What is it about?
This chapter details a qualitative focused ethnography of one urban public elementary school math teacher in a Northeastern United States. The research questions were: 1. In what ways did this study participant make adjustments to the district-mandated curriculum she was obligated to follow? and 2. What motivated this teacher to adjust the mandatory district curriculum regardless of the risk of being fired? Data were collected from multiple sources (e.g., field notes, interviews, observations, artifacts, recordings). Saldaña's (2013) thematic and value coding was used for data analysis. My investigation found that, while balancing on the edge, i.e., at the risk of losing her job, this teacher made a wide range of adjustments (e.g., scaffolding, retailoring, reinforcing) to the curriculum and her instruction and taught every topic in-depth to help her students deeper comprehend the content and achieve higher.
Featured Image
Photo by Greg Rosenke on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Apparently, this study findings may be found useful and applicable nation-wide and globally.
Perspectives
This chapter addresses such topics as Curriculum Approach, Curriculum Contexts, Teachers' Emotional Labor, History Curriculum, and Instruction Design.
Dr. Olga Gould-Yakovleva
SUNY Alumna, Independent Researcher,
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Focused Ethnography of a Teacher Adjusting a District-Mandated Curriculum, May 2026, IGI Global,
DOI: 10.4018/979-8-3373-5027-1.ch001.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
