Notes from the blogging field: Teacher voice and the policy-practice gap in education

Item

Title
Notes from the blogging field: Teacher voice and the policy-practice gap in education
Identifier
d_2009_2013:741c98883627:11781
identifier
12440
Creator
Greene, Kiersten,
Contributor
Jean Anyon
Date
2013
Language
English
Publisher
City University of New York.
Subject
Education policy | Communication | blog | education | policy | practice | teacher | voice
Abstract
Public education is in crisis. From the proliferation of reforms that support high-stakes testing and one-size-fits-all curricula to the overt privatization of schooling via the charter school movement, the system of public education in the United States is in dire need of repair. However, as many scholars, educators, and students have noted over the last century, public education has often---if not always---been in a state of constant crisis, reform, and hopeful repair. Parents, students, policymakers, and most recently the teachers, have been blamed for the failure of public education, though no viable, long-term solution has been successfully conceived and put into practice as long as there has been public schooling. This dissertation investigates teachers' daily work inside classrooms via blogs written by New York City public school teachers, and posits that 1) teachers, whose work provides the fulcrum around which all activity in a school revolves, have an important critique of policy to offer from the view of the classroom, and should be heard by policymakers; and 2) online spaces, and blogs in particular, provide a new venue by which to hear teachers' voices, which have long been both largely inaccessible due to the isolation inherent in teaching, and silenced by the policymaking process. This project is built on the acknowledgment that policymakers do not often consider teachers' voices in the policymaking process, but also on the hope that if enough voices are heard, they will have no choice but to listen.
Type
dissertation
Source
2009_2013.csv
degree
Ph.D.
Program
Urban Education