Organizational Supports and Barriers to Teacher Workforce Diversity

• In Event: 54.018 - Promising Scholarship in Education: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

While public school students are increasingly from immigrant, minority, and working-class backgrounds, their teachers are overwhelmingly white, female, and middle-class. Drawing from a 16-month ethnography of two New York City middle schools, interviews with 43 school employees, policy documents, and human resource records, this project asks: how do school workers account for the lack of diversity among teachers? And, how do school organizational practices impact minority employees? By examining interactions among staff and practices and policies in two school communities, this paper surfaces organizational processes that both hinder and support a diverse workforce, pointing to places of possibility for positive change.

Author

• Johanna S Quinn, Montclair State University