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instead of viewing teachers as research subjects, it privileges teacher’s interpretations”
(p. 465).
In The Good Preschool Teacher, Ayers (1989) presents case studies of six
teachers. The rationale for his research rested on the voice of the preschool teacher being
unheard and unheeded. For the six participants, involvement in the research process led
to an awareness of aspects of their own practice that had been obscure or unavailable to
them.
This awakening to previously unknown worlds, this seeing anew, gave them and
may give other teachers in other places and times clearer access to choice, greater
freedom to become the teachers they want to be, more active and vital participants in
their own reflective practice. (Ayers, 1989, p. 8)
In the preface to The Good Preschool Teacher (1989), Vivian Gussin Paley, a
pioneer in creating case studies from the field of early childhood education that focus on
children, writes: “We teachers are more curious about the children than about ourselves.
Our every action reveals the shadow of our urgent preoccupation, but seldom is there
anyone around to question the questioner (Ayers, 1989, p. vii).
Case studies of early childhood were once written primarily by child
psychologists and psychiatrists. Freud, Piaget, Erikson, and Bettelheim wrote case studies
of young children’s emotional and cognitive development that have strongly influenced
educators. In the past 20 years there has been a rise of non-clinical case studies, including
the work of Paley (Walsh et al., 1993). In Molly is Three (1986), Paley created a case
study of a young child as a writer and constructor of knowledge. The subject of the study