Professional Preparation: Principled Responses to Privatization and Overregulation in Teacher Education

• In Event: 67.045 - Principled Resistance: How Teachers Resolve Ethical Dilemmas

Abstract

Purpose
Although an “ethos of privatization” (Crocco, 2018) has pervaded many educational reform efforts of the last twenty years—from Teach for America to charter schools—the pace, extent, and character of these reforms produce markedly different state policy contexts in which teacher educators and teachers work. At the same time, new efforts at the regulation of teacher education, either through imposition of requirements related to accreditation or through state legislation, also contribute to an uncertain future for traditional teacher education. Previous research by this author (Crocco, 2018) has emphasized state-level policy context differences, even while acknowledging the commonalities across state lines fueled by No Child Left Behind in 2001 and Race to the Top in 2009. This paper focuses on the ways in which teacher educators have responded through principled resistance to the differing policy contexts around these twin threats in Michigan.

Theoretical framework
Public policy choices may be considered good or bad, both in terms of means and ends. Increasingly, social justice and equity aims have become part of the standard aspirational framework for teacher education across the country. Teacher educators, for the most part, are committed to “good and just teaching” (Cochran-Smith et al., 2009) at the heart of social justice and equity-oriented practice.

Methods
Using a qualitative phenomenological research approach, this paper will focus on the lived experiences of teacher educators in Michigan who have engaged in principled resistance to policies they deem ill-advised. Data sources include a series of observations of and interviews with these teacher educators/scholars. Discourse analysis will also be done of policy documents and proposed legislation that would over-regulate teacher education programs in the state.

Evidence
Since onset of the standards-and-accountability movement in education, some teacher educators have become more engaged in principled response. In general, they may disagree with both the means and ends of privatization, both with charters or fast-track teacher preparation programs. In the particular case of Michigan, they may object to regulatory efforts known as the “Garcia bills” (http://gophouse.org/education-panel-approves-representative-garcias-new-teacher-prep-legislation/) or the new social studies curriculum standards that downplay diversity and equity (https://www.freep.com/story/opinion/contributors/2018/06/24/social-studies-standards-michigan/725085002/).

Substantiated conclusions
Teacher educators, like teachers, are “street-level bureaucrats” (Hill, 2003; Lipsky, 2010) who implement policies enacted by others. All too often it seems that their perspectives get scant consideration in policy decisions by politicians and bureaucrats that will affect their ability to do work that advances social-justice and equity-oriented goals.

Significance
Since the current U.S. Department of Education has returned a measure of control of education to states, state policy contexts have become more crucial than they were previously. This paper provides a look at the conditions stimulating principled resistance of teacher educators on behalf of the social justice and equity aims to which they are committed.

Author

• Margaret S. Crocco, Michigan State University