The COVID-19 pandemic has immeasurably impacted nearly every aspect of schools from day-to-day operating procedures to the way students attend classes to curricular and instructional matters. In the early stages of the pandemic, while COVID-19 spread across the country, the large-scale, nationwide closure of schools in March 2020 forced educators, students, and families alike to adjust to emergency remote teaching with virtually no warning or preparation (Marshall et al., 2020; Hodges et al., 2020). As the 2019–2020 school year came to a close remotely, states began the process of reopening after initial COVID-19 related closures; and the predicament of how to reopen schools in the fall became a major topic of debate. This contentious debate continued throughout the rest of the 2020–2021 school year as school buildings went in and out of in-person, hybrid and remote instructional models; and the public health crisis persisted. Caught squarely in the crossfire of the debate and on the receiving end of policy coming down from state governance were public-school classroom teachers. Historically, this top-down dynamic is certainly not new for the teaching profession (Lortie, 1975; Cohn et al., 1993; Gratch, 2000). Intersecting with this reality is the view of teachers as executors of policy that others create (Cohn et al., 1993; Cochran-Smith et al., 2009) — a view that situates teachers in a web of bureaucracy (Elvira, 2020) that is often at odds with their expertise and local knowledge of practice (Cochran-Smith et al., 2009). This view ultimately results in the exclusion of teachers’ voices in decision-making arenas (Cohn et al., 1993). While preliminary research investigating the impacts of COVID-19 on teachers and the teaching profession has established some of the emotional and physical toll that has occurred, more details with respect to the way that teachers experienced the work of teaching itself in conjunction with policy decisions is necessary. The three studies in this dissertation address these needs by teasing out teachers’ perspectives, challenging the lingering image of teachers as technicians and the status quo of top-down policy enactment, and determining a way to move forward. More specifically, these studies occur within the context of public-school teaching in the state of Massachusetts (MA) and involve data sources that include survey responses from full-time, public-school teachers in MA who actively taught in the 2020–2021 school year as well as policy memos that came from the MA state educational agency (SEA). The combination of articles in this dissertation examines topics including the status of teachers’ voices and influence in decision-making forums, the relationship between policy and teachers’ work, teachers as experts versus technicians, and teacher demoralization throughout the pandemic. By drawing upon teacher survey data from 122 full-time, public-school teachers in MA, the first study captures their experiences teaching during the pandemic from the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 through April of the 2020–2021 school year. This first study provides a window into the direct experiences teachers had teaching during the pandemic in comparison to teaching prior to the pandemic and sets the groundwork to show how teachers’ experiences do not align with images of teaching as put forth by the MA SEA and the policy rolled out during the pandemic. The second study uses document analysis to examine policy artifacts produced by state governance in the wake of COVID-19 and the way they communicate certain perceptions of teachers and the work of teaching. The third study returns to teacher responses to inquire about their perceptions of the state educational agency’s level of support and policy developed during the pandemic. As such, this third study demonstrates the teacher demoralization that results from the lack of inclusion of teachers’ voices in decision-making forums and the disconnect between policy and teachers’ work during the COVID-19 pandemic. Together these studies reflect that the COVID-19 pandemic has further underscored the gap between the individuals in the classroom and those in decision-making forums. As such, it has revealed the need for a more detailed understanding of the commitments that teachers juggle at the classroom level in order to better align policy, research, and state and national responses with the daily needs of students and teachers.

The purpose of this study was to develop an instrument to measure K-12 teacher demoralization. An increasing body of literature has labeled modern education policies as having a demoralizing effect on teachers (Darling-Hammond & Rustique-Forrester, 2002; Noddings, 2004; Ryan & Brown, 2005; Nichols & Berliner, 2007; Santoro, 2011; Hargreaves, Braun, & Gebhardt, 2013). Teacher demoralization has been defined as a teacher’s “inability to access the moral rewards of teaching” (Santoro, 2011, p. 3). Data was collected from a population of K-12 educators through cognitive interviews (n=6) and a large scale data collection analyzed with a principal component analysis (n=430) in an effort to determine which constructs should be included in the measurement of teacher demoralization. Feedback on the survey instrument was incorporated in an iterative process at each stage of data collection. Results revealed that the theory of teacher demoralization should include two factors: teacher dispositions and feelings of demoralization. The current study failed to find strong evidence of convergent validity with teacher burnout and self-determination need thwarting; however, results suggest that emotional exhaustion and autonomy need thwarting are moderately related to teacher demoralization. Evidence of discriminant validity in relation to teacher self-efficacy was found; however, other discriminant validity evidence was inconclusive. This study extends the literature by providing the first attempt to measure the phenomenon of teacher demoralization. Future studies should continue to refine the instrument of teacher demoralization, and can use this instrument as one way to examine the impact of policy on teachers.