Time Is Not on Our Side: Teacher-Identified Structural Constraints on a Public Elementary School Classroom

• In Event: Lessons Learned: Challenges, Constraints, and Signs of Hope in Local Public Education Contexts

Abstract

Public primary schools in the United States operate under considerable structural constraints. Contextual factors such as budget cuts, high work loads, stressful work environments, and hierarchical operating practices shape the teachers’ roles and what they are able to do in their own classrooms (Kohfeldt, Chhun, Grace & Langhout, 2011). Though the literature on school contexts is vast, and focused study on teacher practices is growing, there is less written about how structural conditions shape and impede teachers’ choice of pedagogies and how this, in turn, helps to determine student experience. This paper utilizes ethnographic methods to examine contextual constraints as understood by a 4th/5th grade White, female teacher in a public elementary school that serves primarily low-income Latina/o students. Data include ethnographic field notes as well as student and teacher semi-structured interviews. Constraints identified in these data include top-down legal mandates, budgetary limitations, and the mismatch between the diverse student population and the standardized curriculum. Results explore how these teacher-identified constraints operate in the school and classroom settings to form a preoccupation with time that shapes her pedagogical practices in ways that reify negative dominant narratives about students in the setting. Finally, implications for culturally responsive policy change are presented.

Author

• Danielle Kohfeldt, University of California - Santa Cruz