Comparing How Teach For All Teachers Think About Teaching in the United States and Brazil

• In Event: The Teach For All Teacher Education Experience in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Brazil

Abstract

Objectives: The purpose of this paper is to explore why recruits to both Teach For America and Ensina!, Brazil’s original Teach For All affiliate, chose to join their respective programs, and analyze how their experiences within those programs influenced their perceptions of the “Teach for” model of teacher education and the principles undergirding it.

Theoretical Lens: This paper is grounded in the notion of the currently dominant educational project (Straubhaar, 2014), which asserts that at any given period of time, prominent and powerful global institutions and actors, through the dispersal of particular ideologies, pedagogies and the like, create and spread commonly accepted notions of best practice in teacher education. I use this framework to identify the “Teach for” model as one prominent manifestation of the currently dominant educational project. More specifically, I use my construct of market logic, or the ideology undergirding the currently dominant educational project, to explain why the participants interviewed in this study chose to join Teach For America and Ensina!

Research questions: 1) Why did recruits to both programs choose to join them? 2) How did participation in their programs over their two-year commitment influence their perception of the “Teach for” model, its methods and theory of change?

Methods: This article draws on interviews with 25 Teach For America teachers and 26 Ensina! teachers. Each teacher was interviewed at least once, in a semi-structured interview format that typically lasted 2-3 hours (with some lasting up to 5), though most were interviewed two or three times over the course of their two-year commitment. The interview protocol included questions regarding impressions of recruitment, the training process, the organization’s staff, as well as their thoughts on the “Teach for” model generally. Interviews were conducted in interviewees’ native languages, whether English or Portuguese. Interviews were then transcribed, translated into English (if necessary), and coded for themes.

Results & Conclusions: Across my interviews with both groups, I identified a subscription to market logic, or more specifically in this case a belief that public schooling as it exists is insufficient and that the private initiatives like the “Teach for” model can make up the difference, was the primary reason why teachers joined Teach For America and Ensina!. Interestingly, after participating in the program for their two year commitment, the majority of those interviewed felt that their experience had taught them how little the nonprofit sector contributes to educational change, effectively leading them to doubt their previous belief in market logic. This illustrates how the business-oriented currently dominant educational project, and the market logic undergirding it, are not uncontested in their dominance—and perhaps more interestingly, participation in programs based in these ideologies can lead recruits to question and challenge them.

Scholarly significance: This study builds upon the current literature on the “Teach for” model, which focuses on its global spread (and implicitly, its acceptance by the education sector across contexts), by documenting two cases in which “Teach for” teachers came to question the model and its underlying principles.

Author

• Rolf Straubhaar, Texas State University - San Marcos