LITERATURE REVIEW:
THE APPLICATIONS OF THE
CONCERNS-BASED ADOPTION MODEL (CBAM)
IN K-12 EDUCATION
ISTC 741
Dr. Xxxxxxxx
Fall 2007
Joseph Student
December 16, 2007

The Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM) was formulated by Hall and Hord in 1987 (Slough, 1999b). The model came out of an approach in which “the dominant strategy for school improvement hinged on facilitating the implementation of discrete innovations in curriculum and instruction…” (Anderson, 1997, p. 332). CBAM was designed to measure and to facilitate innovation and change among instructors.
The model features three categories – Stages of Concern (SoC), Levels of Use
(LoU), and Innovation Configurations (IC). The Stages of Concern are the following:
Stage 0, Awareness; Stage 1, Informational; Stage 2, Personal; Stage 3, Management;
Stage 4, Consequence; Stage 5, Collaboration; and Stage 6, Refocusing. The Levels of
Use are the following: Level 0, Nonuse; Level I, Orientation; Level II, Preparation; Level
III, Mechanical; Level IVA, Routine use; Level IVB, Refinement; Level V, Integration; and Level VI, Renewal. The Innovations Category does not feature specific classifications, as it is analyzed through surveys, interviews, or observations (Anderson,
1997).
Furthermore, to measure SoC, the Stages of Concerns Questionnaire (SoC Q) was developed. This is a 35-item Likert scale questionnaire designed to measure teacher concerns. (Chamblee & Slough, 2004) Along with this, an Open Ended Concerns
Statement procedure and other interview strategies were outlined. To measure LoU, a
Levels of Use Interview was designed along with a “branching interview” (Anderson,
1997, p. 336). Finally, the Change Facilitator Style Questionnaire (CFSQ) was constructed so that a holistic picture could be drawn from the examination process
(Chamblee & Slough, 2004).
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The student lets the reader know how the paper will be divided. Note the use of transition
The literature on CBAM since its inception has shown a number of discoveries in its application. First, teacher psychology, school climate, school leadership, and physical layout can all influence how well innovation spreads among teachers and how much of an impact that training through a CBAM program can make. Second, patterns of technology advancement are not predictable, and patterns of faculty development are not linear, while some scholars have noted that CBAM assumes stable innovation and linearity in instructor advancement. Third, CBAM presents challenges in its application in other countries and cultures. The student identifies his first category. Notice that the name of the category is centered on the page.
School Climate, School Leadership, Psychological State, and Physical Layout
The psychological profiles of instructors, the school climate, the type of school leadership, and the physical layout of the school building influence the spread of innovation among teachers, and the impact that CBAM can make in improving the use of technology and innovation among instructors is helped or hindered by these factors.
McKibbin and Joyce (1980) conducted a study on the influence of psychological state on teacher innovation. They conclude that the psychological states and the personalities of instructors were extremely important in developing in-service programs.
Evans and Hopkins, in their study using CBAM as a model, build upon the importance of the psychological state of the instructor in accomplishing change and innovation.
However, they add that school climate should be added to this equation. They note that more research is needed to link these two dynamics. They conclude that an “open, democratic school” climate has a significant positive influence on innovation and the development of ideas for the classroom. (Hopkins, 1990, p. 42).
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LITERATURE REVIEW: CBAM IN K-12 EDUCATION
The study conducted by Evans and Hopkins analyzed “school climate, the psychological state of the teachers, and levels of use regarding the individual teacher’s use of educational ideas” (Hopkins, 1990, p. 48). They found that the majority of teachers’ psychological profiles show that they prefer “slow, incremental” change
(Hopkins, 1990, p. 55). This characteristic, when juxtaposed with other features of the curriculum and the school, posed interesting problems for innovation and diffusion of ideas. They profiled various schools that had a range of climates. Nonetheless, the mean score for school climate was 97.2 (Hopkins, 1990). Therefore, most schools in the study did lean toward a democratic system of management, one that was “fairly open to innovation…” (Hopkins, 1990, p. 51). However, even in such schools, “actual use was hampered by the lack of an effective communication system and by teacher isolation and classroom autonomy” (Hopkins, 1990, p. 51). Hopkins goes on to maintain that, while the teachers were progressive in their teaching philosophies, their psychological profiles indicating a tendency for sequential thinking made it difficult for them to change their patterns. (Hopkins, 1990).
The combination of these characteristics rendered teachers’ patterns in innovation and development of ideas to be mechanical, with little regard for pedagogical considerations. Specifically, they found that forty-seven percent of the instructors were incorporating ideas at the mechanical level of use, 3 percent were at the level of refinement, 24 percent were at the level of preparation, 3 percent were at the level of orientation, and 3 percent were at the level of non-use (Evans & Hopkins, 1988).
Overall, while the school climate was typically characterized by an open-ended, democratic system, the lack of coordination among instructors and their psychological
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LITERATURE REVIEW: CBAM IN K-12 EDUCATION characteristics perhaps counterbalanced this climate and produced a scenario that was not conducive to innovation or change.
Vandenberghe’s study of innovation in Belgium reinforces this notion of climate and its relationship to school leadership, as it shows the influence of the principal in nurturing faculty innovation and change. Belgium, because of its three main divisions of
Flanders, Walloon, and the city of Brussels and its suburbs, has three ministers of education (Vandenberghe, 1992). It has a history of centralized control of educational policies in each region. However, recent laws have allowed for more autonomy in
Belgium that promotes decentralization and less central administrative control.
Nonetheless, in the midst of this increasing decentralization, a number of activities are still coordinated by the central administration. These conflicting patterns have produced confusion, and the resulting impact on the role of a principal has been profound
(Vandenberghe, 1992). Vandenberghe states that “unclear goals, ill-defined expectations, constantly changing requirements and administrative rules” cause the principals to feel the need to “justify permanently the general and specific decisions they make”
(Vandenberghe, 1992, p. 5).
In this context of conflicting patterns, Vandenberghe (1983) conducted a CBAMbased study in Belgium that emphasized stages of concern among instructors as the country was embarking on large-scale projects of change. He notes that personal concerns and informational concerns ranked very high among participants.
Vandenberghe attributes the high ranking in these areas to the large-scale innovation projects that the system was undertaking, many of which had unclear goals.
(Vandenberghe, 1983) His conclusions support the notion that if guidelines are
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LITERATURE REVIEW: CBAM IN K-12 EDUCATION confusing or unclear, teachers reflect this in their high scores for Stage 2 in the SoC scale.
A high level of anxiety characterizes faculty innovation in such a scenario.
Thus, Vandenberghe’s findings are consistent with those of Evans and Hopkins with regard to the role of climate in affecting innovation and of the principal in nurturing innovation among instructors. Evans and Hopkins, in fact, note that in their study some schools were perceived as providing excellent support for instructors, some were characterized as being “dogmatic in behaviour and reluctant to hand over authority,” and some had leadership that simply “tended to adopt a low profile” (Evans and Hopkins,
1988, p. 223). Evans and Hopkins conclude as well the connection between the support perceived from above and the innovativeness of the instructors in the school system.
Marsh (1987) reinforces this argument. He conducted a study of stages of concern and levels of use of a particular social studies curriculum in an Australian elementary school. He describes the climate of the school as friendly and open, with an effective principal who maintains informal and positive interactions with teachers
(Marsh, 1987). The study showed several significant patterns, one of which I focus on in this review. The SoU scores for Marsh’s study, as was the case for Vandenberghe’s study, showed that stage 2, Personal, represented the category with the highest score.
Marsh echoes the sentiments of the authors of the CBAM model that “teachers having
Stage 2 concerns have major uncertainties about an innovation, especially concerns about the status, reward, and potential or actual benefits of the innovation” (Marsh, 1987, p.
480). Furthermore, in this particular context in Australia, the teachers lacked guidelines on how to use the social studies curriculum that was being studied. “The curriculum contains so many innovations…” and the lack of guidelines on them may have resulted in
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LITERATURE REVIEW: CBAM IN K-12 EDUCATION teachers’ defaulting to the use of the teacher’s guides for direction (Marsh, 1987, p. 483).
Therefore, they exhibited high SoC scores for Stage 2, reflecting a very similar pattern to those exhibited by teachers in Belgium in Vandenberghe’s study.
Overall, Hopkins, who studied levels of use, and Vandenberghe, who studied stages of concern, and Marsh, who studied both LoU and SoC, all support the argument that school climate, changing demands, unclear guidelines, and types of leadership play significant roles in helping or hindering teachers’ development along the stages and levels that CBAM outlines.
However, Anderson (1997) sees shortcomings in the study by Evans and Hopkins.
He notes that Evans and Hopkins’ findings reveal an inconsistency in the data about school climate and innovation behavior because “(w)hile the school rated as having the most open and democratic school climate did have the highest mean implementation score, the school with the second highest school climate rating only ranked fifth in mean implementation score” (Anderson, 1997, p. 340). Anderson also calls into question the authors’ lack of investigation into follow-up measures when the intervention had finished and the teachers had returned to the classroom. However, Anderson, notes, “Despite its problems, the Evans and Hopkins study draws attention to the potential for (and complexity of) examining the relationship between school context and implementation using CBAM theory” (Anderson, 1997, p. 341).
It is clear, overall, that while data produced by CBAM is not always clean and predictable, overall patterns have emerged regarding the value of open, democratic leadership, clear guidelines in curriculum, and a connection between individual teachers’ psychological profiles and their LoU and SoC scores.
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LITERATURE REVIEW: CBAM IN K-12 EDUCATION
Finally, another barrier towards promoting innovation relates to the physical layout of a school building. Science classrooms are particularly vulnerable to this pattern. Slough (1999a) used CBAM to conduct a study of high school science teachers and their perceptions on a number of pedagogical concerns and attitudes toward innovation. His findings illustrate unique challenges that physical science classes experience, including “loss of laboratory space and safety concerns with wires running in and around sinks and gas supplies” (Slough, 1999a, p. 529). The typical set-up of a science classroom requires some overlap between the laboratory, in which experiments are conducted, and the computer lab or classroom, in which computer technology might be used. Slough points out that computers take up space, protrude wires and cables, and can interfere with lab equipment such as sinks and faucets. Thus, we can conclude that classes in the physical sciences, such as biology, chemistry, and physics, may present physical challenges toward teacher innovation. High school principals and administrators may have to make decisions between having a lab or a computer classroom, if space is not sufficient for both, or may have to be involved in intricate design decisions about how
The student identifies his second category. to overlap the two, if space is made for both.
Criticisms of CBAM Methodology and Assumptions
The purpose of CBAM is to help teachers innovate, to help them change their ways of instruction. Anderson (1997) summarizes its design as one in which a “key assumption…is that classroom change can be facilitated” (p. 336). The tool can be used to “assess teacher concerns about a change, their levels of use, and their configurations of use. This information can be used for planning and delivering interventions to assist individuals or groups of teachers in implementing the change.” (Anderson, 1997, p. 337)
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LITERATURE REVIEW: CBAM IN K-12 EDUCATION
Criticisms of CBAM in its ability to accomplish these tasks include the steps it outlines and the assumptions it maintains. Bailey and Palsha (1992) note that Stage 0 and
Stage 1 of the SoC scale are basically indistinguishable. “The only distinguishing feature is that individuals in Stage 0 do not necessarily want to learn about the innovation, whereas those in Stage 1 are interested in finding out about it” (Bailey and Palsha, 1992, p. 232). They also argue that Stage 6, Refocusing, is not a reasonably separate category.
They found in their studies that individuals at Stage 6 are simply at a slightly higher level than those at lower stages in desiring to act on whether a particular innovation is helpful to students. They, therefore, propose a revised five-stage model of Awareness, Personal,
Management, Impact, and Collaboration (Bailey and Palsha, 1992).
In addition, Slough (1999b) has expressed criticism of the CBAM theory because of what he perceives as its assumption of the nature of technology and its use among instructors. In terms of telecommunications technology, he argues that CBAM “assumes a static innovation,” but that such advancements in general are not static at all (Slough,
1999b, p. 1951). He notes that instructors who are at the lower stages of concern are uncomfortable and intimidated by this unpredictability in technology, while teachers who are comfortable with it are actually motivated by this instability: “In fact, they considered the challenges created by the changes to be a driving force for their involvement with telecommunications” (p. 1951). However, he argues, CBAM does not take this phenomenon into account. Overall, Slough feels that CBAM’s assumptions about the nature of technological progress results in problematic application of the model.
Furthermore, Slough disagrees with what he sees as an assumption in the CBAM framework that teachers progress linearly in their development and innovation. He
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LITERATURE REVIEW: CBAM IN K-12 EDUCATION argues that exceptions abound to this rule, most notably in the management stage. He notes that, in his study, teachers at the management level typically restricted student use of such technology in the classroom, listed more barriers at this stage than at other stage for the use of telecommunications innovations, and tended to reject any notion of the possibility that telecommunications technology enhances pedagogy. (Slough, 1999b).
He maintains that CBAM does not assume any points in its scale at which tension becomes tighter and resistance becomes higher, while such points do exist.
Leithwood and Montgomery (1980) developed an alternative model to CBAM because of similar concerns to those of Slough. They make the case that a policy maker can be very explicit about innovation but that each context in which this innovation is to be implemented demands different modifications of it (Leithwood & Montgomery,
1980). However, they maintain that CBAM does not reflect sensitivity to this process.
As a result, they designed an alternative model with a procedure for deciding how many levels are necessary for an innovation. It is distinguished from CBAM in that it does not assume a fixed number of levels for curriculum change or innovation. Overall,
Leithwood, and Montgomery seem to concur with Slough that CBAM’s linear and pattern-like style of progress presents difficulties in its application.
The student identifies his third category.
CBAM’s Application to Other Countries and Cultures
Studies have been conducted on faculty innovation and change in other countries using CBAM as the theoretical framework. Such attempts have occasionally experienced problematic results due to translation concerns and other cross-cultural issues.
Vandenberghe’s study in Belgium and the Netherlands featured a translated version of the 35 items in the original Stages of Concern questionnaire. The resulting
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LITERATURE REVIEW: CBAM IN K-12 EDUCATION effort eventually led to a 57-item questionnaire (Vandenberghe, 1983). Subsequent evaluation showed that the Belgian-Dutch SoC-questionnaire maintained a close meaning to that of the original questionnaire. However, Vandenberghe goes on to articulate a
“conspicuous difference” (Vandenberghe, 1983, p. 8). Stage 1, Information, and Stage 2,
Personal, appear together in the Belgian-Dutch version, while they are separate in the original English version. His analysis shows that this distinction was not significant in overall findings.
Nonetheless, the SoC Q features another category, Consequences for Pupils , that comes after Personal/Informational category. The translation from English to Dutch in this case proved a bit problematic. “Although we used the word ‘consequences’ in this case, this subscale apparently has another meaning than it has in the American questionnaire” (Vandenberghe, 1983, p. 9). Vandenberghe makes the case that the
Belgian-Dutch version of the SoC questionnaire asks the teacher about the desire to hear
“something about the value of the innovation for the pupils,” an issue that is not pursued in the American form of the questionnaire (Vandenberghe, 1983, p. 9). “The problems the teacher experiences himself, are, as it were, expressed via problems he anticipates among his pupils” (Vandenberghe, 1983, p. 9). Anderson elaborates on Vandenberghe’s study and the significance of this addition to the Belgian-Dutch version of the SoC questionnaire, arguing that the original CBAM model maintained that “ intense teacher concerns about the impact of a change on students are not predicted until after the teacher has gained some mastery over the use of change…,” while the Belgian and Dutch researchers maintain that “early concerns about possible consequences for students may reflect teacher uncertainty about the impact of vaguely defined large-scale innovations, as
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LITERATURE REVIEW: CBAM IN K-12 EDUCATION well as a tendency for teachers to express anxieties about their performance in terms of anticipated student response” (Anderson, 1997, p. 343). Overall, researchers in Belgium wanted to allow teachers to express any concerns about an innovation with regard to student satisfaction at the beginning of the study, while the American version calls for this analysis later in the study.
One might conclude that the large-scale changes that the educational system in
Belgium was experiencing at the time of Vandenberghe’s study contributed to a need for researchers in that study to add a category that reflected a concern for consequences for students. This example indicates that cultural and contextual factors can affect the application of CBAM and can call for researchers to propose an adjustment or modification of its wording. Anderson concludes: “The Belgian-Dutch findings show that the validity of CBAM classification schemes should not be taken for granted nor applied noncritically to any educational change and context” (Anderson, 1997, p. 343).
In addition, Marsh’s study in Australia experienced some challenges due to crosscultural transfers in using CBAM in that country. In western Australia, curricula is developed by a central office. This resulted in a high degree of Stage 0 concerns among teachers. Some of the questions in the CBAM model may not have been appropriate for this setting. Marsh (1987) explains that instructors and administrators in western
Australia are not presented with many alternatives to a given curriculum and that
CBAM’s questions, some of which ask whether a syllabus is effective or whether other syllabi should be considered, may be awkward for teachers to answer. Overall, the degree of autonomy and decisionmaking power assumed in CBAM’s questionnaire may
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LITERATURE REVIEW: CBAM IN K-12 EDUCATION not all be suitable for certain cultural settings in which teachers are not afforded such power and control.
The student provides his conclusion.
Conclusion
The Concerns-Based Adoption Model has been used worldwide and is seen by many as a robust, valid tool for measuring and diagnosing innovation and in facilitating change among faculty members. Studies that have used CBAM as their theoretical framework have noted the importance of the psychological profile of the instructors, the climate of the school, the leadership of the school, and the physical layout of the school.
I found it interesting that open-ended, democratic styles of leadership are lauded throughout the literature, while at the same time strong guidelines are also deemed necessary. Perhaps the tension between these two demands is what results in principals becoming dogmatic, monarchical, or simply uninterested in faculty innovation. It may be difficult for an administrator to maintain a democratic system while establishing strong guidelines on how to use an innovation in a curriculum. The tension here may result in administrative frustration and a resignation to maintain the status quo on the part of the principal.
It is also noteworthy that Marsh’s study in Australia featured a context in which curricula are developed centrally but that faculty members felt uncomfortable because
“they had no official guidelines” (Marsh, 1987, p. 483). Perhaps a culture has been developed in that section of Australia that has resulted in faculty members’ expecting and even desiring guidelines and parameters to be directed from above. If such a culture has been developed, this dynamic would certainly influence levels of innovation that might
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LITERATURE REVIEW: CBAM IN K-12 EDUCATION occur from teachers. CBAM’s application and usability in this context would certainly be affected by these characteristics.
Moreover, criticisms of CBAM are that it assumes a linear approach to progress among teachers and a stable, static pattern of development of technology, neither of which occurs, according to some scholars. I found this intriguing, as I did not detect any assumptions in the CBAM model that instructors progress from one level to another in a rational pattern. Nor did I ever assume that the seven-stage process of SoU meant that the stages were passed through with equal degree of rigor among all instructors. I found
Slough’s criticisms fairly sharp, and they provoked me to want to investigate the CBAM model further.
Finally, applying CBAM across the globe in various countries, other contexts, and in other languages has presented some translation and cultural problems that have had to be factored in when gathering data. This was perhaps the most significant finding for me in this review. First, the fact that CBAM has been applied on such a global scale indicates that administrators and principals are looking for methods by which to assess, measure, and facilitate faculty innovation. Second, while I certainly would have expected some language translation issues emerging from its adoption in another country,
I did not expect that a nation such as Australia would have had significant cultural problems with the questions. I would have anticipated such a phenomenon in Taiwan,
South Korea, or other non-western countries in which educational systems are characterized by significant differences in history and philosophy from those of the
United States.
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LITERATURE REVIEW: CBAM IN K-12 EDUCATION note that the paper was written in 2007, so the APA rules for that year were followed.
The guidelines for APA have changed slightly since then, as we have discussed in class.
References
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