Curriculum in the digital age: Intensifying the work of teachers, the remix

Abstract

This research focuses on the Teacher-to-Teacher Online Marketplace of Ideas (TOMI), the popular ecosystem of participatory online platforms for teachers seeking to share and/or curate classroom materials and curricular ideas. Teachers engage with online platforms for curricular planning through multiple, complex labor practices. In this manuscript, interview data is used to describe the process teachers engage in when using the TOMI: Identifying, Remixing and Teaching, Reflecting, and Reviewing. We then consider how these new labor practices constitute a new type of work intensification that is both richly complex and concerning due to their market orientation. We trouble these findings, considering teachers’ labor practices as examples of unpaid, casual digital labor in light of efforts to defund public education. We argue for structural shifts in public education that allow teachers more time and space for productive, creative, and fulfilling work remixing their curriculum and collaborating with colleagues in the digital space.