Personal Consequences of Compliance and Resistance to Mandated Reforms for Teachers in Low-Performing Schools (original) (raw)
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2016
This case study examines the experiences of two fifth grade teachers as they dealt with district mandates while trying to address their high-poverty urban children’s learning needs. It reveals their personal struggles that led to both compliance and resistance. In this case, the act of finding the space to engage in the intellectual and creative act of redeveloping the curriculum was an act of political resistance and ultimately an act of caring. By examining the experiences of these two teachers we see again how the era of increased accountability and standardization has led to a narrowing of the curriculum and the marginalization of teachers. This increase in accountability disproportionately impacts teachers and students in urban schools.
The Narrowing of Curriculum and Pedagogy in the Age of Accountability Urban Educators Speak Out
Urban Education, 2007
Under the curricular and pedagogical impositions of scripted lessons and mandated curriculum, patterns associated nationwide with high-stakes testing, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, and the phenomenon known as the “narrowing of curriculum,” new teachers in New York City (NYC) find their personal and professional identity thwarted, creativity and autonomy undermined, and ability to forge relationships with students diminished—all critical factors in their expressed job satisfaction. These indirect consequences of accountability regimen as it operates in NYC may exacerbate new teacher attrition, especially from schools serving low-income students. The data reported here suggest a mixed picture of frustration and anger, alongside determination, resistance, and resilience in the face of these impositions. Responses vary by school and grade level, lending support to the notion that the organizational environment serves as a critical factor in teachers' early career decisions a...
URBAN TEACHERS STRUGGLING WITHIN AND AGAINST NEOLIBERAL, ACCOUNTABILITY-ERA POLICIES
As the educational community continues to consider the impact of the proliferation of accountability-aimed reform on students, schools, and communities, the consequences of said reforms on teachers must be included. Results of this study indicate that even distant, broad educational policies manifest in specific and profound ways in teachers' daily, lived experiences, shaping novice teachers' identity, beliefs, and efficacy. The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the perspectives of 38 Teach for America Corps Members (CMs) to situate how the educational reform climate socializes and oppresses teachers from all layers of influence, resulting in permeated macrotransgressions, which negatively impacts teachers. While this oppressive culture poses serious threats to the teaching profession, particularly in urban contexts, we also highlight the ways in which CMs resisted the confluence of socializing forces resulting from neoliberal shifts in educational policy and reform. Implications for teachers, educational leaders, policy makers, reformers, teacher educators, and communities are considered in order to envision a reprofessionalization of teachers working in tandem with the communities they serve to (re)construct a more just society.
Perspectives on Urban Education, 2019
Teachers in urban schools often struggle with being micro-managed by administration, especially when vertical alignment and assessment policies are heavily enforced. This study explores a culturally responsive teaching (CRT) approach to mandated curriculum within an urban classroom. By examining the teacher’s use of 19th century British literature, this study illustrates how educators can move beyond superficial cultural additives and be responsive to the needs of their learners. This study offers a unique perspective on a teacher willing to challenge the mandated curriculum by utilizing CRT with British Literature in an urban high school.
CONSTRAINTS AND NEGOTIATIONS: TFA, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND SCRIPTED PROGRAMS IN URBAN SCHOOLS
As the educational community continues to consider the impact of the proliferation of accountability-aimed reform on students, schools, and communities, the consequences of said reforms on teachers must be included. Results of this study indicate that even distant, broad educational policies manifest in specific and profound ways in teachers' daily, lived experiences, shaping novice teachers' identity, beliefs, and efficacy. The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the perspectives of 38 Teach for America Corps Members (CMs) to situate how the educational reform climate socializes and oppresses teachers from all layers of influence, resulting in permeated macrotransgressions, which negatively impacts teachers. While this oppressive culture poses serious threats to the teaching profession, particularly in urban contexts, we also highlight the ways in which CMs resisted the confluence of socializing forces resulting from neoliberal shifts in educational policy and reform. Implications for teachers, educational leaders, policy makers, reformers, teacher educators, and communities are considered in order to envision a reprofessionalization of teachers working in tandem with the communities they serve to (re)construct a more just society.
Education Policy Analysis Archives, 2018
The rise of high-stakes, standardized, teacher performance assessments (TPAs) is central to the industry being created out of the regulation, policing, and evaluation of university-based teacher education In addition to reinforcing a narrow and counter-critical framework, TPAs can shift responsibility for the evaluation of teacher candidates from university-based teacher educators with a comprehensive and nuanced fluency in candidates' preparedness to external scorers trained to standardize and depersonalize effective practice. In this article, four social justice-oriented teacher educators from three different states examine the practical and political effects of TPAs in their local contexts. By analyzing the curricular, pedagogical, and political implications of this high-stakes standardization of their field, they speak back to a policy landscape that too often marginalizes the voices of the teachers and students it purports to serve. Throughout, they examine the dilemmas of practice created by TPAs, as teachers and teacher educators seek to redefine what it means to enact justice-oriented professional agency in an increasingly regulated context. A critical counternarrative methodological approach was used to collect and process the authors’ lived stories and then to collaboratively reflect upon each other’s personal/professional experiences with TPAs. Several strategies are identified for enacting agency in response to TPAs, including curricular acts of resistance, resistance through participation in state legislative processes, policymaking within teacher education programs, the production of activist scholarship, and refusal to participate at all. Ways are suggested for teacher educators to minimize, mitigate, and resist unjust policy through curricular, political, and scholarly activism.