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Curriculum making as professionalism‐in‐context: the cases of two elementary school teachers amidst curriculum change in Cyprus
Author(s) -
Kontovourki Stavroula,
Philippou Stavroula,
Theodorou Eleni
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
the curriculum journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.843
H-Index - 36
eISSN - 1469-3704
pISSN - 0958-5176
DOI - 10.1080/09585176.2018.1447308
Subject(s) - curriculum , agency (philosophy) , constitution , context (archaeology) , pedagogy , sociology , politics , structure and agency , space (punctuation) , mathematics education , political science , psychology , social science , law , geography , linguistics , philosophy , archaeology
In this paper, two case studies of elementary school teachers in the Republic of Cyprus are constructed to discuss how curriculum making relates to teacher biographies and sense of professionalism, as those are shaped at the intersection of their professional history and projections for the future, informed by and informing their constitution as professionals in local institutional and broader social contexts. Drawing on the ecological model of teacher agency, the two cases are utilised to examine how teachers’ narrated professional experiences in past and current schools were at interplay with their general sense of professional role and purpose as teachers. This complex interplay is simultaneously connected to the ways they perceived and constituted their pupils as well as to the ways they themselves were constituted by others as professionals. The examination of the two cases foregrounds the notions of teacher agency and of curriculum making as contingent, negotiated and negotiable, and opens up the space to consider the politics of both as those are permeated by micro‐processes of subjection and subjectivation.