Taking back the standards: Toward a theory of critical professional practice for specially trained teachers

In California, the state academic content standards dominate language arts instruction for K-12 English Learners (ELs). In addition, alignment between K-12 language arts standards, high-stakes accountability schemes, mandated language arts curricula, and teacher education policies, increasingly requires that teachers, especially those who work in "underperforming" schools, implement these standards with fidelity. Yet evidence suggests California's language arts standards advance content and pedagogies that may put ELs at considerable risk. This dissertation offers three in-depth case studies of teachers, who have been specially trained to serve English Learners, and details their interpretations and instantiations of California's language arts standards in state-identified underperforming schools, largely comprised of Spanish-speaking ELs. Drawing on school change literature that focuses on the unique barriers faced by equity-minded agents of change, I examine these teachers' experiences through three lenses: technical, political, and normative. Through classroom observations, teacher and principal interviews and teacher focus groups, I explore how these teachers apply their technical and ideological training in a tightly monitored policy context and how community, school and classroom realities enable or constrain their use of the standards to meet ELs' needs. Findings indicate that while teachers did not criticize the standards per se, they opposed the standardization of the language arts curriculum, which resulted from the state's numerous mechanisms for enforcing them. As such, this study showcases these teachers' efforts to "take back the standards," and provides the beginning elements of a Critical Professional Practice---a stance towards one's work and a collection of specific strategies---that specially trained teachers can use to adapt standards-based policies to be consistent with their training. Notably, such a practice promotes meaningful learning amongst specially trained teachers and their linguistically diverse students, even in contexts where the prescribed practices would suggest otherwise. These findings are useful in that they build toward a situated and equity-minded notion of teacher agency, thus complicating discussions of school change, local leadership, and teacher learning in the context of policy implementation. I conclude by considering the implications of these findings for teacher educators who seek to prepare teachers to work with diverse students.