Blaming Teachers
264 pages, 6 x 9
8 b&w images, 1 table
Paperback
Release Date:14 Aug 2020
ISBN:9781978808423
Hardcover
Release Date:14 Aug 2020
ISBN:9781978808430
Blaming Teachers
Professionalization Policies and the Failure of Reform in American History
Rutgers University Press
Winner of the 2021 Society of Professors of Education Outstanding Book Award
Historically, Americans of all stripes have concurred that teachers were essential to the success of the public schools and nation. However, they have also concurred that public school teachers were to blame for the failures of the schools and identified professionalization as a panacea.
In Blaming Teachers, Diana D'Amico Pawlewicz reveals that historical professionalization reforms subverted public school teachers’ professional legitimacy. Superficially, professionalism connotes authority, expertise, and status. Professionalization for teachers never unfolded this way; rather, it was a policy process fueled by blame where others identified teachers’ shortcomings. Policymakers, school leaders, and others understood professionalization measures for teachers as efficient ways to bolster the growing bureaucratic order of the public schools through regulation and standardization. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century with the rise of municipal public school systems and reaching into the 1980s, Blaming Teachers traces the history of professionalization policies and the discourses of blame that sustained them.
Historically, Americans of all stripes have concurred that teachers were essential to the success of the public schools and nation. However, they have also concurred that public school teachers were to blame for the failures of the schools and identified professionalization as a panacea.
In Blaming Teachers, Diana D'Amico Pawlewicz reveals that historical professionalization reforms subverted public school teachers’ professional legitimacy. Superficially, professionalism connotes authority, expertise, and status. Professionalization for teachers never unfolded this way; rather, it was a policy process fueled by blame where others identified teachers’ shortcomings. Policymakers, school leaders, and others understood professionalization measures for teachers as efficient ways to bolster the growing bureaucratic order of the public schools through regulation and standardization. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century with the rise of municipal public school systems and reaching into the 1980s, Blaming Teachers traces the history of professionalization policies and the discourses of blame that sustained them.
This accessible and appealing history has an important message for various stakeholders in the professional status and image of teachers.
How teachers advocating for their students could backfire' by Diana D'Amico Pawlewicz
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/12/11/how-teachers-advocating-their-students-could-backfire/#comments-wrapper
There is a lot of life to this book, which is full of many terrific narratives that are engaging, often astounding, and some almost comical. It’s easy to 'blame teachers' and this excellently researched book offers a way to work through that problem.
Why has teaching remained such stubbornly difficult, fraught work despite a long record of policy and reform? D’Amico Pawlewicz’s brilliant new historical analysis lays bare the powerful reasons.
Episode #84 'The Blame Game: 100 Years of Teacher Bashing' Have You Heard
The school reopening debate reveals that we don’t listen to teachers about schools,' by Diana D'Amico Pawlewicz
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/07/10/school-reopening-debate-reveals-that-we-dont-listen-teachers-about-schools/
Blaming Teachers is a major contribution to the labor history of teachers as well as an important challenge to how we think about the legacy of teacher unions. It is sure to be a part of the conversation on either of these questions in the history of education. Further, since understanding the history of one’s occupation is one distinction of a 'profession,' this book should be read in any teacher-preparation pro- gram that dares to treat its students as future professionals.
DIANA D'AMICO PAWLEWICZ is a historian of education reform and social policy and an assistant professor in Educational Foundations and Research at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks supported by the Elnora Hopper Danley Professorship.
Contents
Introduction
1 “A Chaotic State”: The Rise of Municipal Public School Systems and the
Institutionalization of Teaching
2 To “Raise Teachers’ Profession to a Dignity Worthy of its Mission”: The Development
of the Modern School Bureaucracy and Tenure Policies During the Progressive Era
3 Teacher Education and the “National Welfare”: Professional Preparation, Character, and
Class During the Great DepressionContents
Introduction
1 “A Chaotic State”: The Rise of Municipal Public School Systems and the Institutionalization of Teaching
2 To “Raise Teachers’ Profession to a Dignity Worthy of its Mission”: The Development of the Modern School Bureaucracy and Tenure Policies During the Progressive Era
3 Teacher Education and the “National Welfare”: Professional Preparation, Character, and Class during the Great Depression
4 “The Enlistment of Better People”: Responses to the Teacher Shortages of the Post World War II Years
5 “A Brave New Breed”: Teacher Power and Isolation, 1960 - 1980
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Index
Introduction
1 “A Chaotic State”: The Rise of Municipal Public School Systems and the
Institutionalization of Teaching
2 To “Raise Teachers’ Profession to a Dignity Worthy of its Mission”: The Development
of the Modern School Bureaucracy and Tenure Policies During the Progressive Era
3 Teacher Education and the “National Welfare”: Professional Preparation, Character, and
Class During the Great DepressionContents
Introduction
1 “A Chaotic State”: The Rise of Municipal Public School Systems and the Institutionalization of Teaching
2 To “Raise Teachers’ Profession to a Dignity Worthy of its Mission”: The Development of the Modern School Bureaucracy and Tenure Policies During the Progressive Era
3 Teacher Education and the “National Welfare”: Professional Preparation, Character, and Class during the Great Depression
4 “The Enlistment of Better People”: Responses to the Teacher Shortages of the Post World War II Years
5 “A Brave New Breed”: Teacher Power and Isolation, 1960 - 1980
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Index
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