Listening to Teachers: How Internal and External Factors Affect Teaching and Learning in High-Poverty Schools

• In Event: Roundtable Session 52
  In Roundtable Session: Life in Schools: New Research on Educational Change, Accountability, and Opportunity

Abstract

This study examines the experiences of teachers in one high-poverty school as they struggled to teach both the skills and knowledge needed for success on standardized tests and the 21st-century skills needed for success in college and the workplace. Teachers identified both internal school factors such as frequent student absences and lack of systematic intervention and student supports as well as external factors such as a re-segregated school system and charter school “dumping” as hindrances in their work to effectively teach students. Importantly, teachers placed no blame on students or their families for their struggles. Instead, they looked to systemic internal and external factors as impediments to success.

Authors

• Megin Charner-Laird, Salem State University

• Stacy Agee Szczesiul, University of Massachusetts - Lowell

• James H. Nehring, University of Massachusetts - Lowell