Full-Time Teachers’ Learning

Abstract

Mary is an elementary school teacher with twenty years experience teaching in urban settings. She is critical of what she calls “data-driven” reform that moves the focus from supporting students’ learning in the classroom towards tasks which are more peripheral and wasteful of teachers’ time and energy. Accordingly, she reports that her work is intensifying in multiple ways because of increasing bureaucratic demands with diminishing resources available. Although a seasoned practitioner, she feels she still struggles to complete her responsibilities without working beyond a “nine hour" day. While she continues to want to take formal courses she is also more selective and quite critical of the lack of flexibility she encounters in professional development options. Mary finds that collaborations with a few close colleagues represent her main mode of learning.