Teachers' Work in Trying Times: Policy, Practice, and Professional Identity

Abstract

This study examined organizational routines and teachers' experiences in two urban public elementary schools. The study advances the scholarship on teachers' work through a nuanced examination of instructional routines in order to illuminate teachers' experiences with accountability based-reforms. Using neoinstitutional theory, this study employed ethnographic methods to examine instructional routines in two schools of varying AYP-status: one high-performing school and one low-performing school. Observations and interviews were conducted with a total of 17 teachers over the course of two school years. Findings indicated that routines were a recoupling mechanism, used to more closely align teachers' tasks with the goals of accountability policy. The implementation and performance of routines was both similar and distinct between the two schools. There were distinct differences in the intensity and the pervasiveness of mandated instructional routines between schools. However, regardless of AYP-status, routines served to rationalize teachers' instructional tasks by reducing variation in the form and content of classroom instruction. Accordingly, the process of recoupling and the resulting rationalization of teachers' tasks resulted in teachers experiencing reduced professional discretion, depleted intrinsic rewards, and compromised relationships with students and with each other. Under these circumstances, accountability policy moved teaching away from professionalization and undermined efforts to sustain teachers over time.