Complex positioning: teachers as agents of curricular and pedagogical reform

We analyse two narratives of teacher-facilitator teams producing elementary science curricula and disseminating them to their peers. We draw on these stories to interpret how teacher-facilitators position themselves with respect to other educators (e.g. peer teachers and development-team members), to real and imagined students and parents, to knowing and learning science, and to pedagogical practices and texts. We read these acts of positioning relationally and responsively. Teacher-facilitators position themselves and their work in highly complex ways to multiple political and social others. These multiple positions raise a range of anxieties and questions for the teacher-facilitators and shape their curricular and leadership roles. Our purpose is, first, to tease out these complexities of positioning and subjectivity, and second, to consider how teachers construct their roles as pedagogical and curricular leaders among their peers. This analysis illuminates thinking about how reform is enacted in schools and how leadership roles are constructed.