Curriculum Making as Novice Professional Development: Practical Risk Taking as Learning in High-Stakes Times

This qualitative case study presents three novices in urban schools who enacted curricular projects as participants in a university-based professional development program. This experience created an opportunity for practical risk taking, enabling them to consider the consequences of curricular choices in personal terms. Such professional development pivoted on epistemological inquiry grounded in three critical tension areas: management of relationships, curricular ownership, and the sources of classroom knowledge. In these cases, practical risk taking seemed to precede conceptual changes in the teachers' thinking about curriculum itself, raising concerns about how novices learn during an accountability era where such risk taking is often discouraged.