Phi Delta Kappan

Editor in Chief Kathleen Vail introduces the Spring 2026 issue of Kappan on Curriculum and Instruction.

News, quotes, and past insights related to the theme of the Spring 2026 issue of Kappan: “Curriculum and Instruction”

Some curriculum requirements ask teachers to instruct students in ways that go against their beliefs about effective instruction. In this article, the authors share their findings from a review of literature about teachers’ principled resistance to curricular control. They provide examples from the literature of teachers resisting curricular mandates when they believe they do not serve their students’ best interests. These teachers reject policy mandates through strategic compliance, strategic compromise, strategic redefinition, overt and outright resistance, and leaving. Implications are provided for administrators who seek to maintain instructional cohesion on their campuses and for teachers who experience value conflicts with the instructional mandates they receive.

As part of a statewide initiative to shift elementary mathematics teaching in Michigan toward more child-centered instruction, teachers overwhelmingly reported that a major obstacle to improving their practice was time. Through interviews and videos of teaching, Kaellen Williams, Mallory Mattimore-Malan, and Amy Noelle Parks analyzed how teachers’ concerns about time shaped their experiences implementing pedagogies designed to center children’s thinking in mathematics. They found that teachers felt pressured to curtail children’s thinking and mathematical exploration to meet time demands, sacrificing responsiveness to children and impeding instructional change. They suggest strategies for educational leaders to alleviate the pressures of time for teachers and their children.

American teachers spend far more time on direct instruction than teachers in other countries, leaving little room for tasks like planning, collaboration, and student support. Policy makers have proposed numerous time-saving reforms, yet teachers rarely have a voice in assessing the viability of approaches. Drawing on a national survey and focus group, Ashley J. Carey, Breanne Lucy, and Jack Schneider examine teacher perspectives on five major reforms. Across approaches, teachers saw benefits but also significant hidden costs, including added coordination and reduced autonomy. Their findings suggest that meaningful progress on teacher time requires confronting the structure of the school day itself, not simply rearranging teachers’ remaining minutes.

In recent years, states throughout the U.S. have started mandating the incorporation of playful learning in public schools. However, translating policy into practice remains a significant challenge. Researchers from the Active Playful Learning (APL) project highlight how their one-on-one coaching program supports teachers in implementing small, sustainable pedagogical shifts that foster playful and meaningful learning environments. Grounded in a three-part framework, APL emphasizes student agency to help children develop crucial 21st-century competencies. Using real coach examples, they show how APL is laying the groundwork in four U.S. states to bring playful learning to scale in diverse educational contexts.

Students often report that school isn’t engaging, but certain experiences stand out as sparking their curiosity and interest in learning. Zachary Herrmann, Catherine Zhang, and Gillian Daar investigated alongside college students the K-12 learning experiences that had a long-term effect on them. These experiences fell into four categories: Purposeful Moments, Planned Journeys, Spontaneous Moments, and Fortuitous Journeys. While some of these experiences require deliberate teacher planning, others require creating conditions that spark and support students’ curiosity.

Educators hope to cultivate citizens who will positively impact their communities and the larger world, yet this goal can feel out of reach due to the many challenges present in education. Drawing on place-based pedagogy, Hear, Here, an oral history and storytelling project, engages students in local history and diverse perspectives through cross-disciplinary experiences. Sara Pendleton, Lisa Lenarz, and Ariel Beaujot describe how the project provides students with opportunities to connect familiar places with broader cultural, political, historical, and social contexts and consciousness. This approach offers a replicable model that forms a bridge between local and global, while also positioning students as knowledge creators actively engaged in their communities.

While more schools and districts are turning to evidence-based curricula vetted by their states or outside expert reviewers, that’s not necessarily translating into student achievement gains. Education researcher Sara Pixley explains that the problem lies with how school systems are implementing these new resources. Too often teachers aren’t receiving aligned professional development, support staff and administrators lack an understanding of or access to the materials, and instructional time isn’t used strategically. Pixley highlights the barriers to effective implementation of high-quality instructional materials and discusses how to knock those barriers down so student outcomes improve.

Many states are seeking to increase curriculum use in public preschool programs. But the field lacks tools to identify and implement high-quality preschool curriculum. In response, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine have issued a new report, A New Vision for High-Quality Preschool Curriculum, which identifies multiple elements of preschool curriculum quality and offers domain- and content-focused guidance. In this article, Jeanne L. Reid & Erin O’Leary describe the elements of curricular quality identified in the report, offer ways that decision-makers can use its guidance to make informed curriculum choices, and note several field-based initiatives to support the use of high-quality preschool curricula.

Educators Rising helps address teacher shortages by introducing high school students to the teaching profession. This introduction to the program’s curriculum discusses the origins of the curriculum, how it is developed, and the benefits it brings to students interested in exploring education careers.

James Conant envisioned the American comprehensive high school as a democratic institution that would bring together students from diverse backgrounds in a shared civic experience. Dustin Hornbeck builds on John Rury’s 2002 critique to argue that the high school has not just fragmented but shifted toward an “outsourced” model. Drawing on both historical context and current developments, he explores how proliferating curricular choice pressures have reshaped the high school landscape. Rather than serving as a civic commons, today’s high school increasingly functions as a delivery system for individualized credentials.

Teachers are seeing growing numbers of students with mental health disorders in their classrooms. Many have anxiety or trauma, which can make it difficult for them to engage in academic work. If an activity provokes anxiety or triggers a student’s trauma, they may disengage from the activity and engage in disruptive behavior. Jessica Minahan explains that negative thoughts could be at the root of students’ disengagement and dysregulated behavior. Traditional activities to help students regulate their behavior, such as sensory breaks, may be counterproductive for these students, because they cause them to dwell on negative thoughts. Negative thoughts rising from anxiety or trauma may be greatest when students engage in independent work, without teacher support. Setting students up for success with independent work can help break the cycle that leads to disengagement and dysregulated behavior. If a student is stuck in negative thoughts, an activity to distract them from the negative thoughts can help them re-engage.

Educational spaces often favor extroverted traits, marginalizing introverted students and educators. Sara Schnoor explores the impact of introversion bias in schools and highlights introverts’ strengths, including deep thinking, strategic decision-making, and attentive listening. She offers practical strategies for fostering inclusion of introverts, such as redefining participation, creating reflective spaces, and recognizing diverse leadership styles. By addressing these biases, educators and administrators can cultivate learning environments that honor all personality types, ultimately enriching school culture and student success.

Reforms intended to help at-risk students have not had the desired results. For many students, the root problem is a lack of a sense of understanding how to solve problems. Stanley Pogrow explains how the Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) project helped students build a sense of understanding by engaging them in regular thoughtful conversations. While the program targeted Title I students, it was also effective for students diagnosed with learning disabilities. Today’s educators can use the lessons from HOTS to develop similar programs or incorporate regular Socratic questioning into their lessons. A pre-algebra program called Supermath shows how educators can use similar strategies to help students develop a sense of understanding of math concepts.

A lack of coordination and athleticism led Tracy Bare to give up on sports when she was in fifth grade. But when, as a teacher, she was invited to participate in a student-faculty basketball game, she realized that her students couldn’t give up when school was hard so maybe it would be good for her to try something she knew she wasn’t good at. After years of lessons and regular practice, she’s still not good at basketball, but she knows what it feels like to struggle at something and keep going without much success, and she’s better able to relate to students who have that experience with school.

School takes up a large part of people’s lives. David F. Labaree argues that it’s too much. Young people have little unstructured time to learn on their own, without close adult supervision. In addition, the skills required for success in school, such as compliance and avoiding risk, can limit students’ ability to innovate in the future.

In this regular Kappan column, Starr Sackstein responds to educators’ work-related questions. In this issue, a reader who feels comfortable collecting data about her students’ performance isn’t sure how to use that data effectively. Sackstein offers a series of suggestions for making checks for understanding more effective and less challenging.

A curriculum is like a recipe. Different teachers can follow the same formula and get different results. Connie Hamilton explains that the curriculum is the what, but instruction is the how for reaching learning targets. Timing, engagement, learning tasks, and checks for understanding shape how students experience the curriculum. She offers suggestions for how teachers can adjust each of these instructional elements to improve outcomes.

PDK International’s new CEO introduces herself to members.

The 2025 PDK Poll found that a majority of Americans support some sort of cellphone ban for students in school.