The Movement of Life Unit: A Story of Creative Insubordination

• In Event: Centering Identity and Political Dimensions in the Learning Sciences

Abstract

We study a team of fourth-grade teachers who worked creatively against institutional barriers to design an interdisciplinary, politicized unit on human and animal migration. Teachers worked collectively to mitigate risk by taking advantage of administrative relationships and departmentalization and leveraging subject differences in standardized testing. The unit connected deeply to students’ experiences as recent immigrants and created student-led pathways for community activism. The design process was highly emotional; teachers expressed outrage at feeling unsupported in designing and implementing politicized units and also recognized the empathic pedagogical work necessary in facilitating such conversations. Identifying these institutional affordances, and the layers of emotional work in the design process, provides insight into how to support similar acts of Creative Insubordination.

Authors

• Jennifer Radoff, University of Maryland - College Park

• Erin Ronayne Sohr, University of Maryland - College Park

• Dylan Paré, University of Calgary