schmidt et al., 2005; Squires, 2009). This study explores how different educational stakeholders have perceived the coherence of the core curriculum that aims to guide the district-level curricula and further governs the development of the national basic education system. Curriculum coherence is suggested to be comprised of three interrelated components: consistency of the intended direction, referring to the clarity of the goals and roles of the teachers and schools, as well as the ability to support the teaching of the essential material; an integrative approach to teaching and learning, entailing the encouraging of teachers to use activating teaching methods along with assessment that supports 211 Stateand district-level stakeholders Downloaded by Tampere University At 03:16 06 June 2019 (PT) learning, as well as support for the harmonization of teaching; and alignment between objectives, content and assessment, characterized by continuity and connectivity within the curriculum (Sullanmaa et al., submitted). Consistency of the intended direction is important for facilitating the shared ownership of clear aims in the educational system. Schools are facing multiple demands from within as well as outside the schools, for instance from parents and the wider community (see Honig and Hatch, 2004). Hence, it is essential that the curriculum provides grounding for navigating between the contradictory demands and that it establishes a clear direction for school practice and its development, as well as realizes the practical outcomes and benefits of the reform (Ornstein and Hunkins, 2004; Timperley and Parr, 2005). It has been suggested that the curriculum needs a shared and consistent purpose, which creates coherence in diverse school-level activities (Fullan, 2007). Schools that successfully improve their practice have a shared sense of direction among the school community (Hallinger and Heck, 2002; Newmann et al., 2001; Reezigt and Creemers, 2005). In addition, without clarity about the curriculum reform’s aims and main message, the local implementing stakeholders might gain very different understandings of the change (Spillane and Callahan, 2000; Timperley and Parr, 2005). For instance, teachers might not change their classroom practices accordingly due to not fully understanding the underlying principles of the reform (e.g. Ng, 2009) or insufficient clarity about changes in their roles. Consistency of the intended direction, however, does not mean that the curriculum should be implemented similarly in all contexts (also see Buchmann and Floden, 1992). It is crucial to communicate the key purposes and underlying principles of the curriculum (Spillane et al., 2002); yet, an adaptive approach also recognizes contextual conditions at the school level and allows for diversity in the implemented curriculum (Buchmann and Floden, 1992; Darling-Hammond, 1998; Ornstein and Hunkins, 2004). A coherent curriculum also provides an integrative approach to teaching and learning that is consistent with the educational values, objectives and content of the curriculum. Successful reforms focus on developing the core school practices of teaching and learning as well as altering teachers’beliefs, norms and pedagogical practices (Coburn, 2003; Darling-Hammond, 1998; Elmore, 1996). These core beliefs include teachers’ understanding about how students learn, the nature of knowledge and subject matter, and how this is shown in their teaching practice (Coburn, 2003; Elmore, 1996). Acurriculumreformthataimstoimpact the core of schooling requires a shared understanding and commitment to the reform principles and goals of teaching and learning, as well as school-level capacity building and support for the new practices at the local level (Darling-Hammond, 1998; Fullan, 2009; McLaughlin, 1998; Porter et al., 2015). The administrators and stakeholders involved in curriculum development have a key role in developing coherence in teaching and learning, and in facilitating commitment to and support for this development throughout the various levels of the educational system (see Cantlon et al., 1990; Dutro et al., 2002; Porter et al., 2015; Spillane, 2004). Curriculum coherence also includes alignment and continuity within and between the curriculum’s objectives, content, teaching methods and assessments. Alignment is essential for the construction of integrated, consistent and meaningful learning experiences that build sequentially and reinforce one another (Beane, 1995; Fortus et al., 2015; Schmidt et al., 2005). Alignment between goals, instruction and assessments (e.g. Squires, 2009, 2012), and the sequencing and progression of content within and across grades (e.g. Fortus et al., 2015; Schmidt et al., 2005; Shwartz et al., 2008) have been shown to improve pupils’deep learning and school achievement. Perceptions regarding a curriculum’s alignment and continuity are also important among teachers and other educational stakeholders for understanding and accepting the curriculum as a sensible whole (see Vitikka et al., 2012). Alignment as a part of curriculum coherence needs to be considered simultaneously with the curriculum’s intended 212 JEA 57,3 Downloaded by Tampere University At 03:16 06 June 2019 (PT) direction and the framework for developing teaching and learning. Hence, all three components of coherence in the steering core curriculum are assumed to contribute to the curriculum reform’s impact on the school-level development work. Function of coherence in curriculum reform The effects of curriculum reform on school-level practice and development, particularly on a large scale or long-term basis (see, e.g. Coburn, 2003; Elmore, 1996), depend on the interaction between the stakeholders at different levels of the educational system and their understanding of the curriculum reform (e.g. Cheung and Wong, 2011; Fernandez et al., 2008; Fullan, 2007; Ng, 2009; Timperley and Parr, 2005; Yuen et al., 2012). High levels of perceived coherence in the core curriculum have been shown to contribute to district-level stakeholders’expectations of the impact that the curriculum reform will have on school-level development, by directing the development work toward solving problems faced by schools, and committing teachers to the development work (Sullanmaa et al., submitted). However, the stakeholders may differ regarding the extent to which they perceive the curriculum as a coherent whole and believe in its impact on the school-level development, how much time and effort they are ready to invest in the reform implementation, and what they aim to emphasize when developing the local curriculum (Cantlon et al., 1990; Dutro et al., 2002; McLaughlin, 1998; Spillane, 1998). The various stakeholders’expectations concerning the reform’s impact are influenced by their understanding of the curriculum reform, their role in the educational system, their expertise and previous experience and local values (Spillane et al., 2002; Spillane, 2004). This means that the curriculum reform is reconstructed at each level of the educational system as it is interpreted by different stakeholders and then mediated to the next level (Coburn, 2005; Darling-Hammond, 1998; Louis and Robinson, 2012; Nordholm, 2016; Porter et al., 2015). Thus, coherent perceptions about the core curriculum and beliefs about the reform’s impact on school-level development among stakeholders at different levels of the system are essential in facilitating school development. Due to the different positions and activities that the stakeholders and practitioners across the educational system have in curriculum development work, variation in perceived curriculum coherence and beliefs about the reform’s impact on school-level development is likely to occur (see Desimone, 2006; Louis and Robinson, 2012; Spillane, 1998). Still, little is known about how curriculum coherence is perceived by those involved in national or district-level curriculum development, how the experiences of stakeholders at different levels are related, or how the possible differences could be bridged to achieve stronger agreement and coherence. Curriculum reform in Finland The educational system in Finland aims to facilitate stakeholders’coherent understandings about the curriculum by involving stakeholders from different levels of the educational system in the curriculum reform process and by emphasizing collaboration and shared goals among educational administrators, stakeholders and practitioners in the reform orchestration (Salonen-Hakomäki et al., 2016; Tikkanen et al., 2017; Vitikka et al., 2012). The national core curriculum, based on the Basic Education Act, is part of the Finnish educational steering system which outlines the mission, key objectives and core content of basic education (Vitikka et al., 2012). The Finnish National Agency for Education (formerly the Finnish National Board of Education) is responsible for orchestrating reform of the core curriculum approximately every 10 years. The most recent reform was launched in 2012. The Finnish National Agency for Education invited various stakeholders such as municipal education providers, teacher educators, researchers, principals and teachers to participate in working on different parts and content of the core curriculum. These state-level working groups were also responsible for writing the final core curriculum document, completed at 213 Stateand district-level stakeholders Downloaded by Tampere University At 03:16 06 June 2019 (PT) the end of 2014. The core curriculum includes the main objectives and core content, and represents an outline to be collaboratively developed for local curricula by the districts and municipalities (Vitikka et al., 2012). It functions as a tool for developing a shared understanding of the values and aims of teaching and learning, and as a basis upon which teachers can build their pedagogical practices (Vitikka et al., 2012). The local education providers in Finland have autonomy in organizing education. In the reform process, they are responsible for constructing new local curricula within the framework of the reformed national core curriculum. Generally, the local curriculum is constructed as a joint curriculum for a district or for an individual municipality. The district-level curriculum is developed in collaboration between municipal actors and school staff. The district-level working groups construct a local curriculum that emphasizes the core curriculum content from a local perspective, taking into account contextual factors such as local needs and traditions (Finnish National Board of Education, 2014). The local curricula were to be finished by the spring of 2016 and implementation in schools began in stages in the fall of 2016. Quality, equity and trust are some of the basic values on which school development is based in Finland (see Sahlberg, 2015). Accordingly, the core curriculum process aims to promote agreement between educational stakeholders at different levels on goals and expectations regarding the curriculum reform (Pietarinen et al., 2017), and the purpose of the local autonomy of the curriculum implementation is to facilitate the commitment of local stakeholders (Vitikka et al., 2012). Hence, coherence-making in the curriculum reform process is particularly important in the Finnish educational system, which emphasizes the autonomy of schools and teachers and relies on them to engage in active school development work to put the national curriculum reform into practice. Aim of the study The aim of this study was to explore stateand district-level stakeholders’perceptions of curriculum coherence and school impact in the context of Finnish national curriculum reform. Subgroups of stakeholders were identified based on the perceived curriculum coherence and school impact using latent profile analysis (LPA). It has been suggested that a certain level of agreement about a curriculum’s meaning, goals and effects between the state and district levels is key to facilitating curriculum reform implementation and promoting school-level ownership and development (see, e.g. Dutro et al., 2002; Fullan, 2007; Timperley and Parr, 2005). Accordingly, the following hypotheses were tested: H1. Different profiles based on perceived curriculum coherence, consisting of consistency of the intended direction, integrative approach to teaching and learning, alignment between objectives, content and assessments, and perceived school impact can be detected. H2. The state-level administrators in charge of constructing the national core curriculum, and the district-level stakeholders involved in the development of local curricula on the basis of the national core curriculum, differ from each other in terms of the profile memberships (e.g. Desimone, 2006; Spillane, 1998). Methods Participants The participants comprised two cohorts: Cohort I: state-level stakeholders responsible for the development of the core curriculum, and Cohort II: district-level stakeholders involved in the construction of the local curricula. Cohort I: the state-level stakeholders (n¼116) were accountable for constructing the national core curriculum in Finland as members of state-level working groups. The participants were comprised of school teachers (n¼51, 44 percent), university teachers 214 JEA 57,3 Downloaded by Tampere University At 03:16 06 June 2019 (PT) (n¼30, 26 percent), association representatives (n¼7, 6 percent) and officials from the Finnish National Agency for Education and Ministry of Education and Culture (n¼22, 19 percent). The data were collected in 2014 while the working groups were finalizing the national core curriculum document. The majority of respondents were women (n¼85, 73 percent) and the minority men (n¼29, 25 percent). For 75 percent (n¼87) of the participants, this was the first time they had been involved in the core curriculum reform’s state-level working groups. The mean age of the participants was 51.53 years (SD ¼7.82; Min./Max. ¼32/65). Cohort II: the district-level stakeholders (n¼550) were responsible for the local curriculum development as members of district-level curriculum development working groups in 12 case districts in Finland. The municipal education providers were responsible for forming the working groups, and the process was similar in all the case districts; however, the case districts organized the local curriculum process in different ways, varying from collaboration among several neighboring municipalities to carrying out the reform work within an individual municipality. The participants were from 54 municipalities in Finland, representing 17 percent of all Finnish municipalities (54/320[1]), and included urban and rural municipalities of different size throughout Finland. Hence, the case districts represented different ways of organizing the local curriculum process as well as different types of municipalities in Finland. Most of the participants were teachers (n¼403, 73.3 percent), school leaders and principals (n¼101, 18.4 percent), and also included other school staff such as student counselors, and municipal administrators and coordinators (n¼28, 5.1 percent). The data were collected from the district-level working groups during the spring of 2016 when the local curricula were being finalized. As in the state-level group, the majority of respondents at the district level were women (n¼408, 74 percent) and the minority men (n¼131, 24 percent). At the district level, 61 percent (n¼335) of participants had previous experience in curriculum development work. The mean age of the participants was 46.03 years (SD ¼8.81; Min./Max. ¼26/71). Measures Both participant cohorts completed the Curriculum Reform Inventory (Pietarinen et al., 2017; Sullanmaa et al., submitted), including the same measures for curriculum coherence and school impact. The survey and measurements were developed for the research project (Pietarinen et al., 2017), and the scales were initially pre-tested and commented on by two experienced stakeholders involved in the core curriculum process. The curriculum coherence scale (including 3 factors and 17 items) was designed to measure the perceived core curriculum coherence in terms of the core curriculum’s goals, purpose, content and the development of teaching and learning (Pietarinen et al., 2017). It includes three factors (Sullanmaa et al., submitted): first, the consistency of the intended direction (CON, six items, α¼0.87), that entails clarifying and supporting the roles and duties of the teacher and school as well as successfully summing-up the most important goals; second, the integrative approach to teaching and learning (INT, four items, α¼0.74), that includes encouraging teachers to use activating teaching methods and assessment that supports learning, as well as supporting the harmonization of teaching; and third, the alignment between objectives, content and assessment (ALI, seven items, α¼0.84), that includes continuity within subjects, acknowledging pupils’age range, as well as the alignment between goals, subjects, content, teaching methods and assessment. The school impact scale (SCI, six items, α¼0.88) measures the perceived impact of the curriculum reform process on further school-level development work (Pietarinen et al., 2017). The scale used in this study was adapted from the scale developed by Pietarinen et al. (2017). It entails, for instance, maintaining active development work in schools, committing teachers to the development work and directing the development work to resolve problems observed in the daily life of the school. All items on the scales were rated on a seven-point 215 Stateand district-level stakeholders Downloaded by Tampere University At 03:16 06 June 2019 (PT) Likert scale ranging from 1 (fully disagree) to 7 (fully agree) (see the Appendix for scales and items). The percentage of missing values per item ranged from 0.8 to 3.6. Measurement invariance between the two participant cohorts –state-level stakeholders (n¼116) and district-level stakeholders (n¼550) –was tested in terms of the curriculum coherence and school impact scales. The configural model and the models for metric and scalar invariance were compared by examining changes in CFI, TLI and RMSEA (Chen, 2007; Cheung and Rensvold, 2002; Wang and Wang, 2012). Full metric invariance was supported for the curriculum coherence and school impact scales across the two participant cohorts. Partial scalar invariance with two non-invariant intercepts in the curriculum coherence scale and two non-invariant intercepts in the school impact scale was also supported. The invariance of factor loadings and most of the intercepts was considered a sufficient basis for the further LPA (Byrne et al., 1989; Cheung and Rensvold, 2002). The scores for each factor were obtained by calculating the mean of the factor indicators. The correlations and descriptive statistics for the mean scores of curriculum coherence and school impact for each participant cohort are shown in Table I. The mean scores of the three components of curriculum coherence and school impact seemed to be slightly higher among the state-level stakeholders (Table I). In both participant cohorts, the integrative approach to teaching and learning was perceived as the highest, and consistency of the intended direction as the lowest, of the dimensions of core curriculum coherence. Among the state-level stakeholders, the minimum mean score value for the alignment between objectives content, and assessment was rather high compared to the other curriculum coherence components. Correlations between the curriculum coherence components and school impact were positive and high, as expected. Analysis A LPA was employed to detect subgroups of individuals based on their perceptions of the core curriculum and the reform process in terms of curriculum coherence and school impact. LPA is a person-centered approach focusing on the response patterns of individuals instead of relations among variables (Berlin et al., 2014; Muthén and Muthén, 1998–2015). It is used CON INT ALI SCI State-level stakeholders (n ¼116) Consistency of the intended direction (CON) Integrative approach to teaching and learning (INT) 0.73** Alignment between objectives, content and assessment (ALI) 0.69** 0.59** School impact (SCI) 0.72** 0.72** 0.59** Mean 5.04 5.45 5.32 5.04 SD 0.99 0.88 0.73 1.04 Min. 1.33 1.75 3.29 1.00 Max. 6.83 7.00 6.71 7.00 District-level stakeholders (n ¼550) Consistency of the intended direction (CON) Integrative approach to teaching and learning (INT) 0.61** Alignment between objectives, content and assessment (ALI) 0.69** 0.66** School impact (SCI) 0.64** 0.62** 0.57** Mean 4.34 5.23 4.87 4.76 SD 1.00 0.86 0.80 0.96 Min. 1.17 1.75 2.00 1.33 Max. 6.83 7.00 7.00 7.00 Note: **po0.01 Table I. Correlations and descriptive statistics of curriculum coherence and school impact scales for each participant cohort 216 JEA 57,3 Downloaded by Tampere University At 03:16 06 June 2019 (PT) to identify unobserved subpopulations, i.e., latent classes of individuals based on their observed response patterns (Berlin et al., 2014). More specifically, LPA was used in this study to explore the variation in the educational stakeholders’perceptions, and to examine whether the two participant cohorts differed in terms of their profile memberships. The analyses were conducted using Mplus version 7.4 and MLR estimator, which produces maximum likelihood estimates with standard errors and χ 2 test statistics that are robust to non-normality (Muthén and Muthén, 1998–2015). The observed mean scores for the three components of curriculum coherence, and for the school impact scale, were used as the indicators of the latent profiles. The indicator variables were allowed to correlate within classes. An exploratory approach to obtain the best statistically and conceptually suitable latent class solution was used (Berlin et al., 2014) and data were fitted to models estimating one through six classes (Table II). Akaike (AIC), Bayesian (BIC) and adjusted Bayesian (aBIC) information-based measures of fit, as well as Vuong–Lo–Mendell–Rubin (VLMR), Lo–Mendell–Rubin (aLRT) and bootstrapped (BLRT) likelihood ratio tests were used to determine the optimal number of classes (Berlin et al., 2014; Nylund et al., 2007). In addition, latent class probabilities and entropy statistics were used to examine the clarity of the different solutions. After identifying the most suitable latent profile solution, the three-step approach in Mplus (Asparouhov and Muthén, 2014) was used to investigate the differences between stateand district-level participants by adding the auxiliary variable, i.e., participant cohort, as a predictor of the latent class variable in logistic regression. The three-step approach considers the measurement error in the classification (Asparouhov and Muthén, 2014) and produces more reliable results than conducting comparisons using the most likely classifications as an observed variable. Results Latent profiles Based on all fit indices and likelihood ratio tests, the two-class solution fit the data significantly better than the one-class model. According to the VLMR and aLRT likelihood ratio tests, the model fit did not significantly improve with the addition of any subsequent classes after the two-class model. The AIC and aBIC indices showed increasing fit with every additional class, whereas the BIC and the BLRT test showed the five-class model to fit the data best. However, the largest class, including 538–555 participants, remained relatively stable from twoto six-class solutions, and therefore the additional classes did not add substantive value. The two-class solution was thus considered the more parsimonious, and as the VLMR and aLRT likelihood ratio tests showed no further improvement in model fit with additional classes, the two-class model was chosen for further analysis. The entropy statistic of 0.76 in the two-class solution was considered adequate. The profiles are shown in Figure 1. The first latent profile culled from the analysis was high coherence and impact. It was the most common profile among the participants in the entire data with an 83 percent share (n¼555). Participants in the high coherence and impact profile perceived the steering core curriculum document as coherent in terms of the three curriculum coherence components, and at the same time expected it to have a rather strong impact on school-level development. The second latent profile lower consistency of intended direction and impact represented 17 percent of the participants (n¼111). 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The scales and items for curriculum coherence and school impact Scales* Curriculum coherence Consistency of the intended direction (In) the national core curriculum […] Con11: clarifies the entity of a teacher’s job Con12: supports the teaching of the essential material in various subjects Con13: delimits the duty of the school in a sensible manner Con14: is clear and well organized Con15: successfully sums up the most important goals for the operation of the school Con16: constitutes an aligned foundation for the local curricular work Integrative approach to teaching and learning (In) the national core curriculum […] Int21: encourages teachers to use activating and engaging teaching methods 225 Stateand district-level stakeholders Downloaded by Tampere University At 03:16 06 June 2019 (PT) Int22: encourages teachers to use assessment methods that support learning Int23: supports the harmonization of teaching Int24: the general section creates something new Alignment between objectives, content and assessments (In) the national core curriculum […] Ali31: the goals are in line with the assessment criteria Ali32: a subject constitutes an integral continuum Ali33: the goals are in line with contents Ali34: takes a pupil’s age range into consideration Ali35: descriptions of teaching methods in various subjects are in harmony with the general goals Ali36: constitutes an integral whole Ali37: the goals of the general section are also well in evidence in the subject section School impact The work to reform the curriculum […] Sci1: maintains active development work at schools Sci2: commits teachers to working on developing the school Sci3: helps the school community identify the core tasks Sci4: directs development work to resolve problems observed in the daily life of the school Sci5: helps people develop solutions that work at the local level for organizing teaching Sci6: promotes the resolution of many problems related to basic education at the local level *Translated from Finnish. Corresponding author Jenni Sullanmaa can be contacted at: [email protected]i For instructions on how to order reprints of this article, please visit our website: www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/licensing/reprints.htm Or contact us for further details: [email protected] 226 JEA 57,3 Downloaded by Tampere University At 03:16 06 June 2019 (PT)