Unpacking Teachers' Thinking About Teaching: Participants Interpreting Their Participation in Brazil's Teach For All Affiliate

• In Event: Three Dozen Countries and Counting: Teach For All's Global Influence on Teacher Recruitment and Training

Abstract

Objectives: The purpose of this paper is to explore why recruits to the Teach For All (TFAll) affiliate in Brazil chose to join the program, document their experiences within the program, and analyze how those experiences influenced their perceptions of the program and the principles undergirding it.

Theoretical Lens: I frame my analysis within my construct of the currently dominant educational project (Straubhaar, 2014), which asserts that at any given period of time, prominent and powerful global institutions and actors, through the dispersal of particular ideologies, pedagogies and the like, create and spread commonly accepted notions of best practice in education. I use this framework to identify TFAll as one prominent manifestation of the currently dominant educational project. More specifically, I use my construct of market logic, or the ideology undergirding the currently dominant educational project, to explain why the participants interviewed in this study chose to join TFAll’s Brazil affiliate.

Research questions: 1) Why did recruits to TFAll’s Brazil affiliate choose to join the program? 2) How did participation in the program over their two-year commitment influence their perception of the organization, its methods and theory of change?

Methods/data sources: This article draws on interviews with 26 teachers recruited into TFAll’s Brazil affiliate, who represented the vast majority of the first (and only) cohort brought into the program. Each teacher was interviewed at least once, in a semi-structured interview format that typically lasted 2-3 hours (with some lasting up to 5), though most were interviewed two or three times. The interview protocol included questions regarding impressions of recruitment, the training process, the organization’s staff, as well as their thoughts on TFAll generally. Interviews were conducted in Portuguese, transcribed into Portuguese and translated into English. Translated interviews were then coded for themes.

Results & Conclusions: Across my interviews, I identified a subscription to market logic, or more specifically in this case a belief that public schooling as it exists is insufficient and that business-oriented nonprofits like TFAll can make up the difference, was the primary reason why teachers joined TFAll’s Brazil affiliate. Interestingly, after participating in the program for their two year commitment, the majority of those interviewed felt that their experience had taught them how little the nonprofit sector contributes to educational change, effectively leading them to doubt their previous belief in market logic. This illustrates how the business-oriented currently dominant educational project, and the market logic undergirding it, are not uncontested in their dominance—and perhaps more interestingly, participation in programs based in these ideologies can lead recruits to question and challenge them.

Scholarly significance: This study builds upon the current literature on TFAll, which focuses on the spread of the program (and implicitly, its acceptance by the education sector across contexts), by documenting a case in which TFAll teachers came to question the program and its organizational model.

References
Straubhaar, R. (2014). The Multiple Influences on Nonformal Instructional Practices in Rural Mozambique: Exploring the Limits of World Culture Theory.Comparative Education Review, 58(2), 215-240.

Author

• Rolf Straubhaar, University of Georgia