Going Beyond the Standards: Centering Teacher-Student Relationships in Curriculum Creation

• In Event: Centering Student Identity in Our Practitioner Research: Crossing Borders, Systems, and Educational Life-Spans

Abstract

Objectives
I conducted a practitioner research case study of four colleagues in a Spanish/English bilingual Pre-K-8 public school in Washington, DC, to understand how teachers’ beliefs and relationships with students shape and define priorities when creating their own curriculum. These teachers went beyond the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) to create curriculum that integrates student interests, multimodal Literacies (New London Group, 1996) while supporting academic success for diverse learners.

Theoretical Framework
Using a theoretical framework of New Literacy Studies (Barton & Hamilton, 2000; Gee, 2001; 2008; Street, 1993) and feminist standpoint theory (Harding 2004; Haraway, 2007; hooks, 2004), I locate literacy and meaning making as a situated practice. Further, by taking an “inquiry stance” (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009) as a practitioner researcher, I view teachers as epistemological creators of “knowledge-of-practice” (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2001; Lytle, 2000) within their own classrooms.

Methods/Data
This research was conducted as a practitioner research case study. I selected a bounded single-case embedded design (Yin, 2009) of four teachers at my former school. For this study, I chose to collect multiple sources of evidence to allow for triangulation of data (Creswell, 2007; Yin, 2009), including semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, a focus group, and lesson plans and materials voluntarily shared by the participants.

Findings
In our conversations, teachers described that a flexible curriculum allows teachers to go beyond the standards by integrating their personal strengths and interests to engage diverse students. When teachers are given agency, they teach to their strengths, prioritize student engagement when selecting texts and approaches to content, and create time and space to build a supportive classroom culture.

Significance to Education
This practitioner research study demonstrates to administrators, policymakers, and academics that teachers can create their own curriculum that goes beyond the Common Core State Standards to successfully support culturally and linguistically diverse learners. A flexible curriculum that is built by teachers for their specific classrooms allows for a greater depth of literacy engagement when teachers can create curriculum that is tailored to their students’ needs. This research demonstrates how successful teachers can redefine what is “data” and create curriculum values students’ lives over standardized testing.

Author

• Julia Hainer-Violand, Washington DC Public Schools