Finding Freedom in Dialectic Inquiry: New Teachers' Responses to Silencing (original) (raw)

Inquiry, Policy and Teacher Communities: Counter Mandates and Teacher Resistance in an Urban School District

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.