The Practical Difficulties for Early Educators Who Tried to Address Children’s Realities in Their High-Stakes Teaching Context

Abstract

The field of publicly funded early childhood education continues to evolve into a discipline in which early educators are expected to teach a more culturally and linguistically diverse student population a standardized set of knowledge and skills so that they can meet policymakers’ academic achievement requirements. This creates a range of challenges for early educators who strive to implement instructional practices that attend to children’s developmental, individual, and sociocultural needs. The article addresses this issue through examining the implementation of a professional development course for prekindergarten and kindergarten teachers that asked them to reconceptualize their understandings of their role in the classroom. Examining how their practical conceptions were affected by their participation in this course revealed an eagerness to pursue lines of study with children that addressed issues central to children’s lives. However, transforming this conceptual willingness into practices within their highly structured teaching context seemed to be a more difficult task. Interpreting these findings generates three central points that teacher educators, early educators, and preservice teachers might consider in developing the practical tools needed to prepare children to be successful in their high-stakes schooling environments and local communities.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the National Association for Early Childhood Teacher Educators Foundation for their support of the project that led to this article.

Notes

¹ The state identifies almost 10% of this district’s K–12 students as being African American, almost 60% Hispanic, and 25% White. Over 60% of the students are identified as economically disadvantaged and 25% of the students are identified as bilingual or as an English as second language learner. In the Pre-K program, 90% of the students are from low-income families, 55% percent are English language learners, and over 50% meet both income and language requirements.