ABSTRACT
Many teachers were suspicious of government intentions for the reform, and yet valued moral education to foster healthy, prosocial attitudes, good relationships, cooperative and collaborative practices, service, perseverance, and identification with the local area, with the ultimate goal of living better alongside others. Most teachers met calls for content change with pragmatism, utilizing textbooks to the extent that they did not conflict with strongly held beliefs, and seeking means to achieve policy requirements in the least painful way. They were supported by moral education enthusiasts who invested time toward standardizing new teaching approaches and surface objectives that followed the aims of practitioner literature. Similar practices appeared in multiple schools in each municipality, and in regions separated by great distance, which is difficult to explain as purely local actions amongst colleagues in each school. This chapter looks at ‘other moments of policy enactment’ that intersected the fieldwork schools during the period of this study to question what happens between state policy and school practice. It examines the micro-processes through which new lesson models and pedagogies entered the school and how they were shared and disseminated, in order to better theorize interactions between the overlapping roles of expert practitioners, school administrators, local enthusiasts, and classroom teachers. The analysis reveals the work of expert practitioners with experience in a range of positions in and near school administration who promote innovation in practice, in reference to policy, through national and regional networks at the boundary of the school. As their practices make sense to teachers, they simultaneously make sense for teachers, and translate policy into practice.
