Recent reform initiatives push for stronger curriculum mandates and greater teacher accountability. Such initiatives are leading to an increase in scripted curriculums within the secondary education classroom. What happens when teaching ideologies are at odds with such required curriculums? How do teachers maintain a balance when personal beliefs no longer match the curricular expectations set before them? In this article, I share the stories of three middle school teachers-the accommodator, the negotiator, and the rebel-as they work to incorporate a scripted curriculum within their language arts classrooms. In examining the curricular approaches taken by these three teachers, I urge educators to question their ethical obligations when infusing a scripted curriculum that opposes their personal teaching beliefs.
There has been an increase in research regarding experiences within virtual education. However, little attention has been given to the middle level context. Through a theoretical lens grounded in stageenvironment fit theory, this phenomenological case study describes the lived experiences of two middle level virtual learners as they engage in an academic year of virtual middle school. Their shared experiences give attention to a need for relatedness, self-efficacy, motivation and autonomy in the virtual context.
Carolyn Ellis states, “autoethnography shows struggle, passion, embodied life, and the collaborative creation of sense - making... [it] wants the reader to care, to feel, to empathize, and to do something, to act” (Ellis & Bochner, 2006, p. 433). This autoethnography describes one new mother’s struggles to complete her doctoral program of study while remaining devoted to her familial obligations and relationships. In particular, this article investigates the causes of tension and stress that exist as she attempts to find a balance between her need to care and love for her child, to maintain a relationship with her husband, and achieve success within her graduate studies. Using autoethnography, the author makes herself vulnerable as she shares her intimate experiences through personal journal entries and stories of encounters with family and friends. In this way, the author hopes to utilize her personal experience in an effort to open dialogue concerning the diverse needs of today’s graduate student mothers as they attempt to successfully earn a graduate degree.
As a graduate student, I was awakened to the world of autoethnographic narrative inquiry. It was a world I was eager to traverse as I completed my doctoral coursework, and engaged in my final dissertation research. Yet, I was unaware of my naiveté at inviting others to share in my lived experience. As I engaged in an autoethnographic narrative inquiry of my first year as an online teacher, I found myself entangled in a world of hidden tensions I never expected to uncover. In this article, I share the personal tensions that surfaced as I entered into the world of autoethnographic narrative inquiry.
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