Date of Award
1-20-2025
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Education
First Advisor
Katherine Phillippo
Abstract
This study explores teacher professionalization Since 2020 by examining control over teachers’ work as constructed by classroom teachers. Using a conceptual framework combining the teacher disempowerment perspective, inhabited institutionalism, and professionalization, I focus on the question: Given the recent years of upheaval the profession of education has sustained, how are teachers inhabiting the role of "professional teacher," particularly regarding control over their own work? This qualitative study utilizes semi-structured interviews with fourteen teacher participants in an Indiana public school district. This study finds that participants are constructing a new Since 2020 teaching reality. Participants converged on professional challenges including disruptive technology, consumerist mindsets, and increased parental/public involvement in an image-conscious, referendum-driven context. Participants experienced growing disempowerment in their teaching, often due to invisible structures of control and jurisdictional creep. Participants valued a balance of autonomy and authority but overall found teachers’ level of autonomy to be below what professionals should experience in society at large. These findings have implications including re-empowering teachers through inhabited institutionalist concepts, recharging collective action to better meet the challenges of Teaching Since 2020, and rethinking the definition of professionalization in the situationally constrained context of the Since 2020 environment.
Recommended Citation
Fisher, Melissa, "Teaching Since 2020: Inhabiting Professionalization, Autonomy, and Classroom Teaching" (2025). Dissertations. 4158.
https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/4158
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
