Seeing Teaching and Learning Differently: A Case Study of How Second Grade Teachers and their Students in Texas Make Sense of Instruction

Abstract How early elementary teachers instruct their students new information matters. However, in contexts like the United States, early elementary school classrooms are becoming more regulated and standardized, which leaves little room for teachers to engage in instructional activities that offer their students choice and voice in their learning. This matters because such learning activities improve students’ social and emotional development and increase their interests in such academic areas as literacy and mathematics. Two key groups that are often absent from these conversations about what types of learning experiences should be occurring in early elementary school are the classroom teachers themselves and their students. We begin to attend to this issue by presenting findings from a case study that examined how two classrooms of second graders and their teachers in Texas made sense of how students should be taught new information in school. Examining these teachers and students’ sensemaking of instruction reveals several opportunities for early childhood stakeholders to support teachers in early elementary classrooms so that they can engage in a range of teaching practices that allow all their students to thrive as learners in and out of school.