Of Pliancy and Power: Troubling Language in Novice Teachers' Metaphors of Curriculum

• In Event: Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: The Complexity and Multiple Spaces of Social Justice in Action

Abstract

As teacher educators, we support Teach For America (TFA) teachers who are developing understandings of learning, teaching, and curriculum while they work full-time in classrooms. Using critical discourse analysis, we analyzed 109 metaphors for curriculum created by 27 novice TFA teachers during a curriculum design course to ask, “What understandings and dispositions related to curriculum design do novice teachers’ metaphors reveal, particularly in the context of their work in urban Title One schools?” Two primary continua emerged, creating four distinct categories, one related to agency and the other to pliancy. Our findings indicated that metaphors could serve as a meaningful tool of inquiry that revealed the momentary stances of novice teachers toward curriculum and their agency in its classroom application.

Authors

• Teresa R. Fisher-Ari, Georgia State University

• Heather Lynn Lynch, Georgia State University