Education Policy and Black Teachers: Perspectives on Race, Policy, and Teacher Diversity

This article examines interview responses from prominent education researchers who were asked to consider the role of major educational policies in the underrepresentation of Black teachers in public schools. Participants considered policies related to accountability and market reforms including testing, school choice and charter schools, and alternative teacher education. Although participants agreed that Black teachers contribute greatly to academic achievement for students, their views differed about whether or how policies undermine the presence of Black teachers in schools. We offer conceptual distinctions between participants’ views, including those who described policy as having a mixed impact on Black teachers, those who described policy as having an unintended but harmful impact, and those who described policy as playing a tacit role in systemic marginalization of Black teachers and as a form of institutional racism. We find benefit in all participants’ views and offer suggestions for initiatives that seek to strengthen workforce diversity.

Teaching for America Across Two Hemispheres: Comparing the Ideological Appeal of the Teach for All Teacher Education Model in the United States and Brazil

The last several decades have seen significant growth among private options in alternative teacher education and certification. In this article, I draw on two parallel ethnographic studies of the experiences of participants in variants of one particular alternative teacher education model, developed by Teach For America in the United States and spread internationally by Teach For All. Through analysis of interviews with recruits from Teach For America and its Brazilian sister organization Ensina!, I explore the thinking processes that leads young people to join these organizations, as well as how that thinking changes after 2 years of teaching in the classroom. I find that while participants in these studies joined because they admired the Teach For All teacher education model, many left their 2-year commitment questioning the underlying theories of change driving it.

Fostering transformational teacher agency in Finnish teacher education

In this article, we studied how well teacher education in Finland is able to answer the changing needs of the contemporary world. More precisely, we focussed on the question of how well an alternative teacher education model guides teacher students’ agency towards a transformational view of the teaching profession, making it possible for schools to enable social change. This question was studied in the framework of critical social pedagogy. The data for this article was collected ethnographically by observing meetings in the Critical Integrative Teacher Education (CITE) programme at the University of Jyväskylä in 2015–2017. The analysis is based on a theoretical background in which we outline two different discourses on the concept of teachers’ agency. The first promotes schools’ role in conservation; teachers are expected to educate obedient and uncritical citizens to maintain steady economic growth. The second discourse is defined as critical and emancipatory, where the education pursues transformation in students’ underlying attitudes and a deeper understanding of education and society. The results showed that the CITE model fosters teacher students’ critical self-reflection and understanding of group phenomena considering education. The students’ ability to understand schools in a social context also develops. However, CITE seems to struggle in transforming the students’ thinking and understanding into actions. According to the data, feelings of inability, cynicism and a lacklustre ability to understand concretely how teachers can have an impact on society through their profession prevent a more complete transformation in the students’ everyday modes of action. A stronger community perspective, collaboration with institutions outside teacher education, the enabling of group-oriented action and the provision of real-life experiences regarding the transformation could better help to develop future teachers’ agency towards transformational views.

Teach First Norway - who joins and what are their initial motivations for teaching?

Motivasjon for å undervise er et tema som er mye diskutert i offentlige debatter og i forskningslitteraturen. Grunnen til dette er at læreres profesjonelle motivasjon har vist seg å påvirke elevenes motivasjon, læreres tilfredshet i jobben, fravær og turnover i læreryrket, samt rekruttering av nye lærere. Alternative lærerutdanninger som tilbyr en raskere vei inn i læreryrket har i de senere årene blitt etablert, både i Norge og internasjonalt. Denne studien undersøker om den profesjonelle motivasjonen til kandidater som rekrutteres til disse programmene har spesielle kjennetegn. Artikkelen undersøker både motivasjon for undervisning og motivasjon for å delta i det alternative lederopplærings- og lærerutdanningsprogrammet Teach First Norway. Datamaterialet består av spørreskjemadata og intervjudata fra ett kull (N=13) Teach First Norway-kandidater. Basert på spørreskjemadata ble det utført en klyngeanalyse som fant tre motivasjonsprofiler: “Lav altruistisk motivasjon”, “Interesse for undervisning” og “Høy altruistisk motivasjon”. Ved hjelp av kvalitative intervjuer ble motivasjonsprofilene utdypet. Resultatene viser at samspillet mellom deltakernes ulike motivasjonsfaktorer er kompleks og unik. Det stereotype bildet av en Teach First Norway-kandidat som bruker programmet som et springbrett inn i lederstillinger i næringslivet nyanseres som følge av funnene.Nøkkelord: alternativ lærerutdanning, motivasjon for å undervise, karriere, Teach First NorwayAbstractTeacher motivation is a widely discussed topic in public debates and educational research literature. Prior research has found that teachers’ professional motivation impacts students’ motivation, teachers’ professional satisfaction, teacher absenteeism and turnover, as well as the recruitment of new teachers. Recently, the introduction of alternative teacher education programmes has provided a faster way into the teaching profession. This study investigates specific characteristics of the professional motivations of candidates recruited to these programmes. The article reports both the motivations for teaching and reasons for attending the alternative teacher education programme Teach First Norway (TFN). For descriptive purposes a cluster analysis was performed based on survey data from one cohort (N=13) of TFN candidates. Three motivational profiles emerged: ‘low altruistic motivation’, ‘high interest in teaching’ and ‘predominant altruistic motivation’. The profiles were further explored through qualitative interviews. The results show that the interplay between participants’ motivations is complex and unique. The stereotypical image of a TFN candidate that uses the programme as a springboard into management positions in businesses becomes more nuanced as a result of these findings.Keywords: alternative teacher education, motivations to teach, careers, Teach First