Crafting, Leaving, and Organizing: Understanding Teachers’ Work in Precarious Times

Session Type: Paper Session

Abstract

This session explores the evolving landscape of teachers’ work and collective action across diverse contexts. Drawing on perspectives from organizational psychology, labor studies, and education policy, the papers examine how teachers adapt, organize, and resist within shifting systems of accountability and reform. Studies analyze job crafting and workplace demands across teaching levels among Chinese public school teachers, the rise of rank-and-file unionism and participatory democracy in Massachusetts, two decades of teacher organizing in post-Katrina New Orleans, and the profiles of educators who leave and return to teaching. Together, they illuminate enduring struggles for professional agency, justice, and sustainability in teaching.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Teachers Work/Teacher Unions

Papers

• Generalizability and Determinants of Teacher Job Crafting Profiles Across Teaching Levels: A Job Demands-Resources Perspective - Chan Wang, The Education University of Hong Kong; Xianhan Huang, The Education University of Hong Kong; Shiyu Zhang, University of Hong Kong

• Public Wins: Rank-and-File Unionism, Participatory Democracy, and Teacher Organizing for the Long Haul in Massachusetts - Noelle Mapes, Graduate Center - CUNY

• Why Teachers Leave and Will They Teach Again: A Latent Profile Analysis of Workplace Concerns - Xiaobo Wei, University of South Carolina; Angela D. Starrett, University of South Carolina; Ruiqin Gao, University of South Carolina

• "We're On the Front Lines": Two Decades of Teacher Organizing in New Orleans - Riley Collins, University of California - Santa Cruz

Session Organizer

• Denisha Jones, Defending the Early Years