What uproots teachers: Rehumanizing the Profession: Understanding Teacher Attrition Through the Lens of Humanization

• In Event: Roots, Thorns and Shoots: Cultivating Teacher Perspectives to Reimagine Teaching for Collective Liberation

Abstract

This poster explores conditions prompting attention to a growing, yet persistent, ‘crisis’ in American teacher attrition, through the lens of humanization (Freire, 2018) and dehumanization. We examine the concept of ‘teacher crisis’ and factors contributing to systemic crises which have resulted in ongoing challenges in recruitment and retention of teachers over the last 50 years in the US. We move beyond traditional market-based analyses to focus on disregard for teacher humanity, and the changing nature of teaching as a profession as factors contributing to attrition.
Humanizing frameworks focus on human experiences, co-constructed knowledge, collective liberation, and social contexts as critically important to reaching goals related to teaching and learning (Reid, 2024; San Pedro & Kinloch, 2017). Humanizing practices center nurturing relationships and relationality, encouraging active agency in educational spaces (Bartolome, 1994; Deckman & Ohito, 2020; Reid, 2024). Humanization encompasses ongoing, engaged, authentic processes of empowerment across social, historical, political, and interpersonal contexts (Freire, 2018). In contrast, dehumanizing conditions rob educators of agency across these same contexts, constraining their ability to contribute to their work through their identities, experiences, and professional expertise, and potentially contributing to attrition.
The central research questions that drove this study were: 1) Is the teaching profession in crisis? If so, what is the nature of this crisis and what may be the factors underlying this crisis? and 2) How can a lens of de/humanization be used to understand teachers’ experience in relation to the idea of a professional crisis related to teaching?
The poster draws from the initial analyses of quantitative and qualitative survey data (N = 918) from K-12 educators and former educators across the United States. The survey was initially designed and piloted with French educators to examine teacher professionalism in relation to time (Tourneville, 2021), including sustainability in the field and long-term goals. The survey was adapted in 2022 for a US context, given the increasing discourse around the ‘Great Resignation’ in teaching.
Our survey results closely resembled national teacher survey results (Walker, 2022) around roughly the same time that reported half of all teachers to be considered leaving the teaching profession within the prior year.
• De-professionalization: In examining survey data related to factors for leaving the profession, the importance (and lack) of respect for teacher professionalism emerged as an important theme in selected survey factors related to attrition.
• Lack of respect for teaching and teacher professionalism: A lack of respect for teacher professionalism manifested in multiple ways in the qualitative data including not being trusted to make curricular choices, a lack of adequate compensation, and societal discourse demeaning teachers and teaching.
• Inadequate compensation: participants spoke about being underpaid in relation to their labor and commitment to ongoing professional learning.
The momentary spotlighting of a crisis in teaching, captured through the responses to this survey and other national surveys (Walker, 2022) and attention throughout the popular media and business world (Dixon, 2022; Fuller & Kerr, 2022; García et al., 2022; Horowitz, 2022; Walton & Pollock, 2022) illuminate inter-related systemic and personal crises that captured international attention.

Author

• Gaelle Mounioloux, University of Washington