33.056 - The Secret Lives of Early Childhood Teachers: Fidelity in Professional Identity, Professional Development, and Teaching

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This session will highlight five research studies on early years’ teachers’ professional identity formation; professional development; and daily teaching practices. It will illuminate how teachers in various educational and care settings (private, public, university lab settings) negotiate (Hyun, 2006) their roles in schools. It will foreground the common threads through each of these independent studies showing the practices including those that are secretive, somewhat clandestine strategies, that preschool teachers utilize and assign while navigating their multifaceted responsibilities within their programs/schools. This session is intended to inform and stimulate dialogue on these topics and broadens the body of knowledge of authentic early years teacher identity, professional development, and ethical fidelity in teaching.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Early Education and Child Development

Chair

• Martha J. Lash, Kent State University

Papers

• Undercover: Teaching Privately in a Public Preschool - Jamie Huff Sisson, University of South Australia

• Teacher Collaborative Inquiry: Authentic Professional Development or Process to Manage the Preschool Practitioner "Docile Body"? - Felicia Von Black, Long Island University - Brooklyn

• Interrogating Teachers' Roles in View of Parental Beliefs on Play in Preschool - Krisitna Turk, Kent State University

• Truth Be Told: Early Childhood Teachers' Fidelity Processes - Daniel J Castner, Bellarmine University

• A Black Preschool Teacher and Her Professional Identity Formation in a Predominantly White School - Amal Al-Khabib, The Hashemite University of Jordan

Discussant

• Martha J. Lash, Kent State University