A provocative new article in the American Journal of Education argues that many teachers in the age of rigid curricula, high-stakes testing, and reduced classroom autonomy are finding it difficult to access the “moral rewards” of their profession. This demoralization of teaching threatens to drive away even the most passionate and dedicated of teachers.
“The moral rewards of teaching are activated when educators feel that they are doing what is right in terms of one’s students, the teaching profession, and themselves,” writes Doris Santoro, a professor of education at Bowdoin College. But, she argues, current policy reforms often take away a teacher’s ability to be responsive to students’ needs, and blunt the sense that a teacher is doing what is right for students. This in turn leads to feelings of frustration and hopelessness that are too often misdiagnosed as “teacher burnout.”
“However, the burnout explanation fails to account for situations where the conditions of teaching change so dramatically that moral rewards, previously available in ever-challenging work, are now inaccessible,” Santoro writes. “In this instance, the phenomenon is better termed demoralization.”
To illustrate her point, Santoro describes the experience of Stephanie, a teacher Santoro interviewed in 2008 for a project on why once-passionate teachers decide to leave the profession.
Click on this link for the rest of this story:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-11/uocp-pr111511.php
Click on this link for the full text of the original article:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/full/10.1086/662010
