Struggling to Overcome the State’s Prescription for Practice

Abstract

Issues of standardization, student achievement, and diversity have dramatically altered teaching within early childhood programs across the United States. This has created a situation in which teacher educators need to assist practicing and preservice teachers working in these contexts with formulating instructional responses that address policymakers’ high-stakes demands, take into account the best practices of early childhood, and attend to children’s linguistic, cultural, socioeconomic, and political worlds. This article addresses this issue by examining findings from a qualitative study of a professional development course within a large urban school district for prekindergarten and kindergarten teachers. In the course, the teachers were asked to engage in action research projects that pursued learning experiences with their students reflecting issues central to their lives in and/or outside their classrooms. Analyzing and interpreting their experiences sheds light on how teacher educators can support practicing and preservice teachers in responding to the governmental, institutional, and local demands on their teaching while attempting to formulate learning experiences that reflect their students’ sociocultural worlds.

On the Shoulders of Giants: Benefits of Participating in a Dialogic Professional Development Program for In-Service Teachers

“…Over the last two decades, international research on professional development has led to an understanding of the factors that contribute to high-quality and effective teacher professional development, which improves teaching and student achievement (Penuel et al, 2007;Pianta et al, 2008;Desimone, 2009;Downer et al, 2009;Higgins and Parsons, 2009;Hill et al, 2013;Knight et al, 2014Knight et al, , 2015Cordingley et al, 2015;Brown and Weber, 2016;De Naeghel et al, 2016;Jukes et al, 2017;Kutaka et al, 2017). This previous research has identified the positive impact that teacher training programs have on in-service teachers' activities.…”

“…In this context, TPD research has increased considerably and has focused on evaluating the impact that in-service TPD programs have on both teacher learning and student achievement in mathematics, language, literacy, reading, science, and arts from early childhood education onward (Downer et al, 2009;Higgins and Parsons, 2009;Brown and Weber, 2016;Caddle et al, 2016;De Naeghel et al, 2016;Jukes et al, 2017;Kutaka et al, 2017;Shernoff et al, 2017). Some of this research has further focused on the learning experiences that promote teachers with professional development programs that are based not only on best practices but also on practices that reflect their students' sociocultural context (Brown and Weber, 2016). These practices also start from solidarity with families and local communities to guarantee professionally developed teachers who respond to their students' needs (Zeichner et al, 2016;Lampert et al, 2019).…”

The forgotten ECEC staff working with birth-to-3-year-olds: The imbalances between the workforce policies and ECEC staff employment conditions in Spain

“…This understanding will allow them to develop inclusively and learn about life (Messiou, 2019; Murray, 2019; Siraj et al, 2019). However, Brown and Weber (2016) argue that educators could struggle when reflecting on their practices because of an overwhelming workload, which does not leave them time to explore these ideas daily and, indeed, in a meaningful way.…”