Investigating teachers’ work with multiple knowledge resources in local curriculum development

Abstract

This paper investigates how teachers handle dilemmas generated by the multiplicity of knowledge resources in contexts of local curriculum development. In a study using an ethnographic approach, one team of lower secondary school teachers in Norway, mandated to develop a school based curriculum, was followed closely over a year. Drawing on socio-material perspectives, data from six team meetings were analysed to explore how the team reached decisions in their efforts to develop a subject curriculum. While previous research has paid less attention to what the presence of a diversity of knowledge resources ‘does’ with the epistemic dimension of teachers’ curriculum work, the present study shows that teachers’ engagement with multiple knowledge resources created dilemmas but also greater scope for action in decision-making situations. These processes, however, bring new responsibilities to the fore which require agency from the teachers and should be acknowledged in current discussions of teachers’ work.