Curriculum making as professionalism-in-context: the cases of two elementary school teachers amidst curriculum change in Cyprus

ABSTRACT

In this paper, two case studies of elementary school teachers in the Republic of Cyprus are constructed to discuss how curriculum making relates to teacher biographies and sense of professionalism, as those are shaped at the intersection of their professional history and projections for the future, informed by and informing their constitution as professionals in local institutional and broader social contexts. Drawing on the ecological model of teacher agency, the two cases are utilised to examine how teachers’ narrated professional experiences in past and current schools were at interplay with their general sense of professional role and purpose as teachers. This complex interplay is simultaneously connected to the ways they perceived and constituted their pupils as well as to the ways they themselves were constituted by others as professionals. The examination of the two cases foregrounds the notions of teacher agency and of curriculum making as contingent, negotiated and negotiable, and opens up the space to consider the politics of both as those are permeated by micro-processes of subjection and subjectivation.

KEYWORDS:

• Curriculum making
• teacher professionalism
• teacher agency
• Cyprus

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge the contribution of Mary Charalambous and KyriakoulaMavri, who worked as research associates in this project entitled Enactments of Language Arts and Social Studies curricula: Past and current constructions of teacher professional identity amidst curriculum reform. Funding for the project was provided by the University of Cyprus.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The broader project is a longitudinal research study of teacher professionalism and the ongoing curriculum change in the Republic of Cyprus. The change of curricula across subjects and grades has been part of the comprehensive educational reform, which was initiated in 2004 by the Ministry of Education and Culture (MoEC), and substantiated with the development, publication and dissemination of new curriculum texts in 2010. The longitudinal research study has thus far spanned three phases: Phase I (2010–2011) which involved interviews with 66 teachers to investigate their perceptions of professionalism during the year of mass professional development seminars aimed at familiarising teachers with the new curricula; Phase II of the project (2011–2012, 2012–2013 and 2013–2014) which focused on the period of transition from ‘old’ to ‘new’ curricula and consisted of in-depth interviews with a large number of practicing teachers (N = 245), as well as with teachers (N = 24) who participated in the design and development of the new curricula in specific subject-areas [γνωστικά αντικϵίμϵνα]; and, Phase III (from which this paper is drawn) examines teacher professionalism in the context of everyday practice, focusing on case studies of elementary teachers who taught social studies and language arts classes in the school year 2015–2016. Framing these phases of the project is also policy analysis which investigates understandings of teacher professionalism which have emerged in the context of the refοrm and the positioning of teachers therein over a 10-year period (2004–2014), as well as analysis of archival documents pertaining to curriculum change and the history of the teaching profession in public elementary education in Cyprus over the past 150 years (late nineteenth century-to date).

2. The term ‘Cyprus’ is used to denote the ‘colony of Cyprus’ during the British Period (1878–1960) and the ‘Republic of Cyprus’ from 1960 onwards.

3. The actual word used by the participant in Greek is ‘πολυδύναμος’ [polydynamos].

4. The actual word used by the participant in Greek is ‘μπακαλίστικο’ [bakalistiko].

5. The actual word used by the participant in Greek is ‘λϵιτούργημα’ [leitourgima].

Additional information

Funding

This project was funded by the University of Cyprus Start-up Funding Scheme 2014-2016.

Notes on contributors

Stavroula Kontovourki

Stavroula Kontovourki is an Assistant Professor in Literacy and Language Arts Education at the Department of Education, University of Cyprus, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on languages arts teaching methods, language and literacy development, and multiliteracies. Her research interests cover literacy and language arts education, the performance of literate identities in and out of school, multimodality (textual and embodied), the enactment of literacy curricula in schools, literacy teachers’ professional identities, and literacy policy and educational change.

Stavroula Philippou

Stavroula Philippou is an Assistant Professor in Curriculum and Teaching at the Department of Education, University of Cyprus, Cyprus. She has taught in a variety of formal and informal educational contexts in Cyprus and abroad. She is currently the Secretary-General of the European Association of Curriculum Studies and a Co-Convenor of Network 3 Curriculum Innovation of the European Educational Research Association. Her research draws upon the theoretical, historical and sociological study of curriculum and teaching, focusing on teacher professionalism and curriculum change, curriculum inquiry and teacher education, genealogies of curriculum studies, European education policy and Social Studies and Citizenship Education. She has published widely in international peer-reviewed journals and books.

Eleni Theodorou

Eleni Theodorou is an Assistant Professor in Social Foundations of Education at the Department of Education Sciences at the European University Cyprus where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in the social and cultural foundations of education. Her research interests include sociological and anthropological constructions of childhood, (immigrant) children’s identities, multicultural education politics and policy, family involvement, and sociological understandings of teacher professional identities, mainly investigated through qualitative research methodologies. Her work has been published in international peer reviewed journals and in edited book volumes.