Struggling to Overcome the State’s Prescription for Practice: A Study of a Sample of Early Educators’ Professional Development and Action Research Projects in a High-Stakes Teaching Context

Issues of standardization, student achievement, and diversity have dramatically altered teaching within early childhood programs across the United States. This has created a situation in which teacher educators need to assist practicing and preservice teachers working in these contexts with formulating instructional responses that address policymakers’ high-stakes demands, take into account the best practices of early childhood, and attend to children’s linguistic, cultural, socioeconomic, and political worlds. This article addresses this issue by examining findings from a qualitative study of a professional development course within a large urban school district for prekindergarten and kindergarten teachers. In the course, the teachers were asked to engage in action research projects that pursued learning experiences with their students reflecting issues central to their lives in and/or outside their classrooms. Analyzing and interpreting their experiences sheds light on how teacher educators can support practicing and preservice teachers in responding to the governmental, institutional, and local demands on their teaching while attempting to formulate learning experiences that reflect their students’ sociocultural worlds.