After Arthurdale: Place-based education and early childhood in West Virginia

ABSTRACT

This case study explores how opportunities for critical, place-based education can be eclipsed by the decontextualized curricula and pedagogies inherent in neoliberal, standards-based early education reforms such as universal pre-kindergarten that contain some progressive elements. Following Schwab (1973), we explore the roles of teachers and place in crafting curriculum and pedagogy. Specifically, we present both contemporary data and historical facts in order to document and analyze how educators in the Arthurdale, WV, area have used teacher lore (Schubert & Ayers, 1992) to “lighten” curriculum and pedagogy away from the dark funds of knowledge of local children and families. Dark funds are the knowledge and epistemologies that do not match with middle-class curriculum standards for success in schooling, but that reflect the realities of local children, families, and communities (Zipin, 2009). By tracing the racialized development of teacher lore in the past and present, it becomes clear that critical place-based educational activities such as natural and social histories and action research cannot be sustaining without an interrogation of how White identities have been constructed and perpetuated through teacher lore and other means over time. We use these findings to make several suggestions for reconceptualizing the roles of teacher lore in place-based education while creating curricula and pedagogies responsive to the local early education context.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Stewart Plein of the West Virginia Regional History Collection and Lindsey Wycoff of Bank Street School of Education Archives for their help locating rare texts. Also, thanks go to our JCP reviewers and Sam Stack who provided helpful hints that contributed to our past-and-present method.

Contributors

Melissa Sherfinski is Assistant Professor of Early Childhood and Elementary Education at West Virginia University. Her research focuses on curriculum, home-school relationships and early education policy. Recent articles about West Virginia UPK have been published in the International Journal of Inclusive Education (2015 with Brandi Slider Weekley and Sera Mathew) and Education Policy Analysis Archives (2013).

Brandi Slider Weekley, PhD, is an independent scholar who studies the social and cultural foundations of education. Her work focuses on West Virginian and Appalachian education systems and how these systems can be improved to better serve traditionally marginalized students by capitalizing on students' and local communities' strengths through critical, place-based action.

Audra Slocum is an Assistant Professor of English Education at West Virginia University. Her research focuses on adolescent literacy practices in marginalized communities and how to prepare English teacher candidates to develop critical place-based pedagogies.