The study investigated elementary social studies teachers' implementation of Curriculum-Embedded Performance Assessment in South Korea. It examined teachers' implementation of performance assessment in terms of the formats, cognitive demands, and purposes of the assessment. It then examined what factors influenced their implementation.

This study used a mixed method design combining quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Data sources included questionnaires, interviews and documents. 700 teachers completed the questionnaire. Analyses of these data included regression analysis and structural equation modeling. Eight case study participants were selected from the respondents of the pilot survey. The case studies involved analyses of interview data and assessment documents.

Two noticeable findings about policy and practice emerged. First, the case studies show that teachers believed they were responding to the reform, yet their practices each differed considerably from those of the others. The study identified four patterns in implementing the performance assessment reform--- reluctant, superficial, transitional , and profound implementation---on a spectrum from symbolic to authentic implementation. Second, teachers easily could implement the surface aspect of assessment (performance assessment formats), but struggled with implementing the deep aspects of assessment (higher-level cognitive demands and assessment for learning).

The following significant findings about the factors influencing teachers' implementation emerged from the quantitative analyses. First, all three groups of factors (school contexts, learning opportunities, and teacher capacity & will) were important for the success of the reform when we consider both the direct and indirect effects of these factors on teacher implementation. Second, authentic teacher learning , or active teacher learning aligned with performance-based student learning, was the most important factor that influenced teacher implementation. Third, teacher capacity and will factors had the second strongest direct influences on teacher implementation and mediated the influences of the other factors on teacher implementation. Fourth, most school contexts factors indirectly influenced teacher implementation through either the learning opportunities or teacher capacity and will factors.

The author suggests that teachers need scaffolding to change their implementation from reluctant compliance to profound change in practice, and discusses several ways of scaffolding to help teachers progress in their implementation of the reform, based on the findings.