Examining How Stakeholders at the Local, State, and National Levels Made Sense of the Changed Kindergarten

Abstract

Kindergarten in the United States has fundamentally changed. It is the new first grade where children are taught increased academic content and experience more standardized testing. There is much debate among education stakeholders about these changes, but such discussions are often siloed— making it difficult to know whether these changes reflect these stakeholders’ understandings of kindergarten specifically or public education in general. This explorative video-cued multivocal ethnographic study addressed this issue by examining how local, state, and national education stakeholders made sense of the changed kindergarten. Such findings provide insight into what it is they viewed driving these academic and instructional changes, what opportunities for further reform exist, and whether these stakeholders will work to support and/or alter such changes.

Teachers’ Perspectives on Year Two Implementation of a Kindergarten Readiness Assessment

“…This indicates that KRA generated data did not give information that they viewed as important at the start of kindergarten. Our findings mirror that of others demonstrating that views of what kindergarten should be have both shifted in the last decades and that these views are variable and contextually driven (Bassok, Latham, & Rorem, 2016;Brown et al, 2018). Thus, having clearer state-level (and possibly national-level) definitions of kindergarten readiness as well as guidelines for how readiness is connected to kindergarten learning guidelines and instruction may be needed.…”

“…It is not unusual for new polices to require time for teachers and school leaders to adjust and figure out how to maximize the potential of a reform (Brown, Englehardt, Barry, & Ku, 2018;Payne, 2008). Thus, more experience may be needed for KRAs to achieve their full potential.…”

Beginning to Dismantle the Binaries that Frame the Neoliberal Kindergarten

“…Through examining the findings from a larger exploratory VCME research study (Adair et al, 2018;Brown, 2021;Tobin et al, 2009) that sought to understand how a set of stakeholders in Texas (n=62) and West Virginia (n=26) made sense of the types of learning experiences kindergarteners are and should be having in school and why (Brown, Englehardt, Barry, & Ku, 2019a;Brown, Englehardt, Barry, & Ku, 2019b;Brown, Englehardt, Ku, & Barry 2019c;Brown, Barry, Ku, & Englehardt, 2021), I, in this article, seek to identify and dismantle some of the binaries that frame the changed kindergarten. I do so by examining the following research question: How did education stakeholders in this study appear to use binary logic, which privileges policymaker's neoliberal reforms, to make sense of the changed kindergarten?…”

“…The narrative that kindergarten in the United States (US) is the new first grade is pervasive (Bassok, Latham, & Rorem, 2016). Education researchers have documented how policymakers' neoliberal education reforms have turned kindergarten into a learning environment that privileges children's academic performance over their development and learning (Brown, Englehardt, Barry, & Ku, 2019a;Graue, 2009). Many of these critiques, including my own with colleagues (e.g., Brown, Englehardt, Barry, & Ku, 2019b), are rooted in a binary logic (e.g., ready vs. unready student) that positions the constructs defining public schooling, the act of teaching, the process of learning, families, and even the children themselves in opposition with each other (Mac Naughton, 2005).…”

“…Through analysing some the findings of a larger exploratory video-cued multivocal ethnographic (VCME) research study (Adair et al, 2018;Brown, 2021;Tobin et al, 2009) that shared a micro-level view of a day in a kindergarten classroom with a range of education stakeholders in Texas and West Virginia (e.g., Brown, Englehardt, Barry, & Ku, 2019a), I examine how a sample of education stakeholders from these varied contexts appeared to use binary logic to make sense of the changed kindergarten. By doing so, I begin to pull apart some of these binaries that emerged in my analysis by employing Mac Naughton's (2005) and others (e.g., Foucault, 1982) tools for deconstruction.…”