In this qualitative study of middle school English teachers, I investigated the phenomenon of why teachers stay, year in and year out, despite challenges brought on by educational reforms and negative depictions from the general public. The teachers’ experiences illustrate the dedication and perseverance of professionals committed to working with students year in and year out. I framed this case study (Merriam, 1988) in theories of sensemaking (Maitliss & Christianson, 2014; Wieck, 1995) and critical pedagogy (Freire, 1970; Giroux, 2011). The participants were three teachers who taught middle school English for over ten years. Within this time frame, they were exposed to multiple, ongoing reforms: No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and Common Core State Standards. I used sensemaking and critical pedagogy lenses to explore how these teachers experienced issues of power and interpreted educational reforms. I also examined the reasons why they persisted in the profession. I employed grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006; Glaser & Strauss, 1967) and Gee’s (2011) Seven Building Tasks for analysis to identify four categories to illuminate the teachers’ stories: 1) Public Perception of the Profession, 2) Pedagogy and Curriculum, 3) Relationships, and 4) Being a Teacher. The teachers’ experienced ongoing struggles and yet had longevity in the profession. Implications of the study point to the perils and promises of long-term teaching. The perils were challenges of the profession: demands from administrators, new and limiting curriculum, a negative public perception, and long hours. The promises these teachers kept were commitments to decision makers and the public, middle school students and their families, and to the profession. It is these promises that they kept each year that motivated the teachers and sustained them over time.

This project is framed by a dilemma: representations of teaching practice are critical in teacher education, and yet the representations we rely on dangerously oversimplify teaching. My central questions emerge from this dilemma. In telling stories about teaching, how messy can the story be before it becomes unintelligible? Why does messiness matter and what does it produce for teachers-to-be? After examining both canonical accounts of teacher knowledge and emergent research that is productively disrupting the field, I draw on the work of Karen Barad to help me imagine both a new way of telling teaching stories, what I call diffractive storytelling, and a new way of thinking about their use in teacher education. In particular, I take up Barad’s concept of apparatus to consider what knowing is made possible by traditional teacher stories, what knowing is foreclosed, and what these possibilities and limitations mean for teacher education. Finally, I turn to other apparatuses at work in teacher education, especially standardized assessments such as edTPA, the new performance-based assessment of teacher readiness being implemented across the country. I argue that attending carefully to the apparatus-ness of the instruments used in teacher preparation allows us to contest the naturalization of narrow conceptions of teaching practice and sustains the paradox of holding to standards while resisting standardization.

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The purpose of this qualitative, narrative study was to examine the stories of public elementary school teachers who hold doctorates and to discover what these stories tell about their understanding of education within the context of public schools. Specifically, investigation centered on reasons teachers in this group pursued doctorates. This study also examined the ways in which they describe their role as educators within the public school system; the ways in which they view their relationships with public school colleagues; and the ways in which the doctoral experience has influenced their beliefs about teaching, public schooling, and education. Participants included seven California elementary public school teachers who took part in two tape recorded interviews and contributed one story from their professional experience and/or a personal reflection on the interview process. Analysis of the data involved restorying the participants' stories, identifying segments of information, labeling the segments with codes that describe their meaning, grouping the codes into themes, and identifying examples from the data that supported the themes. Six themes emerged from the collected data: learning, connection and collaboration, conflict, leadership, satisfaction, and respect . The participants described their various learning experiences, how they connect and collaborate with others, the ways in which they experience conflict, the contexts in which they exhibit leadership skills, the circumstances that have brought about personal satisfaction, and the ways in which they have observed and experienced respect. Results revealed that the teachers pursued a doctorate in order to broaden their knowledge base and educational experience and that the doctoral experience has given them a broader perspective of education. They have assumed a leadership role within the public school system, and although they acknowledged that they have a different viewpoint of education and schooling than their colleagues, they see those with whom they work as valuable members of the school community. Implications from the results focused on the importance of change within the learning process and the responsibility of leadership that comes with advanced knowledge and experience.

No description available.