My Managed Mind: Navigating Teacher Identity in a For-Profit Managed Charter School

• In Event: AERA Research in Progress Roundtable Session Five
  In Invited Roundtable: Research-in-Progress RT023 (Sunday)

Abstract

This study utilizes Freire and Giroux’s beliefs on critical theory to employ an autoethnography exploring the impacts of corporate ideology and neoliberalism on my identity as a teacher. Working at a charter school managed by a for-profit company, I seek to identity contradictions present between the school’s mission and philosophy and my lived reality. Data collected for the study included the school’s website containing the mission statement, recorded journal entries through the first quarter of the 2025-2026 school year, field notes, meeting agendas, and emails with administrators. Using reflexive thematic analysis, I will generate themes across the sources of data upon the finishing of the data collection stage.

Author

• Samantha Lopez, Florida Atlantic University