Invisible features: hidden aspects of teacher identities in an urban charter school

Abstract

The reconfiguration of public education around free-market aims means each charter school must define its product, and its product features, around marketability - specifically their school's pedagogical practices, aims, and goals. Yet how these are defined may not align with how teachers perceive of the aims and goals of teaching. This in turn impacts how individual teachers make meaning of their roles within a school culture, and how they talk about what the purposes and practices of teaching are for them. This descriptive phenomenological study explores how one group of teachers at an urban charter school react to phenomena (including how the various product features of their school are presented) and how they make meaning of the prominent concepts in contemporary school reform, including teacher autonomy, accountability, failure, choice, and equity. This study also examines how, and how broadly, these perceptions are shared among these teachers, and how these concepts are internalized by them. One key finding from this study was agreement among these teachers around the idea of equity, as each of the study participants defined equity in the same way. This research contributes to the literature on the evolving process of teacher professional identity development in urban charter schools, and also has implications for research on teacher retention and training.