Negotiating calendar time: ‘Best practices’ and teacher sense-making in a public pre-Kindergarten classroom

ABSTRACT

Within the United States, publicly funded pre-Kindergarten (pre-K) is a borderland of teacher practice - somewhere between early childhood and Elementary approaches to pedagogy. For pre-K teachers, this can mean negotiating many different, and oftcompeting conceptions of what curriculum and practice should look like in order to support the learning of four-year-olds. This paper explores the practice of calendar time and how one pre-K teacher, Wanda, identified and negotiated competing conceptions of calendar time as 'best practice' in her school, district and in a professional development program. The findings of this paper raise questions about how teacher educators and researchers should be supporting pre-K teacher practice and sense-making in the face of conflicting policies and expectations for pre-K.

Notes

^1. All names in this paper are pseudonyms, chosen to protect the identities of participating teachers and children.

^2. The writing of this paper was supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation (1019431). The opinions expressed in this paper do not necessarily reflect the position, policy, or endorsement of the National Science Foundation.

^3. All names used in this paper are pseudonyms to protect the identities of both teachers and children participating in this study. All participants (or their guardians) signed consent forms and the project was verified and overseen by an IRB at the institution of record.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by NSF Grant #1019431 “Professional Development for Culturally Relevant Teaching and Learning in PreK Mathematics”