From innovation to routine: Hopes, challenges, ands frustrations among primary education teachers

Abstract

Difficulties in introducing active methodologies in the classroom may be related to the teachers’ lack of training, as they might not recognize the benefits that these methodologies offer or may not know how to implement them. Based on a qualitative ethnographic study conducted in two bilingual public primary schools in Andalusia, with a variable mix of middle-class and lower-middle-class students, this study investigated these assumptions and observed the relationship between the persistence of these innovative practices and their alignment with the grammar of schooling and micropolitics of the school. The results show that attempts to introduce these methodologies by a group of novice teachers seeking support from professionals to improve their practices led to the abandonment of the most effective tools for maintaining the legitimacy of their own position in the face of the intentions and interests of other agents. The difficulties generated by this dynamic resulted in the discrediting of specialist groups among these teachers and the emergence of a set of local pedagogical strategies that diverged from expert recommendations.