Preschool teachers as undercover agents within the figured world of public school

Sisson, Jamie Huff

doi:10.1177/1463949118774908

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Prior scholarship has conceptualized this new way of working as "border-crossing," which emphasizes school-based pre-K teachers' daily movements between the worlds of ECE and K-12 (Sumsion & Britt, 2003). Along these lines, research has demonstrated how toggling between ECE and K-12 practices creates dissonance for school-based pre-K teachers (Delaney, 2015(Delaney, , 2018Sisson, 2018). Other research has highlighted the challenges that policy actors face in bringing ECE and K-12 together in public pre-K (Brown, 2009;Brown & Gasko, 2012).…”

Section: The Pre-k Borderlandmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Policies and Policy Actors Shape the Pre-K Borderland: Implications for Early Childhood Educators’ Work Experiences

Wilinski

Morley

Landgraf

2021

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education

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Background/Context: Public prekindergarten (pre-K) is increasingly common in U.S. public schools. The policy decision to house pre-K classrooms in public schools places pre-K teachers in a “borderland of practice,” where the separate worlds of the early childhood and K–12 systems collide. Borderland work has implications for pre-K teachers’ job satisfaction, professional identities, and sense of belonging. Focus of Study: The purpose of this study was to understand how pre-K borderlands come to be constituted and how features of the borderland shape the lived experiences of school-based pre-K teachers. The context for the study was Michigan’s state-funded pre-K program, Great Start Readiness Program. We drew on scholarship in border studies to conceptualize the pre-K borderland as the space around the borders separating early childhood education (ECE) and K–12 systems. We sought to understand how the pre-K borderland was shaped by policies and policy actors and the implications this had for pre-K teachers’ work experiences and well-being. Research Design: This comparative case study was conducted in two Michigan counties during the 2017–2018 school year. Data included interviews and focus groups with district officials (12), interviews with pre-K teachers (28), and interviews with principals (10) and kindergarten teachers (13). Findings: Results indicate that school districts in Michigan provided pre-K through two main implementation models: elementary school and district early learning centers (ELCs). This complicates previous literature that equates school-based pre-K with the elementary model. We found that pre-K teachers in both settings faced challenges that negatively affected their work experiences and well-being. All teachers, regardless of implementation model, struggled to build professional connections with elementary school colleagues. Many also felt unsupported by administrators who lacked an understanding of pre-K. Teachers in elementary buildings had to navigate conflicting policies and building colleagues who perceived their work as “just playing.” Pre-K teachers in district ELCs faced compensation disparities that resulted in low morale and threatened to push them out of pre-K. Taken together, our findings demonstrate that neither borderland—elementary school, district ELC—was ideal, suggesting that the solution to better supporting pre-K teachers does not lie in simply altering one aspect of their work experience. Conclusions/Recommendations: School-based pre-K has multiple meanings and multiple borderlands of practice. Across these borderlands, we note the significance of classroom location decisions, teacher compensation, administrator support, and policy (in)compatibility. We advocate for (1) intentionality around the placement of pre-K classrooms within school districts, (2) compensation parity between pre-K and elementary teachers, (3) increased attention to opportunities for collaboration and professional development, and (4) fostering elementary principals’ understanding of early childhood education so they can better support pre-K teachers.

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Section: The Pre-k Borderlandmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Policies and Policy Actors Shape the Pre-K Borderland: Implications for Early Childhood Educators’ Work Experiences

Wilinski

Morley

Landgraf

2021

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education

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“…By increasingly regulating teachers’ work, such policies limit teachers’ ability to use their professional judgement in decision making (Hatch, 2002: 459). A significant body of literature points to how discourses of “the professional” embedded in policy inform the ways teachers understand themselves as professionals (Bown and Sumsion, 2007; Bradbury, 2012; Delaney, 2015; Sisson, 2018; Sisson and Iverson, 2014; Woodrow, 2007). As teachers negotiate the range of discourses “through which they are shaped and in which they are positioned,” their subjectivities or “ways of being” are shaped (Osgood, 2006b: 7).…”

Section: The Politics Of Professionalizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Wilinski

2019

Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood

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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.

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“Teaching Culture Through Culture”: A Case Study of Culturally Responsive Pedagogies in an Australian Early Childhood/Primary Context

Sisson

Whitington

Shin

2020

Journal of Research in Childhood Education

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Preschool teachers as undercover agents within the figured world of public school

Cited by 6 publications

References 24 publications

How Policies and Policy Actors Shape the Pre-K Borderland: Implications for Early Childhood Educators’ Work Experiences

How Policies and Policy Actors Shape the Pre-K Borderland: Implications for Early Childhood Educators’ Work Experiences

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

“Teaching Culture Through Culture”: A Case Study of Culturally Responsive Pedagogies in an Australian Early Childhood/Primary Context

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