Preschool teachers making sense of a new curriculum text within competing contexts and discourses

This study investigated how a group of teachers in Queensland, Australia made sense of the first government-developed preschool curriculum guidelines. The implementation of curriculum reforms in pre-compulsory settings has tended to be ignored by researchers. This study provided a unique opportunity to build insights into how preschool curriculum is constructed within contested and complex social and political contexts. An interpretive approach to research was adopted that was informed by hermeneutic traditions. Data were accumulated using two group conversations involving seven preschool teachers and three conversations with individual teachers. Transcripts gathered during the evaluation of the trial document were analysed as well as texts associated with the production of the guidelines. Aspects of critical and poststructuralist theory were combined to help construct critical understandings of teachers' experiences with the new guidelines. The investigation showed that preschool teachers made sense of the curriculum text in relation to their existing child-centred curriculum perspectives. The study highlighted how teachers' interpretations were shaped by competing agendas, ideologies and discourses operating within teachers' work contexts and the contexts that shaped the production of the text. The findings indicate that the introduction of the document reshaped teachers' views about curriculum, children and their roles as they renegotiated curriculum perspectives in relation to new official definitions of curriculum. Rather than evaluating the curriculum text, the study showed how teachers constructed multiple and contradictory interpretations of the text as they managed tensions within the texts and within complex work contexts. Teachers' perceived that the text provided government endorsement for their existing philosophies and practices and created new expectations for changes in practice. The document provided a resource that teachers could use strategically to justify their practice to parents and colleagues who did not always value child-centred practice. The text also operated to construct new positions and ways of understanding curriculum that competed with teachers' existing views. The study highlights that policy makers and teachers need to reflect critically on the multiple factors that shape the negotiation of curriculum meanings in diverse contexts. The study shows that preschool curriculum is negotiated within complex and unstable discourses and power relations. Recognition of this complexity can help curriculum developers to design materials that empower teachers as they manage competing interests and demands. Awareness of the multiple factors that shape curriculum and curriculum materials can help teachers to monitor reflexively the positive and negative outcomes of curriculum reform and make appropriate decisions about how to use reforms to meet children's needs. This can help teachers to maintain a sense of control within changing contexts and to ensure changes in practice can be ethically justified