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In this article, Betty Achinstein and Rodney Ogawa examine the experiences of two new teachers who resisted mandated "fidelity" to Open Court literacy instruction in California. These two case studies challenge the portrayal of teacher resistance as driven by psychological deficiency and propose instead that teachers engage in "principled resistance" informed by professional principles. They document that within prescriptive instructional programs and control-oriented educational policies, teachers have a limited ability to implement professional principles, including diversified instruction, high expectations, and creativity. In this environment, teachers who resist experience professional isolation and schools experience teacher attrition. Through these two cases, Achinstein and Ogawa express concern about the negative impact of educational reforms that are guided by technical and moralistic control.
We teach kids to be confident, to stand up for themselves, to have opinions, to be strong, and to be wise. When teachers are that way, they are shut down. We don't want that in our teachers. -Sue, a new teacher
As this new teacher suggests, the capacity to "stand up for themselves" that many teachers foster in their students may be stifled in teachers by educational policies and programs that aim to control and thereby limit debate on instructional practice. This article highlights the cases of two novice teachers who engaged in resistance against a scripted literacy program that was approved by the state and adopted by their school districts. The cases reveal that these teachers' resistance was rooted in professional principles and, in at least one case, was initially supported by a professional community. The cases challenge the dominant images of teacher resistance as personality flaws and conservative acts needing to be altered.
These cases also reveal the unintended consequences of prescriptive instructional programs and control-oriented educational policies. Our purpose was not to assess the efficacy and appropriateness of different approaches to literacy instruction. Instead, we focused on how districts enforce the current policy environment by demanding that teachers implement literacy programs with "fidelity," thus establishing a technical and moralistic tone that constrains reflective critique and marginalizes dissent in the profession.
Related Literature
Teacher resistance has not gained substantial attention from researchers, despite research that documents instances where teachers rejected policy directives (Berman & McLaughlin, 1977; Cohen, 1991; Cuban, 1993). It has become...