Part of a growing trend to look at the interaction of curriculum policy and teachers’ classroom practice, this book differs from those currently on the market in two ways. First, it looks at teachers’ responses to multiple subject matter reforms (reading, writing and mathematics). Second, those responses are used as part of an analysis of the recent move toward systemic reform. Looking across multiple school subject matter is a key feature of this book. Most of the current analyses of curriculum policy and classroom practices focus on a single reform - a new textbook series, a new local curriculum guide, a new state test - in a single subject matter. The author examines how four Michigan elementary school teachers manage a range of reforms (new tests, textbooks, curriculum frameworks) in three different school subjects. Comparing their responses is instructive because: teachers’ responses vary across classrooms - even when teachers teach in the same school building, their responses to reading reforms can vary dramatically; and teachers’ responses also vary across the reforms - although a teacher might embrace changes in his/her reading practice, proposed changes in mathematics and/or writing might be ignored. This book is also important because it is one of the few studies to use empirical findings as a means of examining the current movement toward systemic reform. This conception of educational change is widely touted, yet the support and the critiques tend to be based on conceptual stances rather than empirical data. The author’s analysis of systemic reform rests on the cases of four teachers set in the context of a state-wide reform effort. Based on that analysis, the author concludes that although the problem of US education may by systemic, the solutions are not necessarily so.
