Dissonance: A New Theoretical Frame for Understanding Teacher Identity Formation in Early Childhood Borderlands

• In Event: Roundtable Session 18
  In Roundtable Session: Rethinking and Translating Early Childhood Education Traditions

Abstract

The growth of public pre-K classrooms within elementary schools has created a borderland for teachers - somewhere between the academic accountability of elementary schools and the more emergent practices of early childhood. This paper examines how a new theory of 'dissonance' can serve as a means for theorizing identity development among teachers practicing within this borderland. This paper is conceptual in nature, considering how dissonance has been theorized across other fields, and how it might serve as a framework within early childhood education.

Author

• Katherine Kresin Delaney, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor