All a question of the goal? Re-tracing (mis)alignments between teachers’ implementations of curriculum material and intended learning goals in the context of early childhood educator training in Germany

<jats:p xml:lang="en">Curriculum material is often designed to address content-specific intended learning goals. However, research indicates that teachers’ personal goals may cause misalignments between their implementation of curriculum material and its intended learning goals. This study aims to investigate misalignments between teachers’ implementation of curriculum material and its intended learning goals and to which extent they are caused by teachers’ personal goals. To reach this aim, a qualitative study was conducted to examine how eight vocational school teachers implemented the learning activity “How many?” suggested for the initial training of early childhood educators on the topic of set perception and determination of cardinality. Each participant provided a lesson plan and self-recorded lesson video on the topic of set perception and determination of cardinality. In addition, participants were interviewed on how they used the provided curriculum material for designing their lessons and their potential reasons to adapt or omit “How many?”. To evaluate their lesson design’s alignment with the activity’s intended learning goals, the participants' lesson plans were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Triangulation of the findings with the interview data revealed that only one participant fully adopted the intended learning goals as her own and implemented the activity completely in line with its intended learning goals. Meanwhile, the remaining participants’ personal goals, such as reducing math anxiety, seemed to cause misalignments regarding the intended learning goals. The study's results detail further constraints and affordances to the alignment between teachers’ lesson designs and learning goals intended by curriculum material. It is followed that it is central to support teachers in adopting intended learning goals as their personal goals. Otherwise, teachers’ classroom implementation of curriculum material may not suffice to reach desired outcomes.</jats:p>