Listening to Voices Rarely Heard: "Alternative" Teachers' Perspectives on the Term Alternative Education

• In Event: Roundtable Session 53
  In Roundtable Session: Situating Teachers: The Impact of Diverse and Changing Teaching Contexts on Teacher Practice

Abstract

This ethnographic study focuses on the perspectives and experiences of educators within an alternative high school during the 2012-2013 school year. It is guided theoretically by the extant literature on alternative education and Johnson’s (1990) concept of the workplace and methodologically by Spradley’s (1979, 1980) seminal works. For the purposes of this paper, I focus on data that reveals the tensions educators working within alternative settings experience as a result of being defined as “alternative”. More specifically, the term alternative carries certain economic advantages, but from a sociological, cultural, and psychological perspective it proves to be an added burden to alternative educators who are already engaged in challenging work.

Author

• Shanna Rose Thompson, University of Massachusetts - Lowell