Theses and Dissertations

Date of Award

5-1-2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Department

Curriculum & Instruction

First Advisor

Karin Lewis

Second Advisor

Pauli Badenhorst

Third Advisor

Ana Carolina Diaz Beltran

Abstract

My dissertation, Curriculum, Power, and Pedagogical Becoming, examines the complex relationship between institutional curriculum structures, teacher agency, and the lived realities of classroom practice within U.S. public schooling. Situated at the intersection of curriculum theory and critical pedagogy, the study investigates how power operates through scripted curricula, pacing mandates, and fidelity-driven instructional models, and how these mechanisms shape pedagogical decision-making, professional identity, and the educational experiences of Hispanic students of poverty, language, and color. While standardization is frequently framed as a vehicle for equity and accountability, this research explores how institutional constraints may simultaneously regulate teacher practice and delimit possibilities for culturally sustaining, relationally grounded teaching.

Employing an autoethnographic methodology, the study positions educator experience as a legitimate site of scholarly inquiry and knowledge production. Guided by Pinar’s theory of currere and Freire’s concept of conscientização, the analysis proceeds through recursive engagement with professional memories, pedagogical artifacts, and classroom narratives. These narrative data illuminate the dynamic processes through which curriculum is interpreted, negotiated, resisted, and re-authored in everyday practice. Particular attention is given to moments of pedagogical becoming, where tensions between compliance and agency reveal the ethical, relational, and political dimensions of teaching that remain obscured within technocratic models of instruction.

Findings suggest that lived curriculum emerges as a co-constructed, relational process that exceeds formal curricular prescriptions and cannot be fully captured through procedural or standardized frameworks. The study argues that excessive reliance on scripted instructional models risks reducing pedagogy to technical implementation while diminishing the interpretive and intellectual labor central to teaching. By foregrounding teacher subjectivity and classroom experience, this dissertation contributes to reconceptualist curriculum scholarship, critical examinations of institutional power, and research on teacher agency.

Ultimately, this work reconceptualizes curriculum as an evolving encounter shaped by identity, context, and human relationships. In doing so, it challenges compliance-centered paradigms and advances a vision of pedagogy grounded in meaning-making, professional judgment, and the ongoing process of pedagogical becoming.

Comments

Copyright 2026 Norma Ochoa Urban-Palomarez. All Rights Reserved. https://proquest.com/docview/3371186604

Download

Share

COinS