Sabah English language teachers’ concerns in implementing a curricular innovation

Abstract

Teachers are likely to resist change, unless they are convinced that it significantly benefits themselves and their students. Since teachers play an important role in the effective implementation of an innovation, it is therefore necessary to investigate the nature of teachers' concerns in the technology-enhanced innovation adoption process. The main purpose of the study was to examine and identify the "concerns" of English language teacher teaching in Smart Schools in Sabah, in relation to the implementation of the Smart School Curriculum (SSC) in their classrooms. Teacher "concerns" is measured using the Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM) where "concerns" is defined as the composite representation of the feelings, preoccupation, thought, and consideration given to a particular issue or task. Data was mainly elicited using a questionnaire, supplemented by open-ended responses elicited asynchronously. An adaptation of the Stages of Concern Questionnaire (SoCQ) based on the CBAM was administered to all the English language teachers teaching in the five Smart Schools in Sabah. According to the findings, the concerns of the teachers largely focused on the "self" and "task" stages of the Stages of Concerns (SoC) model. Findings derived from supplementary open-ended elicitation procedure revealed that teachers were concerned with the processes and tasks involved in implementing the innovation such as those relating to their daily teaching duties, the best use of ICT in teaching and learning, scheduling, time, and organization.