(un)intended Outcomes of the Common Core English Language Arts Standards: A Narrative Inquiry into the Learning Experiences of English Learners' Teachers
Open Access
- Author:
- Mooney, Angela J
- Graduate Program:
- Adult Education
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- July 13, 2015
- Committee Members:
- Esther Susana Prins, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Esther Susana Prins, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Davin Jules Carr Chellman, Committee Member
Patrick Willard Shannon, Committee Member
Jeanine M Staples, Committee Member - Keywords:
- adult learning
elementary teachers
Common Core State Standards
English Learners
authoritative policies - Abstract:
- The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are a key piece of current reform efforts to reshape the U.S. educational system. Critics contend that the related Revised Publishers’ Criteria (RPC), coupled with the authoritative power of the CCSS, will de-professionalize teachers, directing their practice from a distance. The purpose of this qualitative study was to describe how teachers of elementary English Learners were experiencing and responding to CCSS implementation. Few studies consider teachers to be adult learners or explore their informal workplace learning. Therefore, this study also examined the participants’ informal learning in relation to the intended teacher learning outcomes of the RPC. Combining narrative inquiry and critical discourse analysis, the study analyzed the RPC and three teachers’ narratives collected during multiple interviews. The findings revealed that prior to CCSS implementation, the participants characterized themselves as creative, effective teachers who cared about students’ personal lives. After interacting with many of the RPC’s 88 teacher learning outcomes present in their reading curriculum, the teachers described their focus as drilling skills required for standardized testing. The teachers also learned unintended outcomes such as doubting their professional effectiveness and seeing students as test scores. They learned to rely on their professional knowledge to resist when the intended outcomes conflicted with their deeply-held beliefs about helping students. The study provides evidence that Illeris’s comprehensive model of learning is beneficial for understanding teacher learning that occurs outside of formal professional development offerings. The findings also illustrate how authoritative policies are, and are not, able to influence practice.