Exploring the Role of Teachers: Academic Optimism in an Urban Full-Service Community High School

• In Event: Linking Care With Justice for Institutionally Marginalized Students

Abstract

The literature on full-service community schools has grown significantly over the past two decades. Yet, there is limited research on teacher characteristics and behaviors that advance the goals of these schools. Using teacher survey data from an award-winning full-service community high school in a large urban district in the northeastern United States, we explore teachers’ academic optimism, demonstrating its positive association with features of effective FSCSs. We also confirm findings that organizational bureaucracy has a negative effect on teachers’ academic optimism (McGuigan & Hoy, 2006), and that teaching experience is positively associated with this multidimensional concept (Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2007). Although exploratory in nature, these findings have significant implications for the future research and practice of full-service community schools.

Authors

• Claudia Lucia Galindo, University of Maryland - College Park

• Mavis G. Sanders, University of Maryland - Baltimore County