Reading, Reforms, and Resources: How Elementary Teachers Teach Literacy in Contexts of Complex Policies and Required Curriculum

Required curricula and mandates from educational policy have shaped the landscape of elementary school literacy instruction in the United States. This multiple case study investigated the contextual factors and local curricular decision-making of experienced elementary literacy teachers in one large U.S. public school district. The study’s guiding research question was: How do experienced elementary teachers teach literacy within the contexts of required literacy curriculum and complex educational policies? Influenced by theories of local agency and decision-making, this study explored teachers’ thought and action in context through a series of in-depth case-level studies of six teachers within one metropolitan school district as they thought about their literacy curriculum and enacted classroom instruction. This study found the teachers working to coordinate four commonplaces of curriculum making from Schwab (1973/1983), yet in new ways, reflective of the educational changes and challenges of the last 20 years, in what this study calls the four “contemporary commonplaces” to teach in coordinated and locally meaningful ways