This article reviews the book Where Teachers Thrive: Organizing Schools for Success written by Dr. Susan Moore Johnson and published in 2019. By describing the content of each chapter as well as the overall contributions of this recent book to knowledge about the interaction between school contexts, policy environments, and teacher experience, this review provides readers with a taste of this groundbreaking work while also offering analysis and minor critiques.
As neoliberal education reforms spread globally, including the development of school choice pathways that create different types of schools, a reexamination of teacher professionalism may be in order. Current literature about teacher experiences with neoliberal reforms often focuses on negative aspects of organizational professionalism and managerialism, describing shifts in professionalism as stifling teacher autonomy and diminishing satisfaction through increased accountability, standardization, and supervision. However, studies often only examine single school sites and the views and experiences of veteran teachers. This study considers two novice teachers' experiences as they transition between schools, one with more traditional professional cultures and the other within the hyper-neoliberal professional contexts of 'no-excuses’ charter schools, contrasting how they interpreted aspects of professionalism, development, and satisfaction in different environments. Compared to more traditionally professional school environments, novices’ experiences with managerial approaches to teacher professionalism served to accelerate their development while having drawbacks in terms of workload and turnover. The collaboration and collegiality, bounded autonomy, and shared accountability to mutual goals at these “no-excuses” charter schools seemed to create occupational professional subcultures where novice teachers feel simultaneously challenged and supported. The paper discusses implications for reexamining neoliberal approaches to teacher professionalism, mobility, and school organization.
Very little existing research examines the development of novice teachers through a lens of school organization to understand how different school contexts impact shape induction experiences and teachers' instructional practices. Using “no-excuses” style charter schools as an example of a highly organized and coherent school, this study follows two novice teachers as they transition between highly organized and less organized schools to gain a better understanding of how they experience these contexts and how their instruction is influenced by these contexts in both the short and long term. Findings suggest that the more organized school contexts had a significant impact on teacher practice, even in instances where novices experienced dissatisfaction with the no-excuses approach. Implications for bridging teacher preparation and induction are discussed.
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