Doris A. Santoro

Good Teaching in Difficult Times: Demoralization in the Pursuit of Good Work

What happens when experienced teachers who are fueled by the moral dimension of teaching find that they can no longer access the moral rewards of the work? Consistent and persistent frustrations in accessing the moral rewards of teaching requires a new concept to describe teachers who feel they no longer can do good work or teach “right.” Too often, this phenomenon of frustration in the pursuit of good teaching is described as burnout. Although the terms “burnout” and “demoralization” have been used synonymously, it is better to consider the two phenomena as related but conceptually distinct. Burnout may be an appropriate diagnosis in some cases where individual teachers’ personal resources cannot meet the challenge of the difficulties presented by the work. However, the burnout explanation fails to account for situations where the conditions of teaching change so dramatically that moral rewards, previously available in ever-challenging work, are now inaccessible. In this instance, the phenomenon is better termed demoralization. Through an empirical case study and philosophical analysis, this article shows that accessing the moral dimension of teaching is not only about cultivating individual teachers’ dispositions toward good work but structuring the work to enable practitioners to do good within its domain. In this model, teacher attrition does not necessarily reflect a lack of commitment, preparedness, competence, or hardiness on the part of the practitioner. Rather, teacher attrition is analyzed from the perspective of whether teachers find moral value in the kind of work they are asked to perform.

Teachers’ expressions of craft conscience: upholding the integrity of a profession

Abstract How can teachers who quit claim to be dedicated to upholding the integrity of the profession? Paradoxically, and not without costs, leaving teaching may be an expression of an educator’s professional ethics. This investigation applies insights from A.O. Hirschman’s Exit, Voice and Loyalty to the context of teaching in order to reveal the expressions of professional ethics in teachers’ resignation letters. These concerns constitute what Thomas Green calls ‘craft conscience.’ Using philosophical inquiry and document analysis, I examine 15 publicly available teacher resignation letters from the United States that were published on the internet between 2012 and 2014 to examine the pedagogical, professional, and democratic components of craft conscience.

Political Goals and Social Ideals: Dewey, Democracy, and the Emergence of the Turkish Republic

Most historical scholarship on John Dewey’s 1924 educational mission to Turkey has focused on the degree to which the educator and philosopher’s recommendations were actually implemented. By bringing the disciplinary lenses of history and philosophy to bear on Dewey’s mission, this collaborative study differs from previous work by illuminating the disjuncture between Dewey’s conception of democratic localism as essential to an educational system in a vibrant democracy (a social ideal) and Turkish officials’ view of centralized, formal education as a means to promulgate a homogeneous, modern, secular and democratic identity for their new nation-state (a political goal).

Visualizing teacher tweets: finding professional learning networks in topical networks

The data for this study is part of #teachertweets, an interdisciplinary quantitative and qualitative study that examines the networks that US‐based teachers form on Twitter, the conversations they are having there, and the content of individual tweets. This poster uses data visualization to explore teachers tweeting about teaching as a topical network toward more understanding of the ways that teachers engage in professional learning on Twitter.

A Vital, Free, Independent, and Lay Republic

Only months following the 29 October 1923 declaration that established the Republic of Turkey, the country’s newly appointed minister of public instruction, Sefa Bey, invited U.S. philosopher and educator John Dewey to survey his fledgling country’s educational system. Having just emerged from a brutal war for independence, Turkey was beginning a process of rapid modernization under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatiirk, and government officials looked to Dewey for recommendations on how to make Turkish schools agencies of social reform that would advance their state’s identity as a democratic republic.