Making up teachers: Pre-kindergarten policy and teachers’ lived experiences

Abstract

Increased investment in publicly-funded pre-kindergarten (pre-K) in the USA has come with a concomitant focus on teacher professionalization. Pre-K policies and professionalization efforts often fail to acknowledge that they are layered upon a history of previous policies. New policies are inscribed onto this “discursive archive.” The intersection of a new policy and this discursive archive, viewed through the lived experiences of two pre-K teachers, is the focus of this article. Using critical policy analysis as a framework, I interrogate how a new pre-K policy in Lakeville, Wisconsin, “made up” the pre-K professional in particular ways. Lakeville’s policy came with a new conceptualization of the pre-K professional, framed in terms of particular credentials, pedagogies, and ways of being with children. I explore how this view of the pre-K professional made up two pre-K teachers by shaping their professional and material realities. The use of critical policy scholarship, which recognizes that policy is “permeated with power,” provides a way to understand Lakeville’s pre-K policy as more than an intervention into practice. Instead, it shaped teachers’ subjectivities by creating new norms and boundaries around how teachers were to be and act as pre-K professionals, which they took or resisted in particular ways.

Pre-K teachers’ perspectives on factors that influence their experiences through universal Pre-K policy changes in New York City

“…Although professional learning opportunities were provided for teachers to attend, there were inequities in public schools and CBOs, also seen in Wilinski’s (2017) study on Wisconsin’s Pre-K. While all PKFA teachers are required to attend, as these workshops are scheduled on nonattendance days at public schools, many of our CBO teachers were unable to participate because of a shortage of staff coverage in classrooms.…”

“…Despite the access to such opportunities provided by the DOE, many of our CBO teachers felt left out as they had rarely been able to attend such workshops due to a constant lack of coverage at their sites, which aligns with literature (Wilinski, 2017). That is, the feasibility of offering professional learning opportunities for all teachers should be re-examined in order to avoid the influence of structural inequality between the two different school settings.…”

“…In the United States, publicly funded Pre-K programs are defined as being “funded and administered by the state with a primary goal of educating 4-year-olds who are typically developing and who are in classrooms at least 2 days per week” (Barnett et al, 2009), and there is increasing public interest in expanding preschool education available to more 4-year-olds (Wilinski, 2017). New York State became a part of the public Pre-K movement in the 1990s, and then NYC made public preschool programs available to all 4-year-olds in the city in 2014.…”

“…Professional learning is also essential for early childhood educators’ growth in order for them to understand and process their teaching and children’s learning (Brown and Weber, 2016). Wilinski (2017), however, describes the unequal access to opportunities for professional learning experiences by teachers at local child care centers due to inflexibility caused by their program scheduling and low adult coverage during the day. While teachers who are not provided professional learning opportunities fail to learn about policy reform and recommended practices that are directly related to quality and accountability, they are also excluded from communities of practice that might help them develop stronger relationships with their peers and colleagues.…”

Examining Certification Requirements in Early Math and Literacy: What Do States Expect Prekindergarten Teachers to Know?

“…The state preK movement has grown, in part, because it framed preK as education (rather than as care) and linked preK to broader educational goals, such as reducing the achievement gap (Wilinski, 2017). State preK policies vary from state to state, although in all states preK participation is voluntary.…”