"Demoralized: Why Teachers Leave the Profession They Love and How They Can Stay" offers a timely analysis of professional dissatisfaction that challenges the common explanation of burnout. Featuring ...the voices of educators, the book offers concrete lessons for practitioners, school leaders, and policy makers on how to think more strategically to retain experienced teachers and make a difference in the lives of students. Based on ten years of research and interviews with practitioners across the United States, the book theorizes the existence of a "moral center" that can be pivotal in guiding teacher actions and expectations on the job. Education philosopher Doris Santoro argues that demoralization offers a more precise diagnosis that is born out of ongoing value conflicts with pedagogical policies, reform mandates, and school practices. "Demoralized" reveals that this condition is reversible when educators are able to tap into authentic professional communities and shows that individuals can help themselves. Detailed stories from veteran educators are included to illustrate the variety of contexts in which demoralization can occur. Based on these insights, Santoro offers an array of recommendations and promising strategies for how school leaders, union leaders, teacher groups, and individual practitioners can enact and support "re-moralization" by working to change the conditions leading to demoralization. Foreword by David C. Berliner.
This study explores different perceptions of pre-service and beginning teachers’ professional identity in relation to their decisions to leave the profession. Teachers’ professional identity was ...further broken down into six factors: value, efficacy, commitment, emotions, knowledge and beliefs, and micropolitics. This study employed mixed-methods which included 84 participant surveys, and 27 interviews from four groups of participants at different stages of teaching. The findings of this study showed that pre-service teachers tended to have naïve and idealistic perceptions of teaching, and dropout teachers showed most emotional burnout. Implications for improvement of teacher education and retention of beginning teachers are discussed.
Why are America's public schools falling so short of the mark in educating the nation's children? Why are they organized in ineffective ways that fly in the face of common sense, to the point that it ...is virtually impossible to get even the worst teachers out of the classroom? And why, after more than a quarter century of costly education reform, have the schools proven so resistant to change and so difficult to improve? In this path-breaking book, Terry M. Moe demonstrates that the answers to these questions have a great deal to do with teachers unions--which are by far the most powerful forces in American education and use their power to promote their own special interests at the expense of what is best for kids. Despite their importance, the teachers unions have barely been studied. "Special Interest" fills that gap with an extraordinary analysis that is at once brilliant and kaleidoscopic--shedding new light on their historical rise to power, the organizational foundations of that power, the ways it is exercised in collective bargaining and politics, and its vast consequences for American education. The bottom line is simple but devastating: as long as the teachers unions remain powerful, the nation's schools will never be organized to provide kids with the most effective education possible. Moe sees light at the end of the tunnel, however, due to two major transformations. One is political, the other technological, and the combination is destined to weaken the unions considerably in the coming years--loosening their special-interest grip and opening up a new era in which America's schools can finally be organized in the best interests of children. Contents include: (1) The Problem of Union Power; (2) The Rise of the Teachers Unions; (3) Teachers and Their Unions; (4) Unions and School Boards; (5) Are Teachers Underpaid?; (6) Collective Bargaining; (7) Small Victories for Sanity; (8) Reform Unionism; (9) The Politics of Blocking; and (10) A Critical Juncture. Appended are: (1) Union Membership and State Labor Laws; (2) The Survey Sample: Comparisons to SASS; and (3) Young Teachers. Notes and an index are also included.
How colleges and universities can live up to their ideals of diversity, and why inclusivity and excellence go hand in hand. Most colleges and universities embrace the ideals of diversity and ...inclusion, but many fall short, especially in the hiring, retention, and advancement of faculty who would more fully represent our diverse world--in particular women and people of color. In this book, Abigail Stewart and Virginia Valian argue that diversity and excellence go hand in hand and provide guidance for achieving both. Stewart and Valian, themselves senior academics, support their argument with comprehensive data from a range of disciplines. They show why merit is often overlooked; they offer statistics and examples of individual experiences of exclusion, such as being left out of crucial meetings; and they outline institutional practices that keep exclusion invisible, including reliance on proxies for excellence, such as prestige, that disadvantage outstanding candidates who are not members of the white male majority. Perhaps most important, Stewart and Valian provide practical advice for overcoming obstacles to inclusion. This advice is based on their experiences at their own universities, their consultations with faculty and administrators at many other institutions, and data on institutional change. Stewart and Valian offer recommendations for changing structures and practices so that people become successful in ways that benefit everyone. They describe better ways of searching for job candidates; evaluating candidates for hiring, tenure, and promotion; helping faculty succeed; and broadening rewards and recognition.
The demographic divide between teachers and students is of growing public concern. However, few studies have explicitly addressed the common argument that students, and particularly minority ...students, have more favorable perceptions of minority versus White teachers. Using data from the Measure of Effective Teaching study, we find that students perceive minority teachers more favorably than White teachers. There is mixed evidence that race matching is linked with more favorable student perceptions. These findings underscore the importance of minority teacher recruitment and retention.
This book explores ways to prepare teachers to teach English as an International Language (EIL) and provides theoretically-grounded models for EIL-informed teacher education. The volume includes two ...chapters that present a theoretical approach and principles in EIL teacher education, followed by a collection of descriptions of field-tested teacher education programs, courses, units in a course, and activities from diverse geographical and institutional contexts, which together demonstrate a variety of possible approaches to preparing teachers to teach EIL. The book helps create a space for the exploration of EIL teacher education that cuts across English as a Lingua Franca, World Englishes, and other relevant scholarly communities. After an introduction (Aya Matsuda), this book is divided into six parts. Part 1, Theoretical Frameworks, contains the following chapters: (1) Foundations of an EIL-Aware Teacher Education (Yasemin Bayyurt and Nicos Sifakis); and (2) A Framework for Incorporating an English as an International Language Perspective into TESOL Teacher Education (Seran Dogancay-Aktuna and Joel Hardman). Part 2, Teacher Preparation Programs, includes: (3) A New Model for Reflexivity and Advocacy for Master's-Level EIL In-Service Programs in Colombia: The Notion of 'Learning and Teaching Processes in Second Languages' (Raúl Alberto Mora and Polina Golovátina-Mora); and (4) US-Based Teacher Education Program for 'Local' EIL Teachers (Seong-Yoon Kang). Part 3, Courses Dedicated to Teaching EIL, includes: (5) Global Englishes for Language Teaching: Preparing MSc TESOL Students to Teach in a Globalized World (Nicola Galloway); (6) Training Graduate Students in Japan to be EIL Teachers (Nobuyuki Hino); (7) Practices of Teaching Englishes for International Communication (Roby Marlina); and (8) Preparing Teachers to Teach English as an International Language: Reflections from Northern Cyprus (Ali Fuad Selvi). Part 4, EIL-Informed Courses on Another ELT Topic, includes: (9) Preparing Preservice Teachers with EIL/WE-oriented Materials Development (Thuy Ngoc Dinh); (10) Addressing Culture from an EIL Perspective in a Teacher Education Course in Brazil (Eduardo H. Diniz de Figueiredo and Aline M. Sanfelici); and (11) Practicing EIL Pedagogy in a Microteaching Class (Nugrahenny T. Zacharias). Part 5, Independent Units on Teaching EIL, includes: (12) A Global Approach to English Language Teaching: Integrating an International Perspective into a Teaching Methods Course (Heath Rose); (13) English as a Lingua Franca in an Online Teacher Education Program Offered by a State University in Brazil (Michele Salles El Kadri, Luciana Cabrini Simões Calvo, and Telma Gimenez); and (14) WE, EIL, ELF and Awareness of Their Pedagogical Implications in Teacher Education Programs in Italy (Paola Vettorel and Lucilla Lopriore). Part 6, Lessons, Activities and Tasks for EIL Teacher Preparation, contains the concluding chapter: (15) Lessons, Activities and Tasks for EIL Teacher Preparation.
The present study explores the relationship between Foreign Language Enjoyment (FLE) and Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety (FLCA) and a number of teacher-centered variables within the Spanish ...classroom context. Participants were 210 former and current learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) from all over Spain who filled out an online questionnaire with Likert scale items. A moderate negative relationship emerged between FLE and FLCA. Participants who had an L1 English speaker as a teacher reported more FLE and less FLCA than those with a foreign language user of English. Teacher characteristics predicted close to 20% of variance in FLE but only 8% of variance in FLCA. The strongest positive predictor of FLE was a teacher's friendliness while a teacher's foreign accent was a weaker negative predictor. Teacher-centered variables predicted much less variance for FLCA. Participants experienced more FLCA with younger teachers, very strict teachers, and teachers who did not use the foreign language much in class. The findings confirm earlier research that FLE seems to be more dependent on the teachers' pedagogical skills than FLCA.
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