Finding Freedom in Dialectic Inquiry: New Teachers' Responses to Silencing (original) (raw)
This paper offers windows into two teacher inquiry communities that met regularly in Philadelphia during the 2010-2011 school year at a time when the school district was implementing a series of top-down mandates aimed at improving student achievement in low-income, low-performing schools. We document how teachers in both inquiry communities collectively grappled with neoliberal reforms and de-professionalizing initiatives and consider how these spaces offered opportunities for teachers to draw upon their own "counter-mandates" which included personal histories; their commitments to social justice; and the expertise of educators and scholars who informed their philosophies and practices. The paper concludes with implications for those working with teachers, especially ones in urban centers, in which neoliberal reform initiatives are increasingly shaping policy and informing teachers' experiences.
Beyond the Lone Hero: Providing Supports for New Teachers in High-Needs Schools
2010
In this essay we discuss the activities and challenges encountered in a partnership between a faculty of education at a university in southern Ontario and a local school board. The focus of the partnership was increasing student achievement in high-needs schools. We suspect that many teacher educators harbor the idea that the students in high-needs schools will be effectively served if those schools are gradually populated with new teachers who have the skills to engage with school communities and school administrators in a politically savvy way. The belief is that these appropriately skilled lone heroes will initiate programs in every classroom that will eventually lead to increased student engagement and achievement. The graduates of our faculty of education are specifically expected to be those lone heroes. Yet, as teacher educators, we are aware that they will be faced with a system that appears to be at cross-purposes with their good intentions. Perhaps this is the reason why many new teachers in high-needs schools get burned out and leave either a particular school or the school system altogether. However, teacher burnout is a structural problem, not an individual one (Apple, 1990). Thus, effective and sustained change at the classroom level requires support at the systemic level. We will be describing our experiences in providing this systemic support at one school. After describing the context of our research project, we will outline its original aims and some of the lessons learned-namely, that building relationships is the key to a successful school-university partnership. We come to this research from three related but different experiences. Sarah is a retired high school teacher who is now an assistant professor in the faculty of education. Donna is an elementary school principal, currently on leave from that position while on a three-year teaching assignment with our faculty. Carl is a long time professor at the faculty. We are all of African-Caribbean backgrounds. We approach our research recognizing that society is inequitable and unjust, and that this can only be changed through active, conscientious transformative strategies (Freire, 1998). We also assume that a democratic classroom envi
Learning from those who no longer teach: Viewing teacher attrition through a resistance lens
Most public school teachers in the United States now leave the classroom before reaching retirement. Research on teacher attrition has tended to focus on novice teachers, using human capital or organizational theories to understand trends in teacher exit. This study examines the accounts of certified, experienced teachers who left teaching after making significant investments in the career. The accounts of these invested leavers are examined through a lens of resistance, illuminating issues of power as well as the ideals of teaching that may be expressed through the decision to leave.
It's all part of the job": Everyday silencing in the life of a secondary school teacher
MAI Journal: A New Zealand Journal of Indigenous Sccholarship
This article examines the issue of racial silencing in mainstream education by analysing four autoethnographic vignettes based on the authors' teaching experiences. The methodology draws attention to the underlying racial assumptions that underpin the everyday of teachers' working lives, thus demonstrating how silencing serves to perpetuate the interests of Päkehä culture. We argue that mainstream pedagogical approaches to culture and ethnicity also contribute to the phenomenon of silencing, and assert that racialised students will continue to be disenfranchised in mainstream schools unless researchers, teachers and administrators are prepared to "see" how issues of race inform the day-today experiences of a teacher's working life.
The Courage to Leave: Wrestling with the Decision to Leave Teaching in Uncertain Times
The Urban Review, 2014
This qualitative case study of successful educators in one urban high school investigated: How do veteran urban teachers wrestle with the decision to stay or leave teaching? If and how can we conceptualize their considerations in light of a theory of courageousness? Using philosophical foundations and a framework of ordinary courage (Brown, 2010), findings indicate that there are multiple “push” and “pull” factors—almost all linked to educational policies—with which teachers wrestle while contemplating leaving the classroom, and their willingness to confront and discuss these factors marks them as potentially courageous. Implications for research, policy, and practice are presented.
Conviction, Confrontation, and Risk in New Teachers' Advocating for Equity
Teaching Education, 2007
Despite frustration with school constraints, new teachers who graduated from a program focused on advocacy for equity spoke for students in need in school forums and spoke up about issues of equity. Speaking for students, driven by convictions about equitable access to resources and a responsibility to act, often helped garner support and affected attitudes and school practices. However, this
Why have all the teachers gone: Co-inquiry of teacher and teacher educators
2011
New teachers today enter the profession at a challenging time. Teaching is becoming more demanding intellectually, physically, emotionally, and politically (Darling-Hammond, 2006; Intrator, 2006; Korthagen, 2004). They need to know how students learn and how to teach successfully within various social, cultural, and linguistic contexts; manage a complex environment; and use technology (Darling-Hammond, 2006). "The new generation is entering teaching at a time when there are more expectations than ever about teacher performance, but also at a time when teaching has been broadly and publicly disrespected" (Cochran-Smith, 2004, p. 8). 1 Lehman et al.: Why have all the teachers gone: Co-inquiry of teacher and teacher
Embracing Powerlessness and Empowerment: Coexisting Contradictions within Teacher Preparation
Visions of Research in Music Education, 2007
This paper explores the ways in which narratives of the "real world" and narratives of resistance collide in teacher preparation programs. The author suggests that in this collision acts of resistance serve to perpetuate and reproduce the very systems these acts seek to interrogate and challenge. How then does this disconnect, between very different ways of seeing and engaging with the educative process, manifest not only for ourselves, but for our students? This paper seeks to address how teachers of teachers grapple with, and even embrace, the contradictions of powerlessness and empowerment that come from the mindful engagement embedded in this path.
Silenced and Pushed Out: The Harms of CRT-bans on K-12 Teachers
Thresholds, 2023
Over the past year, sweeping local and statewide policies framed as bans against "CRT" are being propagated to restrict how race and racism can be taught in K-12 schools across the nation. As a result, schools are increasingly becoming a place where teachers face interpersonal and professional risk for teaching about US racial realities, including threats to their professional licenses for engaging historical or current day topics of race, inequity and injustice. In this article, we first draw on CRT to analyze how CRT-bans leverage white defensiveness and white comfort to restrict instruction and discourse about systemic racism, thereby upholding it. Second, we describe a mixed methods research study with 117 teachers across the US that provides an initial look at how teachers are being harmed by these bans. The data suggests that CRT-bans are negatively impacting the racial climate of schools and contributing to the systematic pushout of teachers, particularly those committed to equity and inclusion. In addition to capturing teachers' experiences about the bans, we specifically examine the pressure teachers are experiencing and its exacerbation of an already national problem, teacher attrition. We end the article with evidence-based recommendations on ways schools might mitigate the harm of CRT-bans on teachers.
Models of Resistance: Novice Teachers Negotiating Barriers to Best Practice
2020
The purpose of this study was to examine how graduates from three teacher education programs made decisions regarding literacy instruction and assessment as well as the extent to which they were able to implement practices learned in their education programs. Participants were interviewed and observed multiple times, and a variety of documents, such as lesson plans, assessments, and journal prompts, were collected. Data were analyzed using the constant comparative method and Bourdieu’s concepts of field, capital, and habitus. Although the participants initially accepted the existing practices of their schools, they later implemented concepts learned in their education programs. The ways in which they resisted the barriers they faced included resistance with conflict, resistance with an attitude, resistance with relationship, and resistance by making a change
Teachers College Record, 2014
This essay presents a dialogue between a new teacher and a former professor, generated when the teacher decided to leave the classroom after two years. Contextualized within the literature of teacher attrition and offering implications for teacher education, the essay explores what it means to be (a) a novice educator in the era of accountability and (b) a teacher educator tasked with preparing new teachers for this challenging climate. The authors share their perspectives in the hopes of starting a discussion about an important issue that remains relatively unexplored in the research literature: the stories of teachers who leave and their former professors who watch them go.
Open Journal of Social Sciences, 2022
Both popular media and academic research abound with conveyances of teachers exiting the profession in frustration and exasperation. Whether the causes are connected to feelings of demoralization (Santoro, 2018) or feeling attacked both at work and in society, it is clear educators are not staying in education for as long as past generations and are leaving the profession faster. Even in trying times however, teachers, often were the vanguards in defending the sanctity of their profession, protecting quality education for students, and pushing for a better society for all against harmful governmental policies. This brief essay seeks to remind educators specifically, but indeed all readers, where teachers exhibited resistance efforts in defense of their profession in the contemporary fight over the privatization of public education, as well as highlight a few instances where teachers stood up against governmental policies to benefit the broader public.
Frontiers in Education
Before moving beyond the beginning stages of becoming a teacher, one of every two teachers leaves the profession. Hence, for several decades, the recruitment, development, and retention of teachers has been a pernicious problem facing districts, schools, administrators, and school personnel. A productive line of narrative inquiry research has focused on teacher education and development. Additionally, narrative inquiries have focused on teacher retention and attrition. For example, several researchers have narratively inquired into the processes of transitioning out of the profession. In the present investigation, we asked an overarching question, what do beginning teachers need in order to tell stories of staying? And, relatedly, in schools working toward addressing questions of equity, what are the experiences of early-career teachers? And, what can be done to develop and sustain them in their professional commitments? Two novice teachers, Helena and Kristin, both of whom took ini...
From Collegial Support to Critical Dialogue: Including New Teachers' Voices in Collaborative Work
The Professional Educator, 2016
New teachers enter the field with a passion for making a difference with students, their newly gained knowledge from their preparation experiences, and a sense that there is still much to learn. Faced with the same responsibilities as their experienced colleagues, new teachers also enter the field looking for ways to cope with, adjust to, and survive the challenges they encounter on a daily basis (Feiman-Nemser, 2003). As such, most new teachers desire continued support, guidance, and learning opportunities in their first few years of teaching. They hope that much of this support will come from their colleagues (Costigan, Crocco, & Zumwalk, 2004; Feiman-Nemser, 2012; Public Education Network, 2003).A growing research base suggests that many new teachers find the support they need through collegial interaction. Support from peers and mentors is a key influence on new teacher effectiveness (Behrstock-Sherratt, Bassett, Olson & Jacques, 2014; Public Education Network, 2003), and teache...
Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies , 2017
This article is grounded in both Ellsworth and Milner’s arguments, while demonstrating the connections and intersections of their claims in the current terrain of teacher education. I demonstrate the tension between the prevalent forms of academic critique and the increasing diversity in pre-service teacher education programs in Canada and argue that critical discourses may limit the creation of inclusive educational spaces in diverse teacher education programs. Such analysis is timely in light of the recent academic debates around “safe spaces,” “cultural appropriation,” and “trigger warnings” (on which I will elaborate in the next sections; Boysen 2012; Etzioni 2014; Lukianoff and Haidt 2015).