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According to Katz’s (1972) model, given her number of years in the field, Mary
should have been in the third and fourth stages of development. During the time of this
research, Mary was in her first year of teaching in a child care centre with an articulated
Reggio philosophy. She found herself struggling for survival and more aligned with a
teacher at the beginning stages of development. If Mary had had exposure to experienced
colleagues in similar situations, she may not have reverted back to the first stage of
survival.
New Images of Teacher Development
If the practice of emergent curriculum can be visualized in stages then Mary was
in a transitional stage. Applying a scaffold visualization with three progressing levels
suggests that the second stage or step is where reconciling past practice (themes) with the
present (emergent curriculum) occurs. If a teacher ignores this cognitive conflict by
maintaining the status quo, she remains on the second step. It is the acceptance of an
emergent curriculum with the accompanying changes in the role of the teacher that
propels the teacher up a step. Three rungs of a ladder suggest a linear and lockstep model.
In contrast, Felicia’s metaphor of a teacher climbing a mountain, described in Chapter
Five, is a more appropriate visualization for the process of emergent curriculum
implementation. For Felicia, climbing in a straightforward fashion was impossible as
various factors such as parental demands and colleague support derailed the progress up
the mountain, causing detours that spiraled before she reached the peak. Table 2 attempts
to represent a dynamic spiraling model of development. In this model, the metaphor of
the labyrinth that appeared in early chapters becomes vertical as it spirals up a mountain.