School choice, teachers’ work, and professional identity

Abstract

Teacher professional identity, or what it means to be a teacher, informs the types of schools teachers seek for work. With the marketization of schools in the US and abroad, teachers’ professional identities are changing. However, we know little about how teachers negotiate—and renegotiate—their professional identities during the job search in contexts with school choice, such as charter schools. This study uses qualitative interview data from 46 teachers in San Antonio, Texas, where over 25% of students attend charter schools. Our findings illuminate the job search as a critical juncture where teachers evaluate their professional identity as they make choices about the sector—charter or traditional public school—and/or school organization they prefer. In particular, the choice context legitimated flexibility and fluidity in teachers’ professional identity as teachers moved between sectors to find jobs, even if the school did not align with their personal or professional values. We also found that employability and teachers’ perception of the job market played an important role in how teachers strategically presented their professional identity on the job search. Findings offer implications for teacher education and teacher workforce policies.

Teachers of Color and Precarious Work: The Inequality of Job Security

“…Operationalizing precarity from multiple perspectives also encourages school leaders and policymakers to develop workforce policies responsive to ToC and their unique work experiences. Although teaching itself is not precarious work, these insights have important consequences for rethinking how teachers understand their job, the work of teaching, and their professional identities (Castro, Jabbar, and Miranda 2022; Dunn 2018; McWilliams 2016).…”

“…Across these perspectives, the underlying logic remains the same: neoliberalism engenders market-mediated work arrangements and deregulatory actions with far-reaching impacts on public education. The growth of charter schools, the use of vouchers and tax scholarships, the marketization of teacher education programs, or the reshaping of teachers’ professional identities are workings of neoliberalism in education (Brewer et al 2016; Castro, Jabbar, and Miranda 2022; Henry and Dixson 2016; Horsford, Scott, and Anderson 2018). In Sweden, such neoliberal reforms are conceptualized as “fast policy” resulting in a rapid transformation of a highly centralized educational system (Hardy, Rönnerman, and Beach 2019).…”

“…Finally, weakening employment protections through neoliberal restructuring can also threaten teachers’ sense of security by shifting teachers’ emotional connections to their work. This perspective of neoliberalism's lived effects is particularly relevant to teachers’ professional identity—beliefs about what it means to be a teacher—because it emphasizes the state of teaching and teachers’ intrinsic motivations about who they are and the material conditions of their work (Castro, Jabbar, and Miranda 2022). In deeply marketized contexts, ToC experience dissonance about their professional identity by conflating the “work” of teaching with the “job” of teaching (McWilliams 2016; White 2020).…”

“…As teaching adapted to this market environment, it resulted in less teacher autonomy, greater managerialism, and more challenging working conditions. Scholars have since tied the intensification of teachers' work and labor-the tendency to work longer and work harder-to shifting global reforms or "policy technologies" emphasizing performance and accountability targets, standardized curriculum, expanded administrative workload, and increased temporary, contract-based work in teaching (Ball 2003;Brewer et al 2016;Castro, Jabbar, and Miranda 2022;Henry and Dixson 2016;Fitzgerald et al 2019;Horsford, Scott, and Anderson 2018;Lingard 2009). Although the degree and intensity of these reforms vary by national context and are locally specific (Peck 2010); this collective research suggests that market-based reforms impose "an ethical conflict with the ethos of the teaching profession" (Wronowski 2021, 6) that negatively affects teachers' professional identities, mental health and well-being, and their perceptions of job quality and security (Castro, Jabbar, and Miranda 2022;Fitzgerald et al 2019).…”

“…Standing's (2011) account of precarity implies a generalized state of employment insecurity similar to Kalleberg's (2009, 2) view of precarious work that is “uncertain, unpredictable, and risky from the point of view of the worker.” In centering the worker's view of risk, scholars debate whether the precariat should be considered a class itself and who comprises the precariat (Kalleberg 2012). After all, teachers in most countries typically receive regular wages, access to some form of state or government benefit, and, despite differences in public perception and national discourses about the profession (Wiggan, Smith, and Watson-Vandiver 2021), are generally regarded as valuable community actors.…”