Teacher Commitment to Poor Students: Self-Interest and Ethic of Service in the Face of Adversity

• In Event: 68.060 - Roundtable Session 29
  In Roundtable Session: 68.060-9 - Teachers and School Leaders: Realities and Perspectives

Abstract

In Chile, accountability incentives make unavoidable that teachers face the needs of all students to make them perform. This becomes significantly difficult in low-income neighborhoods where students confront socioeconomic adversity. Here, commitment to student learning seems particularly necessary to provide a good education but it cannot be assumed. Adverse conditions and high external pressure might confront teachers with motivational dilemmas when they allocate their effort to serve students. Self-interested motivations and ethic of service may be in tension and affecting teacher commitment to serve students. Through a multiple case study, this research sheds light on this tension, illustrates teachers’ discourses and allocation of effort associated to those commitments, and explores differences between committed and non-committed teachers.

Author

• Miguel Ordenes, University of California - Berkeley