The public school teacher population of the United States is predominantly White, while the demographics of P-12 student population continue to grow increasingly diverse. Across the nation, there has been a call for the recruitment and retention of culturally and linguistically diverse teachers. The state of Oregon passed the Oregon Educator Equity Act, originally called the Oregon Minority Teacher Act, in 1991, and with recent renewed attention, the preparation of more culturally and linguistically diverse teachers in the state has gained prominence. Refocused consideration to the lack of diversity in the teaching workforce is overdue, as evidenced by the low numbers of African Americans found in Oregon's teacher workforce. Moreover, the experiences of African American teachers are underexplored. The purpose of this dissertation was to examine the factors that contributed to the successful recruitment of African American teachers, specifically graduates of a teacher pipeline program. Employing an assets-based framework, a qualitative multiple-case design was used; data analyses included open coding of interview data, a constant comparison analysis of individual cases, and cross-case analysis. The predominant themes that contributed to the success of participants in this study included, belonging, accountability, and commitment to equity. While these findings, consistent with much of the literature on achievement of students of color, are not new, this study adds African American teacher voices to the existing research on the diversification of the teacher workforce. Additionally, this dissertation highlights successful efforts made toward recruitment of teachers of color with an Oregon lens.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact of the standards-based accountability (SBA) provisions of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) on the retention of teachers of color. I am interested in this impact, given the growing body of evidence suggesting a more diverse teacher workforce would benefit all students, particularly students of color (Villegas & Irvine, 2010); however, the teacher workforce is becoming increasingly homogenous and white, in part, due to the declining retention of teachers of color. Overall, I hypothesize that the widespread introduction of SBA as prescribed by NCLB has changed teachers’ instructional practices, thereby changing teachers’ experiences of their job and ultimately their employment decisions. Further, I posit that those changes in teachers’ experience, particularly reductions in perceptions of classroom autonomy, disproportionately impacts the employment decisions of teachers of color (Ingersoll & May, 2011). In this study, I answer three research questions: (1) How have trends in teacher retention changed over time and, how does that vary by teacher race/ethnicity? (2) What teacher-, school-, and organizational-factors influence teacher retention, and how do those vary by teacher race/ethnicity? (3) How has the widespread introduction of SBA through NCLB influenced teacher retention, and how does that vary by teacher race/ethnicity? I use the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) and its accompanying Teacher Follow-Up Survey (TFS) to answer my three research questions. Overall, I confirm an increasing decline in the retention of black and Hispanic teachers and decreasing perceptions of classroom autonomy, which coincides with the widespread introduction of SBA through the signing of NCLB in 2002. However, that decline in retention is only significant for black teachers and not for Hispanic teachers by 2007-08. Additionally, using a linear probability model, I found that the relationship between perceptions of classroom autonomy and retention varies by teacher race/ethnicity, and that there is a significant relationship between perceptions of classroom autonomy and retention for black teachers in 2007. However, I did not find that relationship for Hispanic teachers or white teachers. Ultimately, using a difference-in-difference (DD) model, I only found a significant decline in retention for Hispanic teachers as result of the SBA provisions of NCLB; however, it is unclear how the SBA provisions of NCLB is driving that decline, since I did not find a meaningful relationship between perceptions of classroom autonomy and retention for Hispanic teachers. In that DD model, I did not find a similar decline for black teachers. On the contrary, I found that black teachers in 2007 in states that had previously adopted SBA provisions similar to those in NCLB (Prior states) experienced a significant decline retention and perceptions of classroom autonomy, despite previous exposures to those SBA provisions. These counterintuitive results lead me to reinterpret my results applying institutional theory. Using institutional theory, I concluded that Prior states were able to implement the SBA provisions of NCLB with greater fidelity and, therefore, the impact of NCLB on perceptions of classroom autonomy and retention was greatest for black teachers in those states. Based on these results, I offer future research and policy recommendations to improve the diversity of the teacher workforce.

Efforts to increase time and opportunity to learn science in urban, underserved elementary schools have focused on improving teachers’ science instruction through school-based professional development. This dissertation examined how the social justice science teacher identities of two co-teachers of color developed and shaped while participating in a yearlong, school-based professional development in science. It also examined how two teachers of color and one White teacher activated the human and nonhuman resources provided by the science professional development to transform or maintain their science teaching practices and understandings. The theoretical frameworks included situated perspective of learning, social justice science teacher identity, social structures as schemas and resources, and the relationship between structure, agency, and science teacher identity. Data collection methods included interviews, teacher questionnaires, researcher field notes, and teacher-created documents, such as science slides and student handouts. Data analysis methods are drawn from grounded theory and multiple case study. The findings suggest that teachers’ experiences, orientations, views, existing identities as teachers and in relation to science, as well as their philosophies of students and learning all influenced how they participated in the science professional development, the meanings they constructed through participation, and the ways their teaching practices changed. Teachers at different phases in their careers also wanted and needed different kinds of PD supports. The findings suggest that science teacher educators who are developing science professional development models and workshops should be cognizant of all of these influencing factors on teacher learning and provide differentiated PD activities to support the various learning needs, identities, and personal and professional goals of elementary teachers.

A growing body of both substantive and theoretical literature suggests that educational underachievement among certain ethnic groups is due to the cultural discontinuity between mainstream education and minority students. A pedagogy that both uses and reinforces the culture of ethnic minority students, implemented by ethnically similar teachers, is therefore thought to contribute to a more constructive school experience and strengthen the social and political status of the ethnic community as a whole. For this thesis, a group of Haitian educators working in Montreal area schools was interviewed to investigate the extent to which this approach is viewed as a potential solution to the low academic achievement of numerous Haitian students. Some evidence was found that culturally congruent education is, according to the experiences of some of the respondents, a potentially beneficial strategy to curtail educational inequality. In was generally argued, however, that this should be a limited, remedial strategy with little bearing on the communal survival of the Haitian community.

Despite pervasive arguments for diversifying the teaching profession, as teachers of color have shown improved outcomes for children of color, immigrant and transnational teachers of color have largely been left out of possible solutions for diversifying the teaching workforce. In this context, I inquired into the experiences of immigrant and transnational teachers, seeking to (re)position them as part of the much-needed diversity in the teacher workforce in solidarity with U.S. teachers of color. Combining Critical Race Theory and Nepantla, I sought to learn from the experiences of six immigrant and transnational teachers of color as they negotiated, navigated, and reconciled differences across their home countries and the U.S. I conducted my study in New York City due to its high percentage of immigrants in schools, asking: How do immigrant and transnational teachers of color with prior early childhood teaching experience in their home contexts experience and negotiate the process of (re)learning what it means to teach in the U.S. through teacher education programs in New York City? I employed a qualitative research design, focusing on nuanced and complex individual experiences without generalizing or essentializing a whole population. I used Seidman’s (2013) three interview series of in-depth interviews to gain information about my participants and their experiences and situate my study within and between the realms of counter-stories and testimonios. Analytically, I engaged axial coding, built trans/scripts (compressed renderings of original transcript) that captured emotional qualities, and presented trans/scripts to participants. I asked them to identify important themes and name their own truths and stories. This methodology enhanced the meanings of the interviews by interpreting them through poetic counter-stories, and poetic testimonio with my participants. I synthesized and re-presented findings as co-constructed poetic counter-stories, offering insights into participants’ experiences regarding early childhood classrooms and teacher education programs as spaces of (be)longing, learning about race and racism, access to teacher certification requirements, expectations of being an early childhood educator, and seeing children’s strengths. Implications point toward the need to listen and learn from immigrant and transnational teachers of color in justly transforming early childhood teacher education practices, programs, and policy.

Growing national attention to the importance of early childhood education (ECE) has led many cities and states to abandon debates pertaining to whether and for whom Pre-Kindergarten (PK) should be available in favor of the establishment of Universal PK (UPK). UPK programs have been framed as an investment in human capital to improve standards and performance and achieve economic payoffs that will afford high returns on investment—improving future employment, lowering rates of incarceration, etc. Such an investment narrative is predicated on high-quality UPK programs; this has meant that in New York City (NYC), UPK teachers were expected to be certified by New York State. Situating my study within the growing educational research literature on the problems with teacher certification tests, which found that such tests disadvantage Teachers of Color, this qualitative study employed critical race theory to examine the racialization of teacher certification test success and failure, combining three individual life history interviews, a critical participatory focus group, and dyad. Through interviews, it sought to understand how ECE teachers of Color in NYC conceptualized teaching quality within the context of institutional discourses and official definitions of teaching quality. Employing critical narrative analysis, I attended to the interplay between policy discourses and personal lived experiences via conversational narratives recounting their experiences of licensure test failure, inquiring into how they negotiated institutional definitions of qualified teacher with their own understandings and lived experiences pertaining to teacher qualification. Focus groups served as sites for the co-creation of counter-narratives to the institutional narrative of teacher licensure indexing teacher quality. Findings point toward how current policy conceptions of teacher quality as teacher licensure gives continuation to a long history of teacher licensure tests being used as a racist tool to protect whiteness in the teaching profession. This is particularly problematic in light of the growing majority of young children in today’s early childhood classrooms combined with the proven benefits children of Color have from having Teachers of Color. As such, implications point toward the need to disentangle conceptualizations of teacher quality and qualification from teacher licensure testing.

Minorities stand increasingly under-represented in the teaching profession; they continue to be under-represented in graduate teacher preparation programs. Despite calls for increased numbers of minority teachers, despite countless well-intentioned recruitment and retention programs, the relative proportion of newly prepared minority teachers is in fact decreasing (Carter & Wilson, 1992). Literally hundreds of studies examine retention programs, identifying the deficits of minorities, noting what program elements work, and establishing characteristics of supportive institutional environments. Unfortunately, knowing what can be done to I increase persistence does not yet translate into doing it. By focusing on a positive correlate--those minority students who successfully complete their programs—this study contrasts with the deficit approach. Employing a critical analysis and feminist and ethnic interpretive perspectives, this qualitative study investigates the experiences of minorities who did complete graduate teacher education programs at 10 predominantly white, public and private, urban, suburban, and rural institutions in the Pacific Northwest. Specifically, the study examines how these minority students understand and interpret their experiences, which events they perceive as enhancing their successes and which ones they know interfered. All minorities who had completed graduate teacher preparation programs at the 10 institutions since 1990 were surveyed. Sections of the survey correspond to categories previously found to correlate with persistence (AME/OMHE, 1992; Attinasi, 1989; Pascarella & Terenzini, 1990; Tinto, 1987). Of the 72% who returned the surveys N = 61), 83% asked to be interviewed. Subsequently, seven respondents representative of the surveyed population each participated in two face-to-face interviews. Ethnographic methods were used to inductively analyze the empirical materials gathered in the research study. Content analysis of the subjects' journals combined with their interview transcripts and surveys enabled triangulation within three different sources of the respondents' own words. Results confirm that minorities see themselves as outsiders within predominantly white institutions. Belonging, or not, frames their institutional experience and mirrors their everyday lived realities in mainstream American culture. Respondents attribute their achievements to individual persistence; examples of persistence cited align remarkably with psychological profiles of resiliency (Benard, 1991). Retention program components are viewed as less significant than the personal resiliency each respondent evidenced.

This dissertation offers an intimate view into the emotional life of a queer teacher while she lived and taught middle school in a conservative rural Northern Californian community during the years 2020 to 2022. Acknowledging the emotional weight felt by many educators as they confront challenges in and outside of their academic curricula, this study offers a framework for recording, examining, and analyzing the wobble moments (emotionally difficult events) experienced by teachers in ways that may relieve some of their associated tension and stress. Through reflections on teacher journal entries, this autoethnographic study demonstrates how emotion, dialogic, and queer theories may be used to rethink and reconfigure the narratives of our emotional experiences. The author argues that by engaging in emotional dialogue, teachers may gain new insight on and deepen their relationships to their practice and profession, as well as to their students and colleagues. Ultimately, it is in her analysis of these relationships that the author finds solace and lightens some the emotional weight of teaching.

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