Probing Teachers' (Dis-) Satisfaction with a Curriculum by Means of Unstructured Interviews.

The aim of this study was to develop a method to accurately assess teachers' views concerning a relatively new secondary school agrobiological curriculum "Sciences of Life and Agriculture" (SLA). It is now well accepted that teachers do not react to any "objective reality" (Spectro, 1984) but tend to develop their own perception of the reality in which they operate (Spectro, 1984; Shulman, 1979). The perceptions, beliefs and concems of the teachers seem to influence their performance and attitudes at all the stages of curriculum implementation (Fuller & Bown, 1975; Shulman, 1979: Hurd et al., 1980; Munby, 1984; Crocker & Banfleld, 1986). Accordingly, in order to improve the effectiveness of the relations and of the communication (in-service activities) between the "steering committee" of the curriculum (representatives of the developing team and inspectors of the Ministry of Education) and the experienced implementing teachers, we endeavoured to uncover the perceptions of such teachers about (in Olson's terms, 1983) the "context" in which they work, as expressed in "the language that teachers use in this context".