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.
