Critical Perspectives on Teaching and Teachers’ Work - Böcker

This book examines teachers’ work in the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, where educators grappled with a worldwide virus that profoundly affected teaching and learning. This difficult situation allowed educators and researchers to reflect critically on the enduring labor experiences that persist through this uncertain period, some of them rooted in conditions prevalent long before the pandemic hit. Written from a perspective that cuts across labor studies and education, the book explains how cultural and legally inscribed expectations of teachers have been remarkably impermeable over time. In particular, the volume focuses on the educational transformations that have taken place worldwide since the pandemic occurred, including reduced educational resources, labor strife, and contradictory governmental directives. As the book articulates, these changes affect some of the most persistent educational topics, including student achievement, student health, and teacher satisfaction.

This book examines teachers’ work in the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, where educators grappled with a worldwide virus that profoundly affected teaching and learning. This difficult situation allowed educators and researchers to reflect critically on the enduring labor experiences that persist through this uncertain period, some of them rooted in conditions prevalent long before the pandemic hit. Written from a perspective that cuts across labor studies and education, the book explains how cultural and legally inscribed expectations of teachers have been remarkably impermeable over time. In particular, the volume focuses on the educational transformations that have taken place worldwide since the pandemic occurred, including reduced educational resources, labor strife, and contradictory governmental directives. As the book articulates, these changes affect some of the most persistent educational topics, including student achievement, student health, and teacher satisfaction.

This volume brings into focus the pivotal educational years during adolescence, when many learners are exposed to implicit and explicit messages that STEM is not a viable educational pathway for them.Challenging this notion, Disrupting Secondary STEM Education brings together a collective of critical educators who share what disruptive STEM teaching looks and feels like from an insider perspective, as well as the ways they purposefully create curriculum to subvert existing structures that can confine learning. Through disruptive STEM teaching, a joy for learning is kindled, as well as a sense of empowered criticality in students that can support their development as global citizens facing complex futures. The collection shares stories across a spectrum of educators, from those beginning their teaching journey to those who’ve stood up against narrow curriculum and standardized testing for years in the capacity of both P-12 teachers and teacher educators. The voices of these educators illustrate how the work of disruptive STEM teaching can be actualized within cohorts of future teachers, achieved through early engagement with critical theories and generative field experiences that support and affirm a wide array of identities.This book provides multiple theoretical and practical access points for the reader to understand the work of disruptive STEM teaching and offers a way forward for those interested in developing more critical curriculum in their own classrooms. As such, it will be important reading for postgraduate students and researchers in Social Justice Education and STEM Education, as well as for in-service educators.

This volume brings into focus the pivotal educational years during adolescence, when many learners are exposed to implicit and explicit messages that STEM is not a viable educational pathway for them.Challenging this notion, Disrupting Secondary STEM Education brings together a collective of critical educators who share what disruptive STEM teaching looks and feels like from an insider perspective, as well as the ways they purposefully create curriculum to subvert existing structures that can confine learning. Through disruptive STEM teaching, a joy for learning is kindled, as well as a sense of empowered criticality in students that can support their development as global citizens facing complex futures. The collection shares stories across a spectrum of educators, from those beginning their teaching journey to those who’ve stood up against narrow curriculum and standardized testing for years in the capacity of both P-12 teachers and teacher educators. The voices of these educators illustrate how the work of disruptive STEM teaching can be actualized within cohorts of future teachers, achieved through early engagement with critical theories and generative field experiences that support and affirm a wide array of identities.This book provides multiple theoretical and practical access points for the reader to understand the work of disruptive STEM teaching and offers a way forward for those interested in developing more critical curriculum in their own classrooms. As such, it will be important reading for postgraduate students and researchers in Social Justice Education and STEM Education, as well as for in-service educators.

Critical Perspectives on White Supremacy and Racism in Canadian Education shows how K-12 schooling continues to produce and maintain white supremacist and colonial logics and questions the alternate future of schooling in Canada.It argues that white supremacy and race in schooling are present in colonial-centered approaches to teacher education, formal and informal exclusion through curriculum development, and persistent failed commitments to racial justice and decolonization. These themes guide the organization of this collection, which is further underpinned by theoretical perspectives, including critical race theory, anti-Blackness theory, abolition, and anticolonial theory. Contributions are drawn from classroom teachers, community educators, and pre-service teacher educators and are powerfully informed by first-hand accounts as well as stories of teachers and teacher candidates.Combining theory with practice, this edited volume will be important reading for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students in social justice education, multicultural education, and Indigenous studies. It will also be beneficial reading for antiracist and Indigenous education researchers, as well as policymakers and practitioners within critical education.

Critical Perspectives on White Supremacy and Racism in Canadian Education shows how K-12 schooling continues to produce and maintain white supremacist and colonial logics and questions the alternate future of schooling in Canada.It argues that white supremacy and race in schooling are present in colonial-centered approaches to teacher education, formal and informal exclusion through curriculum development, and persistent failed commitments to racial justice and decolonization. These themes guide the organization of this collection, which is further underpinned by theoretical perspectives, including critical race theory, anti-Blackness theory, abolition, and anticolonial theory. Contributions are drawn from classroom teachers, community educators, and pre-service teacher educators and are powerfully informed by first-hand accounts as well as stories of teachers and teacher candidates.Combining theory with practice, this edited volume will be important reading for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students in social justice education, multicultural education, and Indigenous studies. It will also be beneficial reading for antiracist and Indigenous education researchers, as well as policymakers and practitioners within critical education.

The Handbook on Teachers’ Work brings together research and evidence-based authoritative writings from across the globe that explicitly theorizes and studies teachers’ work.Drawing on research from twelve countries across 6 continents, the chapters are grouped into themes that represent key issues related to work from global perspectives, including:The Political and Policy Contexts of Teachers' WorkTeaching as an OccupationDiverse Teacher Identities and RolesTeaching as Collective and Relational Work; andTeaching and ActivismThe volume explores the idea of teaching as an occupation with a history and trajectory that are shaped by political economies; historical progressions; organizational structures; social relations among educators, students, and others; teachers’ career and labor patterns; their professional norms; and raced, gendered, classed, and culturally linked expectations of teachers and about public schooling.This essential handbook will be of interest to teacher educators, policymakers, and students and researchers in the fields of teachers’ work, curriculum theory, educational policy and politics, foundations of education, multicultural education and teacher education.

The Handbook on Teachers’ Work brings together research and evidence-based authoritative writings from across the globe that explicitly theorizes and studies teachers’ work.Drawing on research from twelve countries across 6 continents, the chapters are grouped into themes that represent key issues related to work from global perspectives, including:The Political and Policy Contexts of Teachers' WorkTeaching as an OccupationDiverse Teacher Identities and RolesTeaching as Collective and Relational Work; andTeaching and ActivismThe volume explores the idea of teaching as an occupation with a history and trajectory that are shaped by political economies; historical progressions; organizational structures; social relations among educators, students, and others; teachers’ career and labor patterns; their professional norms; and raced, gendered, classed, and culturally linked expectations of teachers and about public schooling.This essential handbook will be of interest to teacher educators, policymakers, and students and researchers in the fields of teachers’ work, curriculum theory, educational policy and politics, foundations of education, multicultural education and teacher education.

This book presents new insights into the success strategies of Australian teachers. It analyses interviews with 42 experienced teachers across a range of school contexts to examine “what works” in those contexts. The authors organise teachers’ work and identities around ten distinct roles: designers for learning, emotional labourers, narrative constructors and deconstructors, pandemic navigators, policy refractors, relationship brokers, self-regulated learners, situated ethicists, teaching idealists and technology reframers.The chapters explore two separate but interrelated arcs of analysis simultaneously. Teachers’ work is examined around four nodes: complexities, challenges, contradictions and comforts. Five dimensions of that work are considered as well: psychosocial; profession and professionalism; changes and continuities; naming, framing and shaming; and teaching by design. The Australian study is part of a five-nation international research project focused on teacher motivation and resilience, with the other countries including Brazil, Chile, Ecuador and Spain. The authors are affiliated with the University of Southern Queensland, Central Queensland University and the Queensland University of Technology.What emerges is the understanding that Australian teachers acknowledge the challenging complexity of their work, while they mobilise their constrained agency in innovative ways in diverse contexts. Their success strategies cluster around four distinct types—value-driven, agentic, adaptable and relational—with important implications for current and future teachers alike. It is an essential read for both in-service and pre-service teachers, as well as a viable resource for education researchers and research students, and general lay readers with an interest in the future of education.