Reconceptualizing Teacher Working Conditions: An Active, Ecological Framework

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 9:50 am Four Seasons Ballroom 4
  In Roundtable Session: Fed Up and Pushed Out: Teacher Working Conditions and Retention in the United States (Table 2)

Abstract

We draw on conceptual tools from ecological systems theory to articulate conditions shaping teachers’ work as well as dispositions toward the teaching profession. In so doing, we map the formal and informal structures that shape the daily work of teachers and function as working conditions. We argue that these structures do not act on teachers in isolation– they overlap and interact over time to shape practice. To understand the structures in which teachers exercise agency, we must attend to the processes that wax and wane as a result of these conditional interactions, conceptualizing them as working conditions of their own accord when their presence regularly informs or comprises teachers’ work.

Authors

• Helen Rose Miesner, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

• Sarah L. Woulfin, University of Texas at Austin