When "Effortless" Becomes Effortful: Work Intensification of Head Start Teachers in an Era of Assessment

• In Event: 42.068 - Examining Head Start: The Role of Curriculum, Nutrition, Assessment, and Research Engagements

Abstract

Objectives:
This paper provides an empirical account of the complex, challenging and highly demanding nature of Head Start teachers’ work. In doing so, this paper focuses on Head Start teachers’ experience of changes in their roles and working conditions with growing accountability demands for documenting, reporting, and using various types of data.

Framework:
External high-stakes accountability has brought changes in expectations for teachers’ roles, leading to the intensification of teachers’ work during school hours and beyond (Valli & Buese, 2007). Teachers’ professional commitment to doing the very best for their students also have come in to play as they strive to take on and successfully complete new tasks required by a number of education reforms (Ballet & Kelchtermans, 2008; 2009). Teachers consider new demands and added responsibility as a move towards professionalization although these significantly increase the amount of their work for which they feel they have insufficient time and resources (Easthope & Eashope, 2000). Considering early childhood education’s distinctive history and philosophical foundations that have traditionally set it apart from upper grades, it is important to explore the complexity of intensification of early childhood teachers’ work and the unique challenges it creates.

Modes of Inquiry and Data Sources:
Conducting a qualitative case study of one Head Start grantee in the Midwestern United States, this paper used multiple data collection

Methods: 1)semi-structured interviews with Head Start teachers (n=3) in three different classrooms and their supervisors (n=3) to discuss their experience with policy changes that have had the most impact on their work; 2) time-use diaries to capture teachers’ work beyond school hours; 3) collection of documentation teachers regularly report to their supervisors; 4) classroom observations(two weekly site visits for six months); and a 5) shadowing method (Czarniawska, 2007) to follow a single individual teacher for one full school day for insights into otherwise invisible aspects of teachers’ daily work within a complex institutional setting.

In the data analysis, we conducted a task analysis to identify types of teachers’ work and group those into broad coding categories. We then developed analytical categories and related themes regarding temporal perceptions and experience of teachers to perform certain tasks (e.g., time saving/consuming, time management, scarcity, urgency, intensification, etc.)

Results:
The findings from this paper highlight how changes in child assessment practice had an effect on other areas of teachers’ work and relationship with their colleagues and supervisors with focus on the mediating role of commercially published assessment materials and technology in this process. Assessment technology created additional workloads for teachers to learn the right skills, to perform assessment in different ways, as well as drastic changes in teachers’ views of themselves, which often left them with feelings of professional inadequacy, stress and burnout. Paradoxically, reskilling in the assessment entails deskilling of teachers’ work in curriculum decision making.

Significance:
This paper suggests that, in thinking through efforts to improve teaching quality for positive child outcomes, developing our understanding of the nature and condition of teachers’ work is an important step toward considering ways to attract and retain the qualified Head Start teachers.

Authors

• Koeun Kim, New Mexico State University

• Ba-Ul Paul Chung, Seoul National University of Education