How teachers’ reading of competency-oriented national mathematics curriculum documents relates to their sense-making of reform messages

Although implementing a competency-oriented national mathematics curriculum is a global trend, limited studies have explored how teachers read their national mathematics curriculum documents and make sense of the competency-oriented reform messages present in these documents. This study investigated the patterns of teachers’ reading of the competency-oriented national mathematics curriculum documents and how the reading relates to the teachers’ sense-making of the reform messages in the documents. Participants included 18 in-service mathematics teachers who took part in a graduate course designed to support interpreting the recently revised competency-oriented national mathematics curriculum documents in Korea. Content analysis of the teachers’ writings regarding their interpretations of the documents revealed three types of reading: identifying, clarifying, and extending competency-oriented curriculum messages. Reading accompanied by ‘clarifying’ formed a dialogic relationship between the teachers and the curriculum, leading to accommodation of competency-oriented messages. Conversely, reading accompanied by ‘identifying’ but without ‘clarifying’ led to a monologic relationship between the teachers and the curriculum, resulting in the assimilation of competency-oriented messages. We conclude by suggesting that teachers’ nuanced interpretations of competency-oriented national mathematics curriculum documents may contribute to professionalism in handling the curriculum.