The Impact of the Teach For America Experience on Emerging Leaders

• In Event: Roundtable Session 1
  In Roundtable Session: Alternate-Route Teacher Education: Perspectives and Considerations for Reform

Abstract

The following study looks at the ways the Teach For America experience informed the professional identities of young alumni members. I argue the experience has a lasting effect on their ideas about how educational change can happen. Instead of investigating their effectiveness in the classroom, this study is qualitative in nature and seeks to offer a new story about TFA alumni focused on their ideas about change. I conclude with a discussion about teacher leadership development and consider ways to bolster efforts toward enacting transformational change in education.

Author

• Tanya Maloney, Montclair State University