“So Yeah, I Stepped Outside the Box”: Replacing Quality With Practical Wisdom

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 1:45 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 1
  In Roundtable Session: Identities, Pedagogies, and Practices in the Critical Early Childhood Teacher Workforce (Table 8)

Abstract

Ethical teaching, the capacity to look out for children’s best interests, demands a teacher able and allowed to make decisions. This can be described as practical wisdom, a daily knowing in which a person considers the right thing to do, the right way to do it, in a manner that is responsive to context. Based on interviews with new teachers, I showcase how practical wisdom lives in their small decisions and how how this capacity is hampered by what is referred to as "quality." To do so, I provide a portrait of one early childhood teacher as a case study of how teachers in my study work around quality to act in “the children’s best interest.”

Author

• Cara Elizabeth Furman, Hunter College - CUNY