Contributing To Curriculum Implementation Through Educational Knowledge Mobilization

In response to the curriculum changes,educational leaders and practitioners have to adjust themselves in any aspects caused by the changing,especially in the classroom implementation level.In Indonesia,the current school curriculum is Curriculum 2013 which had been revised and updated until 2015.Concerning the curriculum change and implementation,universities having Faculty of Education have to take part in it.To achieve the functions,higher education in Indonesia has three areas of concern,namely concerns related to(1)education and teaching,(2)research,and(3)community service.Those three elements should have a synergic and mutual relation.To make a good connection of the school and university,there are some situations where those two institutions meet.Therefore,there should be educational knowledge mobilization(KMb)in the interaction between the teacher and the teacher educators.In that interaction,there are exchange of knowledge from both sides.However,based on some studies done by the researchers,among others by Ball(2012),Hemsley-Brown&Sharp,(2003)and Kennedy(1997),knowledge mobilization is not easy to happen.Currently,there is no details and elaborative available documents about the detailed process and impacts of educational knowledge mobilization in Indonesia.KMb is not just a matter of exchanging knowledge.Rather it entails many efforts to mobilize the research results into practical things for practitioners.The end outcome will be a better practice of the curriculum implementation in the schools in different levels and better students’ learning results.This study digs out more the pattern of relation between university and schools especially in the perspective of curriculum implementation.It deals with how the educational research results may help the school teachers to deal with the current curriculum,meaning to understand,to change point of view,to implement the new understanding of the curriculum in their classroom instructions.It also tries to find out how the community service gives a room to educational KMb.Specifically,there are three research questions,namely(1)What are the current educational knowledge mobilizations found in the Indonesian educational fields?,(2)How is educational knowledge mobilization conducted in the schools-university partnerships?,(3)What are the effects of educational knowledge mobilization to teaching practice in schools and to the university?To construct a framework of the research,there were some related concepts and theories used to support the research.They were theory on teachers’ knowledge and professional development,curriculum and curriculum implementation,educational knowledge mobilization,school university partnership,previous research on related topics and current Indonesian schooling and teacher conditions.This research employed the mixed method,to be specific an embedded design mixed method.In gathering and analyzing the data,the researcher triangulated the research instruments.The data were mainly differentiated into three areas.The first was general data from the perceptions of the school teachers(n=141)obtained from the Questionnaire B and the teacher educators(n=79)gained through the Questionnaire A.The second was data from the training and workshop for teachers facilitated by one of the higher institutions in Indonesia.The data were gained through an interview and documents.The third one was the professor-go-to-school assignment program.The data were gained through observation,interview,focus group discussion,and secondary data.The first finding was related to the research question number one.Based on the major KMb strategies proposed by Cooper,Levin,&Campbell(2009),there are three types,namely research-based products,events,and networks.The research revealed that all those three types were found in the Indonesian context.The most frequent occurrence was the first was the research-based products and the second type was professional events.The next model was the networks.There were many available research products in a form of supplementary materials,media,journal articles and research results.The teacher educators mostly shared the research findings by writing a journal article.There were also many educational events such as seminar,and training where the teacher educators shared their research results.The research also showed the research sharing in the professional community network.Concerning their relational interaction of the research use,the educational KMb models revealed from the research are categorized based on Nutley,Jung,&Walter(2008).They are research-based practitioner model,embedded-research model,and organizational excellence model.Those three types were revealed in the research.The most frequently occurring models was the organizational excellence model where the organization contributed to the success of the research result use.The next model was embedded-research model,where the research results were translated in a more practical results,e.g.as in teaching guidelines and given as a top down model.The last was the research-based practitioner models,where educational practitioners actively accessed the research results.There was a small number of the respondents who tried to find and read the relevant educational research funding during their efforts to improve their understanding of the current curriculum implementation.The second finding was the process of educational knowledge mobilization.The process of KMb included the stages involved and roles of different people in the KMb process,including the roles of educational knowledge brokers.The stages were adapted from the stages found in the toolkit knowledge mobilization throughout the research process(NCE,2015).The process followed six adapted stages,namely making the objectives,considering the audience,deciding what to share,sharing,doing evaluation,and doing follow up activities.In terms of the evaluation during the educational KMb process,based on the results of the students learning,there is an improvement on their results of the learning.During the process of educational KMb,there were three contexts involved,context of production,use,and mediation(Levin,2013).This research revealed findings related to different roles of the involved parties,who among others are the government,the university,the teacher educators,and the school teachers.The brokers of educational knowledge became an important part in the process of educational KMb.The last focus of the research is related to the effects of educational knowledge mobilization to teaching practice in schools and university.The effects of educational KMb in school is firstly on the teachers.There were three areas affected,namely teachers’ knowledge,teaching documents,and teaching skills.There are many good effects of the educational KMb processes for the schools especially for the students.The students could express themselves more freely when given a better facilitation,became more proactive in doing the assignments and had a good learning initiative.Also,the students gradually gained more confidence in using the English language in the English class.In terms of level of engagement,they became more confident,active,engaged more in learning and gained a good learning motivation.The research also revealed that they had higher curiosity.In relation to the learning results,they improved their achievement in the topics learned,and successfully achieved the goal of the learning.Educational KMb also had some effects on the university.The teacher educators gain general understanding of the school conditions in Indonesia across different areas,and even different school levels.At the same time,they found the challenges in the classroom teaching and collaborative management.Further,teacher educators obtained real classroom experience in the school.The experience enriched them and became source of teaching materials in the university to prepare the student teachers.Some recommendations were given related to gaining organizational supports and professional community activity in the process of educational KMb.For the further research,it was recommended to examine the educational KMb happening the longer period of time and in different level of schools.