Curriculum Personified: An Examination of New Teachers’ Emic Understanding of Curriculum

• In Event: Teacher Preparation Before and During Full-Time Teaching: A Comparative Analysis of Learning to Teach

Abstract

The paper investigates new teachers’ emic understandings of the concept of curriculum, and the ways in which these understandings are part of a larger process of learning to teach. Our investigation and analysis draw from the larger Learning to Teach interview data set. We argue not only are there multiple ways in which new teachers understand the concept of curriculum, but that this understanding is part of an on-going process of redefinition that occurs in practice.

Teachers’ experiences vary widely with regard to access to various instructional materials. They are given assortment of materials, including: standards, texts, scripted programs, or nothing at all. In contexts where standards are understood as “curriculum”, the teacher is positioned as the implementer of these objectives terms of content, but the decision maker in terms of pedagogy. Viewing texts and textbooks as “curriculum” positions as the implementer of the content outlined in the texts, but decision maker of the pedagogical methods employed. Where the District provided a core curriculum the teacher is positioned as implementer both in terms of content and pedagogy. When given packaged or scripted programs to use as “curriculum,” teachers are placed in a precarious position as mere implementers, and risk consequences for going “off-script”. Finally, when teacher-created materials were considered curriculum, the locus of control for all decisions, lies within teacher and he/she develops the curriculum through a combination of using their own knowledge and seeking out other resources

Our theoretical framework includes literature on the ways in which curriculum is never decontextualized knowledge, but rather is always embedded within a larger socio-political context (Apple, 1981). In particular we focus on how local context influences the organization of teachers’ experience around specific curricular materials (Apple, 2004). We also consider literature on new teacher preparation and development of knowledge in/of/and for practice (Cochran-Smith, & Lytle, 1999). Our findings suggest that context matters significantly in the development of a teachers’ understanding of the concept of curriculum. Given the range of responses to available resources, and the spectrum of critique across the various conceptualizations, we conclude that new teachers would benefit from on-going conversation around curriculum, both during their initial preparation, but also after they enter the classroom.

Authors

• Jennifer G. Zwillenberg, University of Pennsylvania

• Mary Elizabeth Del Savio, University of Pennsylvania

• Talar Kaloustian, University of Pennsylvania