"It's Like Learning a Whole New Language": The Language of Privatization and Learning to Teach

• In Event: Teacher Education, Inc.: Attempts at Privatizing Teacher Preparation Systems Around the World

Abstract

In U.S. education, the economic and political influence of venture philanthropy continues to intensify as narratives about the failure of university-based teacher preparation become cemented (through sheer repetition) in public discourse (Zeichner & Sandoval, 2015). As a result, there is a growing body of important research that both documents the consequences of privatization on public education (i.e., Saltman, 2010; Zeichner & Sandoval, 2015) and analyzes the convergence and alliance of powerful, private networks working to privatize education (Kretchmar, Sondel, & Ferrare, 2014).

In this session, we aim to compliment this scholarship on the larger forces and context of privatization in education by showing how novice teachers learn to teach in privatized school contexts, in this case a privately managed network of “turnaround schools” run by Leaders for Equity in Education (LEE). Started in 2001 by a venture philanthropist, LEE has a two-fold mission: to turnaround a portion of the city’s failing schools, and to prepare urban teachers—through its paid residency program—to teach within its network of turnarounds. Pending successful completion of the paid residency year, residents must commit to teaching in a LEE school for four years. The LEE residency is partnered with City University and it is through City University that the residents complete their coursework in education (including a course focused almost exclusively on learning to enact strategies from Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion) and receive their teaching credential.

Our paper will analyze the ways in which two LEE residents, Sam and Rachael, identified, questioned, and resisted their program’s framing of teaching and learning as a linear and visible process of “measurable gains,” efficiency, and standardization. We will show how Sam’s struggle learning to teach within LEE emerged primarily from the ideological differences within the partnering institutions—LEE’s focus on achieving as expressed through the emphasis on improving standardized test scores, and City University’s focus on flourishing as expressed through the university’s emphasis on critical thinking. LEEs language of achievement, efficiency and skills was, in Sam’s words, “like learning a different language.” Our second case study, Rachael, will show how the program’s emphasis on compliance, training, and “buy-in” (conveyed pedagogically through the program’s use of Lemov’s Teach like a champion) resulted in Rachael feeling like “a remote-control teacher.” While Sam struggled philosophically with the emphasis on achieving (via test scores), Rachael’s struggle was more personal: she felt dwarfed and dehumanized by the program’s language of standardization and compliance. Ultimately, Rachael’s resistance to LEEs language of teaching-as-business culminated in her leaving the residency altogether. Taken together, these two case studies illustrate how the ideologies that animate privatization—efficiency, replicability, and measurable results— are not simply abstract philosophies and goals, but felt forces that powerfully and visibly shape the on-the-ground learning experiences of novice teachers enrolled in programs such as LEE.

Authors

• Lauren Gatti, University of Nebraska - Lincoln

• Theresa Catalano, University of Nebraska - Lincoln