Teachers as Experts and Advocates in School Safety Policies

• In Event: Teachers as Policy Experts, Agents, Activists, and Advocates

Abstract

Objectives/Purposes: This paper describes pre-service and practicing teachers’ attitudes and experiences with school safety policies in Massachusetts and Wisconsin, with a particular focus on the potential of collaborative professional development strategies to support teacher advocacy in this policy area. We argue that collaborative professional development in the form of EdCamps can build the capacity of teachers to be active participants in policy advocacy for the policy issues they identify as important in the current educational landscape, of which school safety and discipline are among the most impactful.

Theoretical framework: This paper is informed by the field of critical policy analysis (Ball, 2006; Taylor, 1997; Welton & Mansfield, 2020), which frames policy as value-laden and the result of historical and social contexts and relationships of power. It theorizes a policy cycle emphasizing the roles of influence, meaning-making, power, and negotiation in the production and practice of policy (Bowe, Ball, and Gold, 1992; Ball, 1993). It emphasizes how policy impacts members of non-dominant groups along race, ethnicity, gender, class, among other identities, and how members of those groups resist processes of domination and oppression (Bensimon & Marshall, 2003). Critical policy analysis centers those closest to the work (e.g. teachers) as the most important to understanding the impact of policy. (Stovall, 2013; Welton & Mansfield, 2020).

Methods and Data Sources: Data was gathered over a time frame beginning in 2018 and ending in the Fall of 2021 in Wisconsin and in Massachusetts, approximately 40 pre-service and practicing teachers. Our data includes written and spoken reflections, survey responses, individual interviews, self-reflections, samples of collaborative writing, and other artifacts gathered during one-time, structured and teacher-directed small group meetings in Wisconsin and during a sustained mentorship learning experience focused on policy and policy advocacy in Massachusetts.

Results: Four overarching themes emerged as critical to teachers’ understanding, analysis, and assessment of the policies in their respective sites: the paucity of evidence for the policies as designed, the problematic connection between safety and discipline policies and race, the negative impact of policies on relationships between teachers and students, and the ramifications of policies for students with mental health challenges. Teachers had significant concerns about the motivations and underlying assumptions informing school safety and discipline policies and their impact on teaching practice and relationships with students. Confronting policies that are deeply rooted long-standing racial inequities, teachers grappled with how to advocate for more just and equitable policy. We discuss the EdCamp model of teacher-directed “unconference” in addressing teachers’ call for sustainable connections with like-minded peers and action-oriented group organizing.

Significance: Safety is an issue of critical importance for teachers and students in classrooms across the country. Student discipline and school shootings present policy problems in which pedagogy, racism, and societal inequality intersect. As school violence persists, the school-to-prison pipeline worsens, and public attention to racial injustice grows, teacher advocacy in these policy areas continues to be of critical importance.

Authors

• May Hara, Framingham State University
  Presenting Author

• Annalee G. Good, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Presenting Author