Final Version May 5 07

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in enabling teachers to take responsibility for their own growth. Making
choices is an empowering process. (Jones, 1993, p. xiv)
Ayers (1992) writes that “recovering the voice of the teacher—usually a woman,
increasingly a person of color, often a member of the working poor—is an essential part
of reconceptualizing the field of early childhood education” (p. 266). According to
Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Traule (1986), voice is a powerful tool for women’s
development and silence, a developmental inhibitor. Development is seen as
“constructive knowledge: integrating voices” (Belenky et al., p. 133) where “all
knowledge is constructed, and the knower is an intimate part of the known” (p. 137).
Recovering from a silent position of powerlessness and low status requires an integration
of voices.
Purpose of the Study
The purpose of this study is to examine paths taken on a journey to become an
emergent curriculum teacher. A particular view of curriculum delineates the paths.
Connelly and Clandinin (1988) suggest that curriculum “can mean the paths we have
followed and the paths we intend to follow” (p. 1). The paths taken will reveal the impact
of a curriculum that emerges from a process of co-construction between the researcher
and the researched. The main research question guiding this dissertation is: How does the
implementation of an emergent curriculum impact a teacher’s self -image and practice?
With the asking of this fundamental question, a series of secondary questions
emerges. These include:
1. What is the perception of the participants about their past experience with a
theme-based curriculum approach?