"The Lessons Really Are the Student's ..."

• In Event: Child Well-Being and Social Progress: Moving Beyond Health, Safety, and Standards

Abstract

As accountability measures and increased standards have been pushed down into earlier grades and preschool classrooms (Hatch, 2010), well-being becomes more than health, safety and educational opportunity. This presentation focuses on the experiences of teachers and students in teacher preparation programs as they negotiate policy mandates while working to include children’s perspectives, experiences, and voice.

While education reform movements and mandates are constructed in the name of social progress by adults on behalf of children, children are strong, capable social actors (Corsaro, 2005) whose voices and perspectives often go unnoticed and totally ignored (Jans, 2004; Lahman, 2008). Teachers hold particular insights into how these reform mandates interact with children’s perspectives, voices and participation.

This presentation draws on narratives from three prior research studies with early childhood teachers and students in teacher preparation programs. The first study is an autoethnography from this author critically reflecting upon experiences as a classroom teacher and teacher educator specifically focused on tensions of policy implementation and meeting children’s needs (Author, 2008). The second study interviewed six primary grades teachers asking what rights they believed children had. The final study analyzes written narratives of teacher preparation students as they describe how they are both becoming and being teachers. All narratives were analyzed based upon specific study questions, common themes and a deeper reading of each text (Gee, 2005; Tobin, 2000). For this presentation, I returned to the original data, seeking specific passages related to this topic of a child rights-based framework in child well-being. Passages were selected based upon their alignment with the original context as well as the current research question and focus.

There is a strong theme of child well-being as more than meeting a child’s safety, health and basic academic needs. Through these narratives child well-being is viewed as including who each child is, their experiences, their voices and their particular ways of knowing, into the classroom and the child’s learning opportunities. For example, narratives from two teachers focus on safety aspects both originating in the school and from children bringing outside school issues into school. Whereas in the same study another teacher stated his entire motivation for being a teacher as, even though his teaching of academics may be questioned, he ensures that “Every kid is going to feel like they have rights! Every kid is going to feel like they have a voice!” Another example of the findings is the narrative from a teacher education student who states the overall conclusion and findings from this study when she states
While I had plans for a lesson to go this way or that way, I learned that that embracing where the children wants to go as more important is key (sic). I came in and was trying so hard to stick to MY lesson but the lessons really are the students’ and not my own.
Children have a lot to teach us, adults, about what works in their education and development. Social progress is only going to happen when we start listening.

Author

• Sonya Gaches, The University of Arizona