ABSTRACT
For five years, I enacted a constructivist teacher education curriculum in my classroom at a conservative midwestern teachers college. In response to my beliefs about learning and teaching, to my students’ beliefs and expectations, and to my colleagues’ critique, the curriculum changed. As written, the curriculum reflected my personal beliefs. When enacted, the curriculum transmuted in response to my students’ negotiations with me to reduce the complexity of the tasks I designed. My curriculum challenged institutional norms, as demonstrated by colleagues’ critiques of my work in the tenure process at the institution where this study was conducted. In this paper, I examine the personal beliefs, instructional dilemmas, and institutional norms that impacted changes in my written curriculum and curriculum-in-action. In particular, I focus on my grading system, an artifact of my beliefs-in-action.
