Full Description
Teachers of the youngest children at school were the first to bear the brunt of the policies to change the curriculum after the 1988 Education Act. What did the changes mean to them? How did they perceive their impact upon their work, on standards in the curriculum, on assessment and testing, and on their relationships with pupils and colleagues? How did they cope with stress, long working hours, intrusions into their home lives, and with change imposed from outside? The authors capture in detail the views of thirty infant teachers and compare their subjective perceptions, dominated by a sense of massive change, with the objective record of both continuities and changes in their work.
Contents
Part I Introduction BACKGROUND TO THE RESEARCH 1 TIME SPENT ON WORK: THE QUANTITATIVE FRAME Part II The picture from the interviews 2 PERCEPTIONS OF THE NATIONAL CURRICULUM 3 ADMINISTERING NATIONAL TESTS 4 PERCEPTIONS OF THE IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS 5 CURRICULUM PLANNING AND CLASSROOM PRACTICE 6 THE USE OF TEACHERS' TIME 7 STRESS Part III Changing teachers' work? 8 TEACHERS' MORALE AND JOB SATISFACTION 9 DILEMMAS OF PROFESSIONALITY 10 THE KEY STAGE 1 CURRICULUM: CONTINUITIES AND CHANGE
