Wading through Confusion, Trusting through Uncertainty: Igniting teacher power through collaborative curriculum building

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Sunday 9:45 am - Gold 1
  In Roundtable Session: Curriculum as a Site of Struggle, Collaboration, and Transformation

Abstract

What happens when educators can dream the curriculum of the future? Aiming to imagine education outside of dominant neoliberal and technocratic ideologies, this project invited educators to practice discretion in collaboratively dreaming a transformative interdisciplinary curriculum. This study examines the impact of collaboration and affirmation on educators’ professional identity and finds that the experience challenged participants to shed institutionalized restrictions on their agency. I argue that such experiences are critical to the generation of relational agency (Edwards, 2005) and ultimately the realization and expansion of teacher power (Webb, 2002). Both are critical as we consider the role educators will continue to play in realizing the transformative potential of education in the face of attacks on schooling and curriculum.

Author

• Hilary Naa-Afi Tackie, SUNY - College at New Paltz