Teaching School: English Teachers’ Classroom Experiences During Three Eras of Educational Reforms

• In Event: Teacher Stories and Experiences: Insights From English Teachers Across Multiple U.S. States

Abstract

This study examined the teaching practices of three teachers as they experienced reforms over time from the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) Supreme Court decision to the publishing of the report A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform (1983) to the passing of the Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, also known as No Child Left Behind (2002).

Tyack and Cuban (1995) wrote about the need for understanding teacher’s experiences with reforms: “Because teachers retained a fair degree of autonomy once the classroom door was closed, they could, if they choose, comply only symbolically or fitfully or not at all with the mandates for change pressed on them by platoons of outsider reformers” (p. 9). This study examined what has largely been overlooked in educational research about reforms: What actually happens in teachers’ classrooms when they shut the door and teach concerning educational reforms? Few researchers have talked with teachers about their experiences with educational reforms. I investigated teacher narratives to learn what happened when a reform was passed down to the classroom level, what support was given, and what experiences teachers had in their daily classroom practices in regards to these reforms.

The framework for this study centered on Vygotsky’s (1978) sociocultural theory, focusing on the culture (Bruner, 1987) of the participants and the school they where they taught, their experiences (Dewey, 1938) with educational reforms in their classrooms, and their narratives (Polkinghorne, (1991) about those experiences. The participants for this study included three female English teachers; each started teaching shortly after significant moments in educational reform began to take hold in a small town school in Georgia—desegregation of students, national curriculum standards, and high-stakes testing. I employed narrative theories (Bruner, 1996) to guide the collection, analysis, and reporting of data in ways that honored the stories of each teacher.

I used two semi-structured interviews with each teacher and one group interview to produce the narratives needed to complete this study. The narratives shared aligned with current scholarship on teachers: The longer the educator had taught, the less likely she was to change her practices as new reforms were introduced (Smagorinsky, Lakly, & Johnson, 2002). The teacher who began her career just before NCLB felt the pressures of this reform in an intense manner that contrasted the two teachers who have been teaching for more than 30 years. I also found that while the curriculum changed because of state standards and high-stakes testing, the veteran teachers reported little change in their teaching over the years.

My examination of three teachers’ narratives to understand their teaching experiences in relation to federal education reform can contribute to ongoing understandings of English teaching (Applebee, 1974) and teaching in general (Lortie, 1975). The narratives they shared have the potential to inform the significant gap in the scholarship that has delved deeply into what happens when teachers close the door and start teaching every day.

Author

• Kelli Ann Sowerbrower, Georgia State University