This mixed methods study uncovered experiences teachers described as burnout or stress during the pandemic were not simply what these two terms described. During, and shortly after, the pandemic, teachers' descriptions of their circumstances fall more in line with the definition and experiences of moral injury. This study utilized the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (OBI) to assess teachers' levels of burnout, coupled with a grounded theory analysis of written experiences, focus groups, and individual interviews. Four analytical themes were identified during analysis: (1) Teachers who were already feeling burnout and stress from legislators' expectations for accountability prior to the pandemic increased as teachers' jobs became more political during the pandemic.; (2) Teachers did not feel they had much autonomy in their classrooms prior to and during the pandemic because of others' expectations of teachers' work.; (3) Teachers' workloads increased prior to and during the pandemic.; and (4) Teachers lacked supportive administrators prior to the pandemic, and these administrators centered blame on teachers during the pandemic. The central hypothesis was teachers could not change the things they described as central to their stress and burnout because they were truly experiencing moral injury.
Within hours of the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, teachers were "floundering," trying to figure out if and how they would discuss what happened with their students the next day. Through the lenses of Days After Pedagogy and white supremacy culture, we examine the following research questions: (1) How, if at all, did teachers pedagogically address January 6, 2021 in their classrooms? (2) What language did they use to describe their choices? We utilized an open-ended online questionnaire to learn about teachers' experiences around the U.S. and analyzed their responses through Critical Discourse Analysis. Findings illustrate that educators' beliefs about the purposes of schooling, teachers' roles and responsibilities, and students' abilities and skills manifest in teachers' discourse about their pedagogical choices in critical moments on days after, as they did after the Capitol Insurrection. These beliefs are often rooted in the characteristics of white supremacy culture and represent a critical facet of teachers' work in contentious times.
The article centers on an interview with Lupe, an undocumented teacher who also identifies as queer and Latinx. Through Lupe's story, we come to see how undocumented teachers experience a form of hyper-precarity shaped by the interlocking forces of racist, neoliberal immigration and education systems. Selected excerpts from my conversation with Lupe illustrate how hyper-precarity due to changing political climates, curricular backlash, and immigration policy can all lead to unstable employment and concerns over mental health and wellbeing. In spite of these considerable challenges, Lupe's story also reflects the critical contributions undocumented teachers are making in their classrooms and communities.
As primarily conservative politicians aim to discredit and outlaw curricula centered on discussions of systemic racism, complex historical topics, gender equality, and other related issues, it is especially significant in today's contemporary context for educators to engage in pedagogical practices that center marginalized students for improved learning and flourishing in pursuit of a multiracial democracy. In this conceptual article, we suggest a set of recommendations to help educators conceptualize and execute their work under censorship laws in what we refer to as politically tense spaces. We recommend unlocking principled resistance, adapting curriculum for critical consciousness, sustaining Black fugitive pedagogical practices, engaging in union and community involvement, and preparing teacher learners for navigating such environments. We argue that educators' central responsibility to students remains unchanged by educational gag orders. We center the Black teaching model, anchored by Jarvis Givens' (2021) notion of fugitive pedagogy, highlighting how Black educators and communities sustained teaching practices under slavery, often covertly and at great personal risk. Following emancipation, Black teachers formalized and extended this tradition through the Jim Crow era, continuing to educate despite ongoing threats to their safety and autonomy. We contend that educators can draw from the Black teaching tradition to design lessons within democratic classrooms. This approach helps students understand the past while equipping them to navigate the broader realities that also shape teachers' work in politically tense spaces.
In the United States, policies are being enacted to ban critical pedagogies in the classroom at alarming rates, creating multiple challenges to teach social justice concepts effectively. Opponents of these concepts seek to punish those who teach them by law, attempting to silence those who would speak about marginalization and thus allow oppression to continue unrestrained. However, social workers must be able to address and challenge structural racism as a foundation of ethical practice and it is our duty to combat these dangerous restrictions. One way to disrupt this cycle is through the intentional use of anti-oppressive pedagogies, which often emphasize the concept of reflexivity and the repositioning of marginalized voices to a more centralized viewpoint. These perspectives are moving to the forefront of social work education as the profession increasingly recognizes and grapples with issues of power and oppression internally. In this article, two U.S.-based social work professors address the challenges of working in a hostile sociopolitical climate and share effective strategies for resistance. The authors present specific recommendations for increasing anti-oppressive commitment in social work education while attempting to help the reader gain a deeper understanding of the complex interaction between social work and racial disparities in the U.S., discuss why this matters on a global scale, and improve reader ability to recognize common academic practices which marginalize non-dominant voices and perpetuate inequity.
Politicized discourse around what is appropriate in schools informs norms for professional behavior for preservice teachers, and professionalism expectations in teacher preparation have been proven to be exclusionary for preservice teachers from systemically marginalized groups. Therefore, it is important we understand how professionalism expectations inform how diverse preservice teachers see themselves as political actors in the field. As part of a larger critical comparative case study, this study explores how preservice elementary teachers describe their understandings and connections between professionalism and the political nature of the teaching field. Humanizing pedagogy in teacher education served as the theoretical framework, and the data included focus group interviews, participantgenerated artwork, teacher preparation program policy documents, and open-ended surveys with participants. Data were analyzed Mullets' (2018) approach to critical discourse analysis in education research. Three findings were identified: 1) professionalism is respectful and politics are not; 2) teachers do not decide what is political; and 3) diverse preservice elementary teachers believe they must be apolitical. The study is significant because it reveals how the divisive political climate is informing diverse preservice elementary teachers' development, which has implications for the fields of teacher preparation and teacher education policy.
This intersectional qualitative study seeks to unpack how public school teachers of color in South Florida make sense of efforts to silence Florida educators and prohibit teaching "that individuals share responsibility for others' past actions by virtue of their race, sex or national origin." Drawing on Black feminist theories, (also identified as problematic by Florida policy makers), this study examines not just diverse identities, but also how public schooling is implicated in perpetuating multiple and interconnected systems of oppression (e.g., racism, classism, ableism, patriarchy). Unlike the remainder of the country where the teaching profession is overwhelmingly white, teachers in South Florida are predominantly culturally and ethnically diverse (e.g., 56.7 self-identify as Hispanic (56.7%), and 24.9% as Black non-Hispanic, 24.9%). In this study, education researchers collaborated with the union president of the fourth largest school district in the United States to ask teachers about their interpretations of "anti-Woke" legislations. Moreover, the teachers were asked to explain how they and other educators are enacting, resisting, and/or subverting the intentions of these legislations.
The Canadian economy has been suffering from the damaging impact of COVID-19. The adverse impact of COVID-19 on employment and income has been unevenly affecting different socio-economic and demographic groups in Canada. Labour market impact of COVID-19 disproportionately affected immigrants, particularly women as they are overrepresented in low paid and precarious work in Canada. Although federal emergency benefits were provided such as Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), marginalized workers were excludedfrom these benefits as they were not able to meet the eligibility criteria. Based on the interviews of 20 women from the Bangladeshi community in the Greater Toronto Area my research finds that neoliberalism contributes to the rise of precarious employment and labour market insecurity and the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the stark contrast in divisions in the labour market between workers with relatively secure jobs and the ability to work from home, those without the ability to work from home (especially in precarious jobs) and those who lost their jobs due to the pandemic. My findings show that a majority of immigrant Bangladeshi women in the Greater Toronto Area who were employed were working in precarious jobs that were low-paying, temporary or contractual in nature. I find a high level of job loss due to the COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately experienced by immigrant Bangladeshi women as they are more vulnerable and marginalized in Canada.
This article examines labour agency among food delivery couriers in Croatia and Serbia, two Central and Eastern European markets where public protest and legal actions against platforms remain scarce. Drawing on 53 interviews with food delivery couriers in Croatia and Serbia, the paper identifies a triple constraint in the form of algorithmic control, subcontracting model of work organization, and structurally weak institutions that divert the agency away from collective channels and into two individualized repertoires: strategic non-compliance and strategic misappropriation. Strategic non-compliance refers to individual actions such as task selection, rejections, and timed logoffs that deliberately bend or break platform rules with the aim of maximizing profit. Strategic misappropriations involve couriers' use of subcontracting and institutional weaknesses to externalize costs, thereby increasing their take-home earnings. These individual actions are not just responses to production regimes but constitutive elements of platform capitalism as it materializes in hybrid institutional regimes.
This research examines the highly influential national organization known as the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a corporate bill mill. This inquiry aims to provide more information about the state organization's influence and activity in shaping Oklahoma's education system, raise public awareness about its practices, and advocate for more transparency regarding ALEC's meetings and the legislators who have benefitted from being ALEC members. This research consists of a review of ALEC's website, relevant documents, and two interviews including one Oklahoma Education Association (OEA) representative and one elected official who is an ALEC member. Key findings include revealing ALEC's history, operation, corporate ties, financial record, and its influence on the privatization of education, specifically in Oklahoma.
In this interview Abby C. Emerson talks with Lois Weiner about her views on today's politically dangerous teaching climate. Their conversation spans unions, teacher education, teachers' work, Project 2025, privatization in education, COVID, and technology. Weiner is uniquely qualified to comment on these topics. She is a Professor Emerita of Education at New Jersey City University and currently works as an independent researcher and author. Her scholarship focuses on social justice in urban education, teacher preparation, and the democratization of teachers' unions to strengthen public education. Recently, her research has examined the growing influence of educational technology in schools and its ties to broader economic and political power structures. Grounded in a lifelong commitment to activism, her work is shaped by her experiences as a teacher and professor. She regularly contributes to publications such as Truthout, New Politics, and Jacobin. Here, she compellingly threads together seemingly separate issues, noting how they are interrelated and essential to the current issues of public education. Weiner offers important implications for teachers and researchers looking to disrupt the status quo. This interview was a longer conversation that was edited for readability. It occurred in August 2024 before the political landscape changed so rapidly after Trump's election. A few edits have been added below to reflect that.
British Columbia has experienced a continuing shortage of skilled construction workers. Over half its apprentices fail to complete their vocational education and training (VOC) programs and an alarming number of workers leave the industry due to the precarious nature of the work and a toxic worksite culture, a problem ofparticular significance for Indigenous workers, women and racialized minorities. This article examines a unique experiment in reorganizing construction training and employment initiated in 2018 under a newly elected government. Its purpose was to address key factors that impeded the industry's ability to achieve the government's ambitious construction agenda by providing more extensive employer support for training and apprenticeship, recruiting a more diversified workforce and improving the workplace culture on construction sites. To advance this agenda, the government created a public corporation, British Columbia Infrastructure Benefits (BCIB), to train and employ the trades' workforce on selected major infrastructure projects. To achieve the support of labour, it negotiated a community benefits agreement (CBA) with a council of19 building trades unions covering its entire workforce. To enable BCIB to function as the employer on all its projects, the government made it a condition of its procurement contracts that successful bidders use BCIB's employees and comply with the CBA's terms, which prioritized local hire, apprenticeships and equity employment. To track its training and employment performance, BCIB established a comprehensive payroll-based database unique in the industry. This has enabled it to identify- and address- impediments to workforce renewal. To improve the worksite culture and deal with racism, sexism and homophobia, it created a mandatory two-day Respectful Onsite Initiative (ROI) orientation program which all its workers must take before starting their jobs. While the creation ofa public employer has been controversial, BCIB's workers have now logged over 500,000 hours, making it the second largest provincial construction employer. It has also documented significant progress in implementing its training and apprenticeship programs, achieving outcomes considerably better than the rest of the industry.
