This article examines the phenomenon of teacher alienation through the lens of Marxist theory, exploring how capitalist and bureaucratic structures inherent in educational policies contribute to feelings of disconnection and disenfranchisement among educators. Drawing upon Marx's concept of alienated labor, the study delves into the ways in which…

This paper examines how teachers see policy and how the visibility of various aspects of policymaking are mediated by our school contexts. As a perspective from a K-12 classroom teacher conducting policy research with other classroom teachers, this paper also explores how teachers, in turn, might make our policy work visible to ourselves and the…

While we know that professionalization improves outcomes for teachers, education policy has effectively "deprofessionalized" teachers, especially those who serve immigrant English Learners. Based on a three-year case study, this paper explores how teachers in an immigrant-serving school exercised autonomy and authority over their…

This book chronicles the challenges, truths, and lessons of teaching and leading in a traditional high school today: the bureaucratic red tape, the fight for inclusivity, the mental health and safety concerns, and the urgent need for teacher support and wellness. From active shooter drills to digital distractions, from closing achievement gaps to…

Teacher accountability reforms implemented around the globe have heightened a sense that teachers are losing the support of policymakers and the general public. To examine the global pattern in teachers' perception of occupational value and identify possible outcomes and predictors, we analyzed the 2018 Teaching and Learning International Survey…

School improvement and its associated policies aim at providing a quality education, a burdensome weight which rests largely on the shoulders of teachers. To achieve such ends, policy texts have been reformed with neoliberal underpinnings, which allow private organizations to enter a space that previously operated through public institutions. In…

New Zealand has its educational roots in 19th and 20th century British educational systems with close similarities between English and New Zealand secondary school education structures. In the last two decades, however, secondary school education in both countries has experienced multiple and sometimes radical reforms. Educational policy has…

This paper examines recent reforms in English-language testing in Japan using a policy distraction framework. We identify the term 'washback (effect)' and other related discourses as major distractors and investigate how 'washback' discourses have functioned as political slogans or catchphrases in policy deliberation processes and how they have…

This study investigated the role of external policy interventions in explaining the trend of school educators' professional intrinsic motivation. Through the explanatory sequential design of the mixed study, we first described the trend in the intrinsic motivation of a total of 1,470 school educators between 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2018 by…

Teachers and their unions are often vilified for the perception that they are working against the best interest of students (Berliner & Glass, 2014). The narrative, it seems, is that teachers' unions only seek to protect bad teachers, and they fight for an unearned increase in pay for teachers. The National Education Association launched the…

The teacher shortage in the nation's public schools--particularly in high-poverty schools--is a crisis for the teaching profession and a serious problem for the entire education system. The Economic Policy Institute's (EPI's) teacher shortage policy agenda plots a course to return teaching to a profession in which teachers are compensated on par…

Shifts in schooling policy have had substantial impact upon the role of principals as well as the relationship that principals have with their teaching staff. In this paper we report on the initiatives 30 principals in a diverse range of devolved Australian government schools adopt to shape and support the local, school-level working conditions of…

In Europe, well-being in the workplace has increasing prominence in the policy and research agenda, and education is a key context in which the challenge of occupational stress has been reported. Traditionally, the ethos in school settings could be said to be shaped by the vocational motivation of employees; that is, a commitment to a social…

This article investigates how learning outcomes, a concept inspired by an Anglo-Saxon curriculum approach, are expressed in policy documents, with an emphasis on expectations articulated to teachers. Developments in education policy for the last two decades reflect a widespread expansion of learning outcome orientation in curricula and assessment…

Teachers are increasingly dissatisfied. In one recent survey, 47 percent of teachers said they were not enthusiastic about their jobs, and another showed a sharp drop in teacher satisfaction since 2008, from 62 to 39 percent. This dissatisfaction does not stem from what one might think--stresses related to dealing with students and families.…