Curriculum theory in action: A case of children's literature in teacher education

Abstract

This is the story of a teacher educator and her 27 students attempting to create the curriculum called "Children's Literature in the Elementary Classroom" over the course of one semester. The study uses "story" as an organizational framework for the qualitative data which was collected. The story documents the teacher educator's "theory of the content" in regard to the teaching of children's literature to pre-service teachers. The data consisted primarily of reflective and stimulated-recall journal entries, as well as the audio-tapes of each class session used for the stimulated-recall journal. The study consists of three major parts. The first part is the teacher educator's own story and the story of the class' instructional history over the semester being studied. The second part of the study is the analysis of the reflective journal and stimulated-recall journal. From the initial analysis a specific unit of analysis "day" emerged. The data was organized onto individual "day description" cards which were sorted for general "tone" of the day. Once sorted for "tone," specific analytic categories emerged. The data corpus was then sorted to discern the degree to which each day exhibited particular specific analytic characteristics. The third part of the study is three case studies which were written based upon the general "tone" sort and the specific analytic sort. The case of the "typical" day, of the "great" day, and of the "problematic" day are presented. This story's major interpretation is in regard to the development of the teacher educator's "theory of the content" as related to her philosophical beliefs about learning, teaching and the important areas of the content to address. The story suggests that one's philosophical views of teaching and learning and the content have implications for the manner in which curriculum is created. These views have implications for the messages pre-service teachers take from the course in regard to their own views of the content, specifically and teaching, generally.