Professional Jurisdiction, Retention, and Attrition: Teachers’ Pandemic Journeys and Changing Commitments to the Profession

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 5:10 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 4
  In Roundtable Session: Educators' Experiences Through the Pandemic (Table 6)

Abstract

This paper presents data from a multi-year national study of teachers’ pandemic experiences and journeys. The study investigated teachers’ perspectives, ideologies and attitudes resulting from expanding responsibilities during school closures, virtual, and hybrid learning, and the return to in-person learning. Teachers’ thinking and decision-making, challenges, motivation, resilience, and innovations provide evidence of changing teacher perspectives, re-examinations of professional values, ethics, and ideals, and a shifting classroom landscape. Findings offer new understandings about teachers’ sense of professional jurisdiction, their changing ideologies and pedagogies, and the resulting effect on morale, attrition, retention, and ultimate commitments to the profession. Teacher testimonials provide powerful and essential data as we grapple with the challenges of recruiting, preparing and retaining teachers post-pandemic.

Authors

• Elizabeth Stringer Keefe, Stonehill College

• Rebekah C. Louis, Stonehill College