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Resistance to reform: A critical ethnograpy of elementary science teachers
Abstract
This critical ethnography develops an ethnographic portrait of four elementary classroom teachers involved in the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded Statewide Systemic Initiative (SSI) reform project and illuminates their experience in resistance to reform. This research focuses on the "lived experience" of these teachers and opens to scrutiny the discreet ways in which one elementary school culture resists change. Critical ethnographers assume all cultural life is in constant tension between control and resistance. Discursive methodology opens to scrutiny otherwise hidden agendas and assumptions in the social structure--historic myths--that inhibit reform or change. Resistance theory suggests that resistance to change is a socially developed phenomenon and that cultural ways reproduce themselves from generation to generation. Resistance theory is the orienting theory and motivation for this research. The research setting is a suburban, midwestern elementary school. Data, collected over a four month period, include field observations, artifacts, photographs, interviews, and dialogical reflections. Data analysis includes the classification of things, persons, and events to identify patterns and themes from the perspective of the participants. Categories and codes, sorted in a "memos and diagrams" method, determine overarching categories related to the major issues of change--environment for change, support for change, and vision for change--and title three cultural portrait chapters of this research. Four historic cultural myths emerge in the data analysis. These myths regarding elementary teacher roles, "teacher time", school and community "trust," and teacher education are established by school policies and traditions. Identification of researcher bias, a detailed research plan, repeated observations over four months, triangulation of data, member checks, and an external auditor insure verification of truth. Conclusions suggest these teachers are "empowered" to practice reform science methodology on a daily basis and are inhibited by a homeostatic system relationship in historic cultural myths. Thus, there are new power tensions among teachers, superintendent, principal, school board members, and parents as a result of the teachers' empowerment. Recommendations include suggestions for continuing power negotiations.
Subject Area
Educational sociology|Science education|School administration
Recommended Citation
Thomas, Julie Anne, "Resistance to reform: A critical ethnograpy of elementary science teachers" (1995). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9600759.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9600759