Dissonance for understanding: Exploring a new theoretical lens for understanding teacher identity formation in borderlands of practice

Abstract

Borderlands of practice are spaces where teachers are engaged in negotiating multiple conceptions of “best practices” within their daily teaching practice. Teachers at work in borderlands must actively negotiate varied conceptions, expectations, and assumptions about what is “best” for their students. These conceptions often challenge teacher professional knowledge and can result in a sense of dissonance about how to best meet the needs of students. Using a case study of one veteran teacher’s sense-making processes in her first year of teaching pre-Kindergarten, this article explores how a theoretical lens of dissonance might help researchers and teacher educators to better understand and support teacher identity formation in borderlands of practice.

Keywords

Dissonance early childhood education professional development teacher education teacher identity teacher sense-making

Introduction

Borderlands of teacher practice—whether caused by competing constructs, differing approaches to the curriculum, or other reasons—exist throughout the field of education. Borderlands represent contested spaces of teacher practice, where many actors outside the classroom have strong beliefs and conceptions of what should be happening within the classroom (Sumsion and Britt, 2003; Woodrow, 2007). These borderlands of practice are spaces where varying notions of “best practices” converge, and sometimes conflict, with the professional knowledge and decision-making of teachers. When teachers are practicing in borderlands, making sense of which conceptions and approaches to value can challenge teachers in ways that undermine their professional identities, subverting their agency to make decisions that best meet and reflect the needs of their students (Crawford, 2004; Lasky, 2005; Skattebol, 2003). This article aims to provide a new theoretical lens for understanding teacher identity formation in borderlands of practice. While the focus of this article is on theorizing, understanding, and supporting teacher identity within the pre-Kindergarten (pre-K) borderland,¹ this lens may help teacher educators and researchers working to support teachers at work in other borderlands.

Within the USA, publicly funded pre-K is an area of early childhood practice where approaches to the curriculum and pedagogy are in a constant state of negotiation (Brown, 2007; Hatch, 2010; Stipek and Byler, 1997). Serving predominantly 4-year-old children, pre-K program availability and funding mechanisms within the USA are largely determined at the community and state level (Hustedt and Barnett, 2011).² Many stakeholders—policymakers, politicians, school districts, community groups, universities, and families—work together to garner support and funding for pre-K programs (Brown et al., 2011). As a result, there are many varied conceptions of what represents “best practices” in pre-K. In addition, since pre-K requires public support and is not a guaranteed right for all children in the USA, there is a high-stakes focus on garnering outcomes—predominantly academic—from the investment of public funds (Brown, 2009). Given this state of pre-K affairs in the USA, the goals of pre-K and what are deemed “best practices” within pre-K vary greatly by site, community, and even state (Ackerman et al., 2009). While, as researchers and teacher educators, we broadly apply the term “pre-K” to publicly funded 4-year-old programs, across communities pre-K classrooms are incredibly different. For teachers entering the pre-K classroom in any of these settings, the expectations for “best practices” are at best unclear and sometimes contradictory (Blank, 2010). This is the pre-K borderland.

Through a case study of one teacher—Wanda—I work to develop a new theoretical lens to aid researchers as they engage with teachers working in borderlands of practice. The goal of this theory is to help researchers and teacher educators better understand the sense-making and identity-formation process for teachers working in borderlands. In this article, I ask: How can a lens of dissonance help researchers and teacher educators to better understand and support the identity formation of teachers working within borderlands of practice? I begin by exploring the specific nature of the pre-K borderland, which has emerged as diverse groups of stakeholders and varied conceptions of “best practices” collide in pre-K classrooms. Next, I consider how identity theory has both important contributions and limitations in helping researchers understand teacher identity formation in borderlands of practice. Finally, I posit my theory of dissonance and examine the specific case of Wanda, a veteran Kindergarten teacher entering the realm of pre-K. This case study of Wanda serves as an example of how the lens of dissonance might help researchers and teacher educators better support the identity formation of teachers working in other borderlands of practice.

Pre-K as a borderland

Early childhood is a broad umbrella that includes many pedagogical approaches, distinctions in teacher education, and conceptions of practice. Early childhood is the only area within educational research that is defined by both age (birth to 8) and developmental constructs. As such, early childhood practice is simultaneously bounded and unbounded. The contexts in which teachers practice—meaning the ways in which they engage with others, with cultural and social practices and assumptions, and with physical space and materials—are centrally important to understanding how teachers construct their identities (Woodrow, 2007). This process-oriented understanding of teacher identity formation draws attention to the ways in which various factors and actors interact to construct meanings and make sense of what it is to teach and be a teacher.

Traditionally, there has been a sharp distinction drawn between pedagogical practices in early childhood and in early elementary classrooms (Katz, 1996). Early childhood teacher education programs within the USA tend to focus on the child and/or child development as the basis curriculum (File and Gullo, 2002; Katz, 1996). In contrast, elementary teacher education programs focus on grade-level-defined content knowledge divided by disciplines (Hatch, 2010; Stipek and Byler, 1997). The growing standards movement within public schools has widened the gap between these approaches to the curriculum, with accountability-based standards further defining the elementary curriculum as outcome-driven (Brown, 2009; Goldstein, 2008).

In addition, the delivery of pre-K services varies widely (Ackerman et al., 2009). Some communities use existing community-based preschool programs and nest publicly funded pre-K within these sites. Other communities add pre-K classrooms to public elementary schools (which predominantly serve children aged 5 to 12). Yet other communities use a combined approach, nesting some pre-K classrooms in community preschool programs and others in public elementary schools. Pre-K teachers nested within community-based organizations are faced with new levels of accountability and expectations for child outcomes (Brown, 2007). In contrast, pre-K teachers nested within public schools are challenged to balance the developmental and social-emotional needs of 4-year-olds against assumptions about readiness (Brown and Lee, 2012).

For teachers, navigating various conceptions of how “best” to teach 4-year-olds can be extremely difficult (Woodrow, 2007). Policymakers have garnered support for pre-K, and researchers have studied effects and outcomes (Barnett et al., 2011; Locasale-Crouch et al., 2007). However, much less attention has been paid to how teachers are negotiating and navigating what it means to teach in borderlands of practice—sites of complex intersections of policy, conceptions of “best practices,” and community, school, and governmental expectations for outcomes—which exist in many areas of teacher practice. While pre-K is an important example of one complex borderland where teachers are constantly negotiating expectations for “best practices,” I believe many other areas of educational research could benefit from better understandings of how teachers make sense and form identities within these spaces.

Identity

Identity theory in teacher education has been a well-used tool for understanding the identity formation of both pre-service and practicing teachers (Marsh, 2002; Moloney, 2010; Skattebol, 2003; Woodrow, 2007, 2008). Much of the identity research has focused on teacher identity as a process of sense-making between personal and professional identities (Britzman, 1991; Clandinin, 1992; Connelly et al., 1997; McLean, 1999). Some researchers claim, however, that the use of identity theory within the teacher education literature has been largely undertheorized and undefined (Beijaard et al., 2004).

In part, this may be a function of trying to fit a broad theory to the unique niche of teaching. Grounded in the writings of Mead (1934) and Erikson (1959), identity theory puts forward the idea that, within each of us, there is a self that we craft as we make our way into the world. This psychological conception of identity theory posits that the process of identity formation is primarily internal—a process within an individual—rather than being constructed through interactions with persons, processes, and contexts. This latter view is from a sociocultural perspective, which frames identity formation as a process that is multiplicative in nature and formed from dialogic interactions with(in) dynamic contexts (Holland and Lachicotte, 2007). From this perspective, identity is an agentic act that results from the co-construction of self and other, self and culture, and self and action. Teacher-related research that takes up a sociocultural conception of identity tends to focus on examining the multiplicative nature of identity and how this affects teachers and teacher education (Bullough, 2008; Marsh, 2002), and on how narrative and life history approaches to understanding teacher identity can add dimensionality to our understanding of its influences (Clandinin and Connelly, 1996; McDermott, 2002).

In this study, I worked to understand how Wanda made sense of her identity in borderlands of practice, and constructed a new identity as a pre-K teacher in response to and negotiation with varied conceptions of “best practices” in pre-K. A main claim of researchers working within the sociocultural vein is that active participation in teaching contexts helps pre-service and practicing teachers to build identities that support their professional agency and pedagogical decision-making (Coldron and Smith, 1999; Flores and Day, 2006; Smagorinksy et al., 2004). Central to the development of teacher identity is the opportunity for teachers to engage dialogically with the constructs they encounter as they enter the field of teaching. When using identity as a lens for understanding teacher practice, context is particularly important (Alsup, 2006; Danielewicz, 2001). Identity formation, from this perspective, is an active, ongoing process. Strong teacher identity is expressed through agency and confidence in professional abilities—knowing how to meet the needs of students and/or to seek out and continue developing this knowledge (Lasky, 2005).

Methods

I begin with an examination of how dissonance has been theorized across other fields. I then present my own dissonance theory, which is conceptualized in relation to teacher sense-making and identity formation in borderlands of practice. Next, I present a case study of one teacher—Wanda—to provide an example of dissonance in action. Specifically, I examine the ways in which Wanda identified and made sense of competing conceptions of “best practices” in pre-K, and how these were actualized in her instructional choices and expressed by Wanda in our work together. According to Stake (2000: 8), case studies require researchers to “take a particular case and come to know it well, not primarily as to how it is different from others but what it is, what it does.” This case, as a result, will never be like any other case—it reflects beliefs, practices, and perspectives at a certain time and place. The case is bounded by Wanda’s sense-making processes as she engaged with the competing conceptions of “best practices” during her first year of teaching pre-K. This includes Wanda’s classroom practice and our work and engagement with one another in her classroom and a larger professional development research project during her first year of teaching pre-K.

The case study in this article is based on data that I collected while working with Wanda as a part of a larger professional development project—the 4K-PD Project. The 4K-PD Project consisted of a series of four professional development courses for teachers who were new to teaching pre-K. The project evolved as a partnership with the local school district, which was initiating a pre-K program that nested classrooms within community and public school sites. The goal of the professional development was to help teachers to reconceptualize their practice to include three main focus areas: (1) developmentally responsive practices; (2) funds-of-knowledge-based approaches for curriculum design; and (3) developmentally appropriate early mathematics instruction. The teachers and researchers engaged in four courses that ran in sequence across two years, meeting once a week after school at a local school site. The researchers (myself included) and pre-K teachers engaged in readings, discussions, and written assignments that aimed to explore the aforementioned themes.

As the district’s pre-K program was nested in both community-based preschools and local elementary schools, the pre-K teacher workforce included teachers from a variety of teaching and teacher education backgrounds. The majority of the teachers participating in the 4K-PD Project were public school teachers, including Wanda. All of the district’s pre-K teachers (in both community and public school sites) were required to have state teaching licenses in early childhood education. From this group, Wanda and several other teachers were designated as case study teachers. I was assigned to observe in Wanda’s classroom for the first year of the project.

During my time in Wanda’s classroom, I was completing a doctoral degree in Early Childhood Education. As part of my dissertation study, I spent extra time (approximately two days per week—one for work and one for play) in Wanda’s classroom. The data collection included detailed ethnographic field notes; weekly photographs of the classroom (and school and outdoor environments); emails between Wanda and myself regarding her practice and the 4K-PD courses; my personal written reflections following each visit; transcriptions from the 4K-PD courses; and Wanda’s assignments from the 4K-PD courses. My role within Wanda’s classroom is a central part of this research. While this article focuses on the theoretical tool of dissonance that I used as a central framework for my writing, it also reflects my position within Wanda’s dissonance and sense-making, and her position within mine.

I approached the data analysis from an interpretivist standpoint, using NVivo (Bazeley, 2007) as my main tool. I began with initial themes and coded the data using a chronological approach. Memo writing was an important analytical tool for exploring existing and emerging themes (Saldaña, 2009). These memos became part of the data set during the second and third rounds of coding. In addition, I asked Wanda to read and respond as I wrote during the data collection and analysis process. Her input helped me to refine my understandings of our work together. As I worked to find theoretical models and frameworks to fit Wanda’s (and my) experiences, I found that I needed to push beyond existing conceptions of identity theory to consider new ways for conceptualizing the experiences of teachers practicing in borderlands.

In the next section, I theorize dissonance, the conceptual framework that emerged as I worked to support Wanda’s developing pre-K teacher identity. Following this section, I present a case study of Wanda’s experiences in her first year of teaching pre-K, and an interpretation of her experiences through the lens of dissonance.

Theorizing dissonance

Dissonance is a construct that has been theorized in numerous fields of study, including psychology, sociology, aesthetics, and anthropology. In the field of education, however, dissonance has not been broadly explored. In this section, I examine existing constructs of dissonance in order to form a basis for my own conceptualization of dissonance as a theoretical tool for understanding teacher identity formation in borderlands of practice.

Piaget and equilibration

According to Inhelder and Piaget (1964), as a child moves through levels of development and cognitive understanding, a sense of equilibrium is achieved (Inhelder and Piaget, 1964). Before this equilibrium, however, comes disequilibrium, which is just as important in activating the child’s development. This movement from disequilibrium towards equilibrium, and back again, is part of the developmental process and an ordered series of events that must occur for continued development:

[T]he movement towards an eventual equilibrium is not fully determined by the mechanics of, say, the human brain, but is guaranteed by the nature of the sequential process itself, the reason being that the behaviour particular to each phase in the series gains in probability of occurrence throughout the completion of the preceding phase, as a function of such antecedent behaviour and its results. (Inhelder and Piaget, 1964: 293)

Each experience of disequilibrium forces the child to learn to accommodate and assimilate new information from the previous experience, which informs the later experience. At each level, the child must find a new footing and stable ground.

From this perspective, however, disequilibrium is an individual act, provoked by the environment and an individual’s need to actively come to an understanding of a phenomenon in the face of newly presented evidence (Block, 1982; Inhelder and Piaget, 1964). As children engage with new knowledge, they attempt to assimilate this knowledge into their existing understanding of the world (or schema termed it). The struggle for understanding, and the disequilibrium that occurs until understanding is achieved, is central to Piaget’s understanding of cognitive development (Flavell, 1996).

The psychosocial moratorium

Erikson (1954) developed the concept of the psychosocial moratorium in early writings on identity development. Expanding on this idea in his text Identity: Youth and Crisis, Erikson (1968: 157) noted that a psychosocial moratorium is a “period of delay granted to somebody who is not ready to meet an obligation or forced on somebody who should give himself time … [it is] a delay of adult commitments.” It is a time to experience and experiment with new roles without accepting the responsibility or commitments of those roles for a given period of time. According to Erikson (1968: 157), these experiences “often lead to a deep commitment,” once the individual has taken time to explore dissonance and conflict in the formation of his or her identity. However, Erikson’s (1959) model considered a psychosocial moratorium to be a single period in adolescence that determined the developmental trajectory of a human life. Any dissonance over one’s identity was fleeting.

Cote (2006) has pushed Erikson’s model forward, using a sociological framework to understand the concept of moratorium. Cote suggests that institutional forces acting on the development of individuals can have an important impact on identity formation. Cote’s approach posits that a moratorium is not a single event in adolescence or the result of the individual alone. Rather, other factors contribute to the struggle towards identity.

The works of Erikson and Cote provide a foundation for understanding how individuals struggle to make sense of themselves and the world around them as they form their identity. Within these conceptions, however, the focus is on identity rather than the machinations (or dissonance) that precede this sense of self.

Cognitive dissonance

Originally presented by Festinger (1962), the theory of cognitive dissonance is premised on the idea that when there is an inconsistency between two cognitions (or understandings), a psychological state of dissonance will develop. Presented with this state of clashing cognitions, an individual will seek to resolve his or her dissonance through choice or action.

The field of cognitive dissonance has undergone great change over the years, with researchers such as Cooper (2007), Elliot and Devine (2001), and Stone and Cooper (2001) reviving and revising the original work presented by Festinger. This “new look” model of dissonance has pushed past Festinger’s original assumption that cognitive dissonance is caused by a “discrepancy among cognitions” (Cooper, 2007: 73). It adds four assumptions about inconsistent behavior and the production of cognitive dissonance: (1) decision freedom is high; (2) people are committed to their behavior; (3) the chosen behavior leads to adverse consequences; and (4) those consequences are foreseeable. In other words, behavior is at the heart of cognitive dissonance rather than cognition (Cooper, 2007). Central to this model is the idea of responsibility: one only feels cognitive dissonance if one feels that one is responsible for the outcome. However, what the cognitive dissonance model fails to account for is the role of structural, cultural, and social norms and narratives—which are very present in schools.

Figured worlds

“Figured worlds” is a sociocultural theory of identity that considers the ways in which we construct and make sense of who we are in the world in relation to others (Holland and Lachicotte, 2007). This approach to understanding identity helps the researcher to focus on the dialogic nature of the interactions between individuals, others, groups, and contexts that are constantly involved in the making and remaking of multiple identities at the same time (Holland and Lachicotte, 2007). According to this theory, “people tell others who they are, but even more important, they tell themselves and then try to act as though they are who they say they are” (Holland, et al., 1998: 3). A figured world, then, is a socially and culturally constructed realm from which and to which people orient themselves as a means of reflecting their own identities. The construct of dissonance fits well with this theory of identity. However, dissonance is the space before this act of being able to tell yourself who you say you are. I posit that dissonance is the process of sense-making that precedes any self-determination of who we are in relation to worlds we are figuring. Paying attention to this period is centrally important in supporting the emergence of strong identities of teachers working in borderlands of practice.

Narrative dissonance

Building on psychological and sociocultural understandings of identity, Hammack (2008) and Sfard and Prusak (2005) posit that examinations of individual narratives often reveal the transactional nature of identity and the search for a sense of self in the face of conflicting narratives. It is in the space between master narratives, Hammack (2008) asserts, that the individual must forge an identity that lays to rest, or at least temporarily diminishes, the discordance between the multiple narratives that are part of our everyday lives. While Hammack (2008: 223) does not identify this space as dissonance, he notes that “[i]dentity is defined as ideology cognized through the individual engagement with discourse, made manifest in a personal narrative constructed and reconstructed across the life course, and scripted in and through social interaction and social practice.” The idea of constructing and reconstructing indicates that there is a conflict that needs resolution—dissonance in pursuit of consonance.

Whereas psychological conceptions of dissonance always point out a need for resolution, sociocultural conceptions do not seem to indicate that it is possible to reach this state. Rather, identity is in a constant state of dissonance, though the relative volume of this dissonance may vary depending on the context, cultural and social mores, and individual interactions. This is an important distinction for my own theory of dissonance.

The zone of proximal development

Vygotsky’s (1978) theory of the zone of proximal development is a theory that continued to evolve throughout his career. Vygotsky loosely defined the zone of proximal development as sensitive periods when certain educational experiences can initiate learning and therefore provoke development (Del Rio and Alvarez, 2007). However, Vygotsky’s conceptions of development are not linear. Rather, he posited that each particular developmental course is divergent, reflective of social and cultural mores—that is, each course of development is dynamic and open. In addition, the zone of proximal development and ensuing development are mediated by both internal forces (motivation and interest) and external forces (cultural beliefs and expectations, and interaction with others). It is a learning process that includes dissonance, disorientation, and, ultimately, sense-making.

Boundary crossing/boundary objects

Emerging from the perspective of cultural-historical activity theory, boundary crossing is the idea that we “negotiat[e] and combin[e] ingredients from different contexts to achieve hybrid situations” (Engström et al., 1995: 319). These boundaries are socioculturally constructed differences that result in uncertainty with regard to the ways we should interact and make meaning (Akkerman and Bakker, 2011a, 2011b). This approach theorizes that these differences often arise from active boundary crossing as a result of collaborative or cross-disciplinary acts. Boundaries and borderlands are both the result of contradictions between activity systems, and can hold great potential as sites for learning and the development of strong identities (Roth and Lee, 2007). However, boundary crossing by teachers may reflect professional agency, whereas borderlands are spaces where the professional knowledge and agency of teachers are often subverted by external actors and systems. Dissonance is the response to this subversion—an uncertainty predicated on having their professional knowledge of what is “best” undermined by external actors. Without professional support in the face of dissonance, teachers can lose their sense of professional identity and agency to meet the needs of their students.

Aesthetic dissonance

While cognitive dissonance is focused on disequilibrium in the rational realm, aesthetic dissonance refers to disequilibrium in the realm of the emotions. Aesthetic dissonance presents a space where what we think we know (ontological knowledge) and what we feel we know (epistemological knowledge) reside in conflict (Weltzl-Fairchild et al., 1997). For example, the assumption may be that when we enter the quiet calm of a museum, we will feel a “heightened sense of pleasure, well-being and exaltation” (Weltzl-Fairchild et al., 1997: 158). As Cazden (1945) and Weltzl-Fairchild, et al. (1997) both note, visual and/or audible stimuli can provoke feelings of dissonance, disconnectedness and/or uncertainty.

Music provides the most accessible way to think about dissonance and consonance from an aesthetic perspective. Musical dissonance—like identity dissonance—is about context. According to Cazden (1945: 5): “A dissonant interval causes a restless expectation of resolution, or movement to a consonant interval. Pleasantness or disagreeableness of the interval is not directly involved. The context is the determining factor.” The context of the experience, and departures from the expected within this context, are at the heart of aesthetic dissonance.

Teacher dissonance

Within education, feelings of dissonance may arise when teachers try to make sense of and implement the competing conceptions of what is “best” for students that define borderlands of practice. While dissonance can serve as an opportunity to support teacher professional development and identity formation, unsupported dissonance can undermine the ability and agency of teachers to make decisions about how to approach and engage with pedagogy in ways that reflect both their professional knowledge and their knowledge of what their students need.

My goal in introducing the lens of dissonance is to find a conceptual tool that better facilitates the work of researchers and teacher educators as they support teachers working in borderlands of practice. Teachers may express dissonance verbally or through evidence in practice. Researchers engaged in participant observation may perceive changing approaches to practice that reflect conflicting conceptions of what is “best.” Learning to recognize and support teachers in this process—to make sense of and develop means of instruction and engagement that meet the needs of their students—is a central part of using this lens.

Dissonant periods are bound to be fraught with uncertainty, as teachers work to make sense of what comprises “best practices” in unique school settings and amidst shifting landscapes of educational policy and accountability. In the following section, I present a case study of Wanda’s dissonance and sense-making process as she engaged with different, competing conceptions of “best practices” in pre-K.

A case study of dissonance

Wanda is a petite woman, with long black hair and small hands that make big motions as she talks. When I met her, Wanda had been teaching Kindergarten at Fuji Elementary School for 10 years. Fuji is a large public elementary school in a mid-sized university city. Located just south of the downtown area, the school serves a predominantly low-income community, with a large immigrant and English-language-learner population. Dedicated to teaching in schools serving children from diverse backgrounds, Wanda has built rich relationships with the children and families at Fuji. This is evidenced by the frequency with which children and parents stop to give her hugs and share news of their families and the progress of children who Wanda used to teach (frequently the older siblings or cousins of her current students). As she expressed to me early on in our time together, Wanda felt that she had a deep understanding of what the families in her community wanted from their children’s school experiences: opportunities for future success. In an early discussion, Wanda told me:

I see myself as someone who knows these families, so I can give the [children] the right start. Before it was in Kindergarten, and now in pre-K. And families expect that from me—that I make sure these kids are ready for what comes next.

This deeply influenced Wanda’s professional identity as a teacher. She wanted to make sure that, above all else, she was responding to and meeting the expectations of families.

During the year when I worked with Wanda, she was transitioning from teaching Kindergarten to teaching pre-K. It was also the first school year (2010–2011) that her local school district was implementing city-wide public pre-K. Wanda volunteered for the pre-K position that was created at Fuji. Wanda described her decision as an opportunity to expand her skill set and get back to what she had always felt early childhood should be: play-based learning with time for social-emotional growth. According to Wanda, there was no time in Kindergarten for either of these things. When she talked about her Kindergarten practice, she often reflected on how difficult it had been to balance assumptions about where children “should be” at the end of the year against the knowledge that teaching to assessments made for drudgery within the classroom.

In early conversations with Wanda, she voiced that she hoped to avoid these situations in pre-K. Wanda was excited about the opportunity to use play as a means for learning. Before the start of pre-K, we both understood that this was the goal of the district. Little did Wanda or I realize at the time that pre-K was also going to represent a complex borderland of practice, with incredibly varied expectations on the part of the school district, Wanda’s school principal, other teachers at Fuji, our professional development courses, and families about how children should be spending their time in pre-K, and to what end.

Conceptions of “best practices” in pre-K began to surface in mid-August, a few weeks before the start of the school year. In the school district’s professional development sessions, which were mandated for all pre-K teachers, different presenters from the school district expressed their high expectations for pre-K in terms of improving overall child outcomes and focusing on developmentally appropriate play-based learning opportunities. According to Wanda, this meant that

They want test scores but we can’t teach the kids how to take the test. We are going to play all year, learn a lot and then sit them down to take a test to see if they are ready for Kindergarten. It’s sort of crazy.

According to Wanda, these same themes were also the main focus of the monthly district professional development sessions which she was required to attend throughout the school year.

The focus on play-based learning was borne out by the materials that each pre-K classroom received: a full set of wooden blocks, puzzles, games, manipulative materials, a play kitchen and a puppet theater, and even a sensory table. Wanda would later tell me that she found these materials particularly “ironic,” as they were never allowed in her Kindergarten classroom. According to Wanda, “these toys were considered to be distractions for my Kindergarten students. Now they are how I should be teaching everything. What a difference a year makes.” While Wanda expressed an eagerness to teach from a play-based approach, the undercurrent of Kindergarten readiness that she identified from the district’s professional development sessions clearly gave her pause:

You aren’t allowed to fail now as a teacher, so they may say play, but if they want those kids to do well on the readiness assessments at the end of the year, that’s really what they are worried about.

A few weeks after the toys arrived, I came into Wanda’s classroom for a workday. As I sat down to chat before the children came in, Wanda piled several binders and spiral-bound books on a table in front of me and asked what I thought. The binders and books were long lists of academic, developmental, and social-emotional benchmarks that the teachers had been given, along with a specialized play-based assessment kit to use in their classroom. According to the district leaders, assessments were to be observational (in contrast to taking children from their activities for one-on-one assessment, as Wanda had been expected to do in Kindergarten). In this way, according to Wanda, the assessments both were and were not quite what they had been when she was teaching Kindergarten:

It’s like we have to achieve and show all the same kinds of readiness skills—but without directly asking or testing. We have to catch the kids doing all the things in these books. And to be honest, I am not sure that I know how to do that.

While she was expected to teach in a play-based format, showing that the children were meeting readiness benchmarks was still a central expectation of the pre-K year.

As Wanda and I got to know one another better through the late fall and early winter, she began to share with me another set of conceptions about the goals of pre-K that she was working to balance—those of her school principal and colleagues in Kindergarten. According to Wanda, they also saw her primary role as preparing students to be “ready for Kindergarten,” which Wanda was already struggling to implement through a play-based curriculum. One day, as we walked to the playground with the children, I heard a Kindergarten teacher tease Wanda, saying: “I hope they are going to be ready to be upstairs after only playing all day!” Wanda laughed and took the children outside. Later, I noticed her calling groups of children to a low table and working through a directed counting activity.

While Wanda’s school principal did not directly interfere with the mandate for play-based learning set forth by the district, Wanda told me more than once that her principal wanted her to be sure that the children were ready for their Kindergarten screenings. The screenings were a battery of tests designed to assess the academic skills of every incoming Kindergarten student across the district. The Kindergarten teachers administered these tests in late spring. The children were taken out to the hall to sit at a table and identify numbers and letters, and engage with counting and an assessment of their reading skills. As Wanda noted, the format alone—sitting one on one with a teacher and being asked direct questions—was going to be completely unknown to her students, who were used to being able to self-direct and choose between play centers.

Up to this point, Wanda had taken the changes that came along with teaching pre-K in her stride. During the first few weeks of school, play was Wanda’s primary vehicle for instruction and engaging the children. During this time, Wanda sought out and created play experiences that her own research and professional development experiences showed her would support children’s learning through play. At some point in October, however, things started to shift. While Wanda had expressed an aversion to using worksheets—something she had not been able to avoid in Kindergarten—she started requiring children to spend time with her at the big, low work table, writing letters or numbers, counting objects and circling the corresponding number, and so forth. I was surprised, but tried not to add my opinion to what Wanda was already negotiating. I was not sure how to proceed in supporting Wanda in the goals she had expressed to me early in the fall to make play-based learning work for her and her students.

As Wanda worked to marry these expectations of pre-K with her daily practice, she began to undertake professional development coursework as part of the 4K-PD Project in which I was a researcher. Our cohort of teachers met for the first time during the second week of school. During the introductions, Wanda’s dissonance was clear:

I’m Wanda. I just switched over from 10 years of teaching Kindergarten because I wanted a change and I didn’t realize how much it would change in a day. So I don’t have a favorite thing right now because there is just so much to figure out. (Seminar, Whole Group, 16 September 2011)

It was not even two weeks into the school year and Wanda was identifying herself as having moved from knowledgeable Kindergarten teacher to novice pre-K practitioner.

While the goal of the 4K-PD Project was to support teachers as they engaged with new approaches to practice, for Wanda—who was already juggling the expectations of her colleagues, her principal, and the school district—our courses clearly added another competing conception of what she “should” be doing in her classroom. As we began to introduce play-based methods for engaging the children in mathematical learning, Wanda was deeply engaged during class time and expressed her eagerness to foreground mathematics play in her classroom. Once again, however, this approach was almost exactly the opposite of how she had been expected to practice in Kindergarten. In a conversation in early December, Wanda noted:

I’ve always been really good at math, and enjoyed teaching it in Kindergarten. But this way of playing to help kids understand math concepts through play … I understand why it is important, but it’s not easy. I can’t say, “There, look, I’ve taught you the concept because we did the lesson together, and now I can check if you understand it.” I’ve got to be patient, to plan materials and get playing with them, and then observe them to try and see if they know the concepts. It’s a lot of time and there is only one of me and 14 of them. And there are a lot of expectations for what they are supposed to be able to do when they leave here. That’s kind of terrifying.

Throughout the early winter, I watched Wanda struggle to make sense of which approaches and conceptions of “best practices” to foreground in her daily practice. Some days, I would observe Wanda engaged in directed small-group lessons on counting. When I arrived the next day, these lessons would be taking place through play with children in the block center. The following week, children would be tracing letters on worksheets with her at a table. And, a day later, Wanda would be writing for a child as she narrated a lengthy story to accompany her picture.

Wanda was moving back and forth between different approaches to engaging the children, with each representing some aspect of the varied conceptions of “best practices” for pre-K that she was desperately trying to balance. By January, Wanda began to ask me, “What do you think?” She was clearly uncertain about how to proceed. In the course of a few months, a confident, knowledgeable veteran teacher had become precariously uncertain. It was at this point that I began to understand that the many competing conceptions of what Wanda “should” be doing in pre-K were preventing her from using her professional knowledge to decide what best suited the needs of her students and their families, and in what measure. The intense focus on what was “best” for children had obscured for Wanda what was relevant for these children in this classroom and this unique school setting—something that she once knew very well.

Working to understand Wanda’s sense-making process, I began to try to reassert her professional agency. Through the professional development coursework of the district and the 4K-PD Project, Wanda had learned a lot, but when it came to knowing what to apply, and when and how, Wanda’s dissonance prevailed. So, when she asked me what I thought, I would respond: “You know these kids. What do you think they need?” Invariably the reply was a sigh, and we would dive deeper into what was working and what was not, planning and testing different approaches to the curriculum that Wanda felt met the needs of her students, rather than any one conception of what was “best.” The process was not easy, and Wanda worked with fierce relentlessness to become the pre-K teacher who she wanted to be, and who she felt her students needed.

By late May, Wanda’s classroom hummed with energy and purpose, and Wanda rarely asked me what I thought. Sometimes there would be letter worksheets and small groups with her at a table—a homage to the academic expectations that lay ahead. But there were also veterinary clinics in the housekeeping corner as a child struggled to make sense of the loss of a pet; enormous block structures in the block area; and children spontaneously deciding to sort and count all of the little plastic bugs that had appeared in jars on the bookshelves one morning.

Interpretations: Understanding dissonance

As Wanda began to identify and try to negotiate the many competing conceptions of what was “best” for her students, I wondered how I, as a teacher educator and researcher, should be supporting her work. As a year-long participant-observer in Wanda’s classroom, I knew that her ultimate goal was to make sure that she gave each child exactly what he or she needed—whether that was learning to count with one-to-one correspondence, learning to get along and take turns with peers, or finding successful ways to build friendships. However, the other expectations of what should, or could, be happening to “best” prepare her students for the school years ahead were a constant presence.

As I watched this sense-making process unfold, I struggled to know how to support Wanda. It was at this point that I began to explore the literature on teacher identity formation and sense-making. I found that the moments that seemed to precede sense-making—moments of dissonance—were when Wanda would reach out to me to seek affirmation of her choices, or to question what made one approach or outcome “best,” compared to another. While my initial response was to tell Wanda what I thought, this rarely seemed to aid Wanda’s sense-making process. Rather, it added yet another conception of what was “best.” Instead, I found that by encouraging Wanda to try each approach, and to see what worked for her and for her children, her dissonance became agency.

Dissonance results from teachers’ engagement with multiple conceptions of “best practices” that challenge and/or subvert their rich professional knowledge. This dissonance, in turn, requires teachers to make sense of what practices are best for their students. For teachers working within borderlands of practice, this sense-making provoked by dissonance may be an endless task. In order to support strong teacher identity formation within these borderlands, teacher educators and researchers need to help teachers recognize and make sense of the landscape of competing conceptions of what is “best” for students that often defines these borderlands. Supporting strong teacher identities means supporting the agency of teachers to make choices within their practice that reflect their professional and local knowledge of what students need (Manning-Morton, 2006; Sisson, 2009).

Borderlands of practice reflect the growing politicization and deprofessionalization of teaching, and exist in many different areas of education (Crawford, 2004). As with Wanda, experiences within borderlands may result in more secure teacher identity and practices that reflect the diverse needs of many learners. However, for this to be the case, we must value the professional knowledge that teachers bring to their work, and encourage and support teachers as they use this base of knowledge and continuing professional development to make decisions that reflect the needs of their students, rather than outside actors with agendas far beyond what is “best” for students.

Pre-K is just one example of a borderland of teacher practice. As the professional knowledge, experience, and competencies of teachers continue to be questioned in favor of standards and outcome-driven “best practices,” there will be more and more borderlands of practice where teachers will need additional support to make sense of what, indeed, works best for their students. The multiple and competing conceptions of what was “best” for Wanda’s pre-K students created a dissonant response where her strong identity as a teacher faltered, leaving her without the agency to make decisions that she determined best met the needs of her students. With support, dissonance can be an opportunity to examine, explore, learn, and affirm developing teacher identities. Without support, dissonance can undermine teacher identity and professional decision-making and agency. Locating professional knowledge, agency, and identity within the borderlands of practice is a difficult and ongoing journey. For each teacher, recognizing dissonance will be very different, but, in all cases, advocacy and support from teacher educators and researchers will be centrally important.

Conclusions

Understanding dissonance requires researchers and teachers to make sense together. Researchers can begin by joining teachers in their practice and, in doing so, constructing rich knowledge of the competing conceptions/expectations for the work of teachers that are at play within borderlands of practice. The result will be a base from which researchers and teacher educators can engage in supporting the agency and professional knowledge of each teacher to make sense and move forward with action.

The ultimate goal of recognizing dissonance is to support teachers’ sense-making and professional agency. Dissonance is the result of the process of sense-making in which we engage as we interact with others in everyday interactions (Holland and Lachicotte, 2007). However, if we leave teachers unsupported as they work to make sense in borderlands of practice, it is unlikely that these moments of dissonance will resolve into agency. Identity is formed through agentic acts of sense-making in practice with others (Wenger, 1998). As researchers and teacher educators, we must act to recognize dissonance and support teachers’ sense-making in the face of forces that wish to deprofessionalize and limit the autonomy of teachers to make decisions about what their students need within their learning environments.

Using a lens of dissonance to understand and support teachers’ sense-making in borderlands of practice can sustain and reinforce strong teacher identities. As teachers continue to be the street-level decision-makers in borderlands of practice (Goldstein, 2008)—extracting, negotiating, and making sense of what is “best” for children from many varying expectations, actors, and policies—teacher educators have to look for opportunities to identify dissonance and support teacher identity and agency.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The writing of this article was supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation (1019431). The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the position, policy, or endorsement of the National Science Foundation.

Notes

Author biography

Katherine K Delaney is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Michigan. She is working on a literacy intervention project based in Head Start and universal pre-K classrooms in Brooklyn, New York. She continues to be interested in understanding the implications of pre-K policies for teachers in practice and access to pre-K experiences for children. Her other research interests include the influence of local and community contexts on early childhood practices, curriculum design, and conceptions of quality, as well as how to best support pre-service and veteran teachers entering pre-K settings.

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