Culture matters: a comparative study of teachers’ views of universal pre-kindergarten in two state regions

ABSTRACT

This multi-case analysis uses video-cued multi-voiced ethnography in two culturally distinct regions of a Universal Pre-Kindergarten (UPK) U.S. state with high levels of accountability to explore how cultural and demographic differences within state borders might impact how teachers view UPK curriculum and standards, how they teach, and how they view one another’s language and literacy practices. The report focused on pre-kindergarten teachers in P-5 public schools. The pre-kindergarten teachers carried out unique processes of emplacement. Emplacement in this case was the process of pre-kindergarten becoming part of the P-5 public schools while remaining uniquely aligned with early childhood. Fields of care and domains of commonality are two major themes from the fields of anthropology and geography used to organize the findings. The findings have implications for thinking about the role of culture in P-5 education. This study shows promise for using video-cued methods in state-level research and associated professional development contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Video-cued research
• pre-kindergarten
• early childhood policy
• culture
• language
• literacy
• Appalachia

Acknowledgements

My thanks to the five teachers highlighted in this report, who shared a year of their lives in this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Melissa Sherfinski, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Early Childhood and Elementary Education at West Virginia University. She is a graduate of UW-Madison, whose research on UPK has appeared in Education Policy Analysis Archives (2013), International Journal of Inclusive Education (2015), Journal of Curriculum & Pedagogy (2016), Journal of Family Diversity in Education (2017) and Journal of Early Childhood Research (forthcoming).