Rethinking teacher adoption categories in mandated curriculum reform: the role of innovativeness and resistance to change

The successful implementation of mandated curriculum reforms is partly influenced by teachers’ psychological dispositions. This study examined how teachers’ innovativeness and resistance to change interacted to produce distinct patterns of engagement with mandated reform, moving beyond the assumption that innovativeness and resistance represent opposite ends of a single adoption continuum. Using Tanzania's Competence-Based Curriculum (CBC) as an empirical context, the study collected data from 263 secondary education teachers through an online 5-point Likert scaled questionnaires, conducted cluster analysis to derive teacher profiles based on these dispositions, and examined profile differences in CBC responsiveness. Findings revealed four distinct teacher profiles with varying levels of responsiveness to CBC – Enthusiastic Innovators, Conflicted Innovators, Neutral Adopters, and Defensive Traditionalists – demonstrating that innovativeness and resistance may coexist and interact to produce varied reform engagement patterns. The Conflicted Innovators configuration challenges conventional diffusion assumptions, showing that innovative orientations do not necessarily eliminate resistance. The study advances diffusion of innovations theory by reconceptualising resistance as a co-constitutive dimension of innovation adoption, proposing a framework that captures the simultaneous presence and interaction of these dispositions. Practically, it advocates for a more nuanced understanding of adopter categories, allowing for interventions that address their distinct dispositions.