Churn and Burn(out)? Identity, Overwork, and Education Reform

• In Event: 52.058 - Teaching for Equity in Complex Times: Negotiating the Common Core State Standards in a High-Performing Bilingual School

Abstract

This paper addresses the toll that CCSS implementation—in conjunction with high-stakes accountability demands—exerted on accomplished bilingual teachers in a high-performing dual-immersion school. Certainly, much has been written about how high-stakes accountability pressures impact teachers. Research suggests that teachers, particularly those working in schools labeled “low-performing,” tend to experience limited instructional autonomy and therefore may deliver instruction that opposes their knowledge and convictions about effective instruction (Dooley & Assaf, 2009). Research also suggests that accountability demands and pressures—again, especially in “low-performing” schools—contribute to lower morale and increased attrition (Santoro, 2011), as well as additional labor and stress for teachers struggling to maintain equity-oriented instructional approaches in the face of countervailing mandates (Achinstein & Ogawa, 2006; Stillman, 2011). This paper adds to existing scholarship by illustrating the complex, ontological toll that accountability pressures can exert, truncating teachers’ agency and learning to the detriment of students they serve.

Like other symposium papers, this one is guided by socio-cultural learning theories, including CHAT (e.g., Vygotsky, 1978). The analysis draws specifically on the concept of “appropriation” in order to better account for certain features of teachers’ policy-related navigation and sense-making (Engeström, 1999; Lektorsky, 2009). With this concept, authors suggest that as teachers learn about policy, they are also developing professional identities—learning “to be” (Edwards & Kinti, 2010). In sum, the analysis aims to uncover a) how teachers’ identities and visions of who they “want(ed) to be” (Lampert, 1985) mediated their meaning-making and CCSS-related instructional enactments, and b) how teachers’ ways of seeing and presenting themselves evolved in light of their CCSS engagement.

Unlike the teachers in “low-performing” schools described above, the teachers at the center of this analysis enjoyed considerable autonomy when it came to CCSS implementation. Despite that autonomy, however, findings indicate that teachers—fueled by fear of failure and a quest to remain “the best”—enacted the CCSS in ways that zealously deferred to terms set by the external accountability climate. In other words, in what CHAT theorists might refer to as a “hierarchy of motives,” teachers tended (somewhat subconsciously) to prioritize and acquiesce to accountability demands, viewing them as the imperatives of teaching and other critical decisions as secondary concerns. This finding extends earlier research suggesting that high-stakes policies can “misdirect” teacher agency toward undesirable goals (Lavigne, 2013) and/or reduce teacher agency altogether by alienating teachers from their core work: supporting students’ cognitive, emotional, and social development (Kostogriz, 2012). Notably in this case, misdirected and/or diminished agency vis-à-vis the CCSS had much to do with teachers’ professional identities, particularly their sense of scrappy entrepreneurialism and tacit affinity for market-based reforms.

This paper argues that the drive to demonstrate ‘excellence’ compromised possibilities for transformative learning—a goal that teachers held for themselves and their students. It concludes by reflecting on the teaching profession’s position within the contemporary policy context, and raising questions about the supports teachers need in order to advance, rather than undermine, equity in “low-” or “high-performing” schools, alike.

Author

• John Luciano Beltramo, Regis University