Rethinking the educational ecology in the wake of COVID: Intellectual solidarity,teacher prestige,and educational humanization

Abstract

In this conceptual article, the authors examine changes to the United States educational ecology during the COVID-19 pandemic. This article draws on contemporary and historical research to critique how K–12 school policies and educational leadership decisions are made amidst a crisis. As schools and districts continue to navigate a shifting educational context, teachers are often left out of the discussion. The authors set out to argue that teachers should be at the center of any plan to move forward and that support for teachers and humanizing approaches to teaching and learning should be at the forefront of any change. Drawing on theories of an educational ecology, the authors investigate how this moment of rapid change might be leveraged, through their exploration of future-oriented educational policies. In doing so, they highlight key areas of the educational ecology with the most potential to (re)humanize teachers' work and support the well-being of students. These include creating policies and systems of preparation and support for historically marginalized groups of teachers, advocating for a more human-centered curriculum, and taking a cautious approach to the presence of technology for instructional and pedagogical purposes. The authors conclude with a call for intellectual solidarity, increases in teacher prestige, and new visions of accountability, ideology, curriculum, and human exchange.

Keywords

COVID-19 teachers educational ecology educational policy leadership

Among educational leaders and policymakers, discussion of the K–12 schooling system and related policies in the United States during COVID-19 has been largely driven by questions of how to return students to school safely, the costs of delaying an in-person return to school for students, and the economic costs associated with parents adjusting to their children learning from home. As states and districts transition from crisis mode to a new normal, this moment becomes pivotal to long-term changes in the way we think about schooling and education. Racial injustice and unrest amidst a recent wave of white nationalism place a heavy burden on schools to create safe and welcoming spaces where students’ social-emotional needs are adequately met. Thus, as we begin to emerge from this historically disruptive public health and economic crisis, it is imperative to begin considering larger conceptual shifts in the ways that education systems are organized to serve students.

Recent research responding to the disruption of COVID-19 calls on a variety of stakeholders to reconsider future educational policies and methodologies through which educational systems are evaluated (Tesar, 2021). At the organizational and institutional level, researchers have described the disruptive shift caused by COVID-19, especially in the mass migration of learning to an online format (Babbar and Gupta, 2021; Malet Calvo et al., 2021). Yet, while consideration has been given to shifts in educational leadership through this crisis (McLeod and Dulsky, 2021), and the experiences of teachers during the initial months of the pandemic (Kraft et al., 2021), there is a need for a complete reconceptualization of teachers' jobs at this pivotal moment in educational history.

In this paper, we argue that future policies should, first, carefully consider the current educational ecology and, second, place support for teachers and humanizing approaches to teaching and learning at the forefront of any change. As key drivers of student success and the health of our society, we argue that strategic resources to teachers and a commitment to re-humanizing the educational experience at this moment would offer the most holistic, efficient, and equity-minded approach to recovery. To circumvent supporting teachers within the effort to build back would be to miss the forest for the trees.

Thus, our goal is to present a framework—a conceptualization of the educational ecology as it pertains to support for teachers and (re)humanization of their work as districts and schools continue to navigate the COVID-19 public health crisis. To this end, we examine and explore the following two areas of an educational ecology that we envision will influence teachers’ experiences the most due to the collective effects of COVID-19: 1) teacher support and teacher preparation and 2) curriculum and the presence of technology for instructional and pedagogical purposes. We will investigate each of these areas of the K–12 ecological framework and provide key implications for educational leaders and policymakers supporting teachers going forward to highlight teacher and human-centered components of a new ecological framework in education post–COVID-19.

Theoretical framework

The educational ecology metaphor has been used in prior empirical and theoretical literature to represent the constellation of contexts, organizations, and systems that students encounter (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Louw et al., 2017; Russell et al., 2013). For example, Russell and her colleagues utilized an educational ecology frame to better understand how schools collaborate with informal organizations such as museums to broaden student access to resources and non-traditional curricula. Louw et al. (2017) moved beyond applying a framework to understand collaboration, and instead focused on how specific features of an educational ecology supported or hindered students' learning pathways and educational outcomes. In this paper we extend these ecological framings by considering the educational ecology as it pertains to teachers and their experiences in the wake of COVID-19, whereas most prior research in this area focuses on students and their educational outcomes. This application allows us to conceptualize the dynamic shift to teachers' work and practice due to changes driven by policy during this extraordinary historical instance.

Teachers’ jobs are becoming increasingly technological, and an increase in teacher retirements is likely to cause substantial changes to the demographics of the workforce, collective institutional knowledge, and workplace relationships for teachers who are returning to the classroom. Meanwhile, teachers are being asked to do more, and as the cost of living increases, there remains a national and systematic stagnation in teacher pay. This trend influences the choice behavior of recent high school and college graduates who might otherwise consider teaching, to opt for more supporting and higher-paying career pathways—thus shrinking rather than expanding the pool of prospective teachers in the U.S. (Baker et al., 2019). The educational ecology allows us to view these issues through a wide-angle lens—and thus can strengthen our understanding of how current shifts could have longer-term impacts on teacher-related policy and leadership, and therefore student success.

“In-process lens” and the “dehumanization of education”

The educational transformation taking place at this in-between, and in-process moment, represents a unique time in our educational ecology, where new meets old, questions of values and resources are being reconsidered, and stakeholders are not yet fully adapted to what the future will bring. A critical investigation of educational realities and responses to COVID-19 in this in-process moment represents a potential transformational time for K–12 education leaders and policymakers. Deeply understanding the educational ecology as a collective might lead to the type of intellectual solidarity needed to transform the social relations of teaching and learning (Magill, 2021; Magill and Rodriguez, 2021). The grand sum of the educational ecology is the return that students gain from participating in our educational system. This return can be measured in many ways (e.g., credentials, wages, professional network, etc.), but also through relative levels of civic virtue—an individual’s willingness to “subordinate private interests to the public interest,” (Labaree, 1997: 66).

In this moment of change where students have been forced into a more technologically individualized approach to learning, the collective public benefit of education is threatened. And as market pressures influence educational leaders and policymakers to quickly adopt interventions meant to abate learning loss, there is the danger that responses to the pandemic will only amplify poorly conceived educational approaches and continue to serve neoliberal interests to the detriment of teachers (Skerritt, 2019). Therefore, in this paper, we delve into the in-process moment of change and consider the longer-term implications of crises-mode decision-making to explore how a rapid shift to more isolated and individualized learning might impact teachers’ work and student well-being. Our pause to reconsider educational futures—especially for teachers—allows us to consider how small educational policy changes, in the aggregate, can have a powerful detrimental impact on whole educational systems. A movement of the educational ecology toward a more individualistic structure will likely increase ideological polarization and social disharmony.

Schools are a basic meeting ground of democratic citizenry, and they provide a context for social harmony through face-to-face interaction and collective action. Yet, even current classroom practices are often not humanizing and do not generally reflect efforts to attend to social antagonisms. Instead, we see this moment as a potentially revolutionary opportunity to help educational stakeholders rethink some of the more dehumanizing educational experiences students and teachers face, helping them clarify some of the educational trends currently shaping the post-pandemic world.

An important body of research demonstrates the ways that crisis and turmoil affect thinking about social life and policymaking. Scholars reveal how many policies are designed to consolidate power, further austerity, and strengthen the interests of the political and economic elite under the guise of combating the crisis (Klein, 2007). A national example of these policies includes the Patriot Act following 9/11 and the Charter School takeover of New Orleans schools following Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans (Buras, 2011). Both instances resulted in decreased democratic control and increased private tyranny over public space. The surveillance state, corporate control, and neoliberal agenda are accepted as inevitable and become embedded in the policies that buttress social structures (Harvey, 2007; Kotsko, 2020). Ultimately, these realities of hegemonic power receive little consideration from a critical public resulting in the establishment of what is acceptable social thought (Fisher, 2009). These and other policy-informed conspiracies are not hidden but rather framed to communicate to the public that combating crisis by promoting policy and practices that future ideological control (Apple, 2017; Lukes, 2004) take primacy over planning experiences that are in the best interests of intellectual freedom and creativity for students, teachers, and communities.

However, understanding these realities might allow educational leaders to leverage this temporal, in-process vantage point toward the social good. We assert that there currently exists a lack of human support for teachers and students, their intellectualism, and professionalism, which is a condition that will potentially be furthered following the pandemic if not considered by the community and greater public. Secondly, we suggest that there were and will continue to be further moves to further de-professionalize teachers in efforts to make them perfunctory purveyors of state knowledge or ineffectively deal with issues related to democracy, experience, and rhetoric in the era of Post-Truth (Magill and Rodriguez, 2022; McGrew, 2021; Milner, 2013; Magill and Rodriguez, forthcoming). Teachers’ unions have played an important role in resisting de-professionalization throughout the pandemic, collectively advocating for the health and well-being of teachers. Yet, they have also been the scapegoat for angry political leaders who were quick to “pass the buck” when it came time to plan for the next surge in cases (Grossmann et al., 2021: 645). As such, the role of unions and collective bargaining agreements are important features of the current and future educational ecology, offering teachers a community voice and opportunities for advocacy at a moment when the nature of their work has become more dependent on technology and isolating.

Wrapped up in each of these considerations is the overburdening of teachers. At stake is the reality of teaching and learning itself. Teachers and leaders can be bureaucrats and technocrats, or teachers can be understood as transformational intellectuals supported by leaders (Magill and Rodriguez, forthcoming), working in real and meaningful ways with their students to address real issues of social concern.

Re-humanizing our teacher workforce: Diversity and support

Support and leverage an increasingly diverse teacher workforce

In this section, we explore one key structure of the educational ecology, the rapid change in the collective demographic identity of the K–12 teacher workforce and the implications of this change toward the goal of re-humanizing teachers and the work that they do. The demographic profile of the teacher workforce, as school systems reopen and begin recovering from the effects of COVID-19, will be starkly different in terms of teachers’ racial and ethnic backgrounds. Before COVID-19, this trend was nationally emergent (Ingersoll et al., 2021), driven by the increased representation of teachers of color in states like Texas, where Black and Latinx teachers are a growing share of the workforce, in many ways reflecting changes in the demographics of the college-educated population (Edwards, 2020). Yet, COVID-19 has prompted more late-career teachers to retire early and thus has accelerated this change (Fearnow, 2020; Kurtz, 2020). Therefore, the teacher workforce is entering a new stage of development—and one upside of this change is increasing demographic parity in terms of student and teacher characteristics (e.g., race, ethnicity, language). Teachers are gradually becoming more representative of the characteristics of students in K–12 public schools. As new cohorts of teachers enter the classroom with diverse backgrounds and identities, the entirety of the teacher workforce itself—as a central component of the educational ecology—shifts and requires new ways of thinking in terms of leadership and policy.

Historically, teachers have been mostly white and female, yet this pattern in workforce demographics is the result of choices by educational leaders—leading to racist practices and policies—most notably the mass layoffs of Black teachers after the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) Supreme Court decision and the forced integration of K–12 public schools across the country (Madkins, 2011). Within present-day contexts, teachers of color are often considered de facto disciplinarians, are less likely to be included in school policy decisions, and are frowned upon for using their native language or bringing aspects of their indigenous culture into the classroom (Achinstein and Ogawa, 2011; Griffin and Tackie, 2017; Kholi and Pizzaro, 2016). As the racial/ethnic dynamics of our teacher workforces shifts, leaders and policymakers must not forget these historic and present injustices. Rather they should improve work environments for teachers of color and leverage increasing teacher diversity and intersectionality, especially within a political climate where race is used as a tool by right-leaning politicians to consolidate political power.

As districts struggle to hire teachers to fill vacancies as students have returned to in-person learning, school leaders will continue to work in crisis mode, likely relying on permanent substitute teachers or expediting their hiring processes to achieve the basic goal of staffing their schools. Yet, if they continue to just get by and make it to the next month, semester, or academic year, leaders and policymakers will miss an important opportunity to support and leverage the growing racial and ethnic diversity of the teacher workforce. We argue for harnessing this demographic shift by investing more in Grow-Your-Own teacher pipelines proven to recruit and prepare more racially/ethnically diverse teachers who are also more likely to remain in the profession (Gist et al., 2019, 2021; Valenzuela, 2017). A few examples include teacher residencies, paraprofessional to teacher pathways, and early college high school dual-credit programs which support K–12 students toward a career in education within their local communities.

Planning for a less experienced and more mobile workforce

The teacher workforce—as a central component of the educational ecology—will also be less experienced, younger, and as a result likely to turnover or exit the teaching profession at a higher rate compared to teachers within the pre-COVID workforce. This is problematic because it could be expensive for districts and schools in terms of the cost of hiring and training new teachers. More importantly, this trend could harm student success. Research indicates that at the organizational level a school is more functional when there is a higher aggregate level of teacher experience and when fewer teachers leave their positions annually (Ronfeldt et al., 2013). Thus, high mobility and low retention contexts are linked with a decay in trust and collegiality amongst teachers and staff at the school level (Johnson et al., 2012) and can also decrease teacher satisfaction and productivity levels. Considering the newness of the workforce, our systems must be designed to meet the needs of a younger workforce, and adapt to their needs in terms of curricular education, and professional development, toward meeting the needs of their students. Supporting new generations of teachers begins with investing in sustained salary and benefits increases and moving away from merit-based short-term compensation schemes. Other solutions include providing teachers with more time to collaborate and increasing the quality of pre-service and in-service support for teachers in training and those who are newly hired.

Educational leaders and policymakers should also consider that this younger generation of teachers will be working to support students living through one of the most historic crises in our national history. Caring for the social-emotional well-being of students and teachers should be a central component of the systems of support created for future generations of novice teachers. At the current moment, it is important to note how the intensity of focus on accountability and testing leading up to COVID-19 weakens social-emotional support for teachers while also distorting their incentives to work with historically underserved communities (Greenblatt, 2018). Instead, accountability could be reformulated in a way that can incorporate the support that teachers are giving to students to grow, above and beyond what can be measured using discrete academic indicators. Some of these might include how students were able to grow in terms of their connection to their community, their civic engagement and their overall knowledge of systems and society, and the way that students work to graduate and enter society as more informed learners.

Finally, as mentioned earlier, educational leaders and policymakers should meaningfully increase pay and creative forms of pecuniary/non-pecuniary compensation for teachers (e.g., housing support, training, collaboration incentives) toward supporting the early careers of less experienced teachers and increasing retention amongst this group. Immediate and sustained salary increases will be critical. New evidence suggests that the rate of teacher retirement and resignation continues to increase—and that this trend is especially acute in districts where staffing shortages existed before COVID-19 (Carver-Thomas et al., 2021). Rethinking the educational ecology to better support teachers should also include innovating above and beyond market-based compensation policies such as one-time bonuses or merit pay. We argue that pay and adequate compensation should be reconceptualized—specifically to support younger cohorts of teachers who will have more complex work environment preferences.

A reconceptualization of the educational ecology in this area would mean working with teachers in intellectual solidarity while also operationalizing their personal and collective agency. Teachers have a larger and more demanding workload compared to before the pandemic. Due to shifts in the learning context and reoccurring waves of COVID-19 case increases, teachers are required to design and implement new remote forms of instruction in isolation (Kraft et al., 2021). Thus, we argue that teacher compensation should also include opportunities for community-driven supports, where teachers as intellectual community members are able to collaborate and regain agency over their professional growth. This shift from a more individualistic form of professional growth to a community-level approach first requires educational leaders and policy makers to authentically listen to teachers’ needs.

Meaningful change to the educational ecology to better support teachers must include a re-humanization of the profession, including a recognition of the emotional and mental health toll experienced by teachers during an unprecedented global health crisis. Rather than top-down neoliberal mandates, it is important for policymakers to consider ways to support collaborative structures toward the emotional and social well-being of teachers. One example is group mindfulness training for teachers, which prior research indicates can reduce burnout and turnover, especially amongst early career teachers (Damico et al., 2018). And ultimately, change to the ecology of education must also include raising teacher pay, which research indicates is stagnating compared to other career paths (Allegretto and Mishel, 2020). Until then, prospective new teachers will choose other professions over teaching or exit the profession early, leaving leaders and policymakers scrambling to triage staffing shortages and the organizational disruption linked with chronic teacher turnover.

Stemming the tide of privatization within the teacher preparation pipeline

Planning and policy development for teacher preparation must be front and center in terms of how we think about re-humanizing our teacher workforce. In some state contexts, independent for-profit teacher preparation programs (TPPs) were enrolling the largest share of prospective teachers before COVID-19 . The companies driving the privatization of teacher training have begun to expand to more states, thus we argue control over the preparation of future teachers is being tossed out to the whims of market forces—with no concurrent reflection as to whether this shift will be beneficial to future generations of students (Yeh, 2018). The collective research evidence suggests that teachers prepared in alternative for-profit programs have much shorter tenures compared to their colleagues prepared in a traditional program with a thorough pre-service component and curriculum taught by experienced scholars and practitioners. Meanwhile, for-profit teacher preparation programs are likely to conceptualize this shift as advantageous to their bottom line. Before COVID-19, to compete and cut costs of program implementation, many for-profit TPPs already offered a program experience that could be completed fully online (Lincove et al., 2015). This program feature was marketed as more convenient and more cost-effective to the prospective teacher. Concurrent to this marketing strategy are algorithmic biases which have served as a tool—intentionally or not—baiting prospective teachers who are economically disadvantaged and/or people of color to for-profit teacher preparation programs or online programs which are less intellectually, pedagogically, and critically focused (McMillan Cottom, 2020; Williamson, 2017). Similarly, these algorithms have been used in teacher evaluation and often discount relationships with students and other unquantifiable realities of teaching.

At the same time, there is no evidence that online teacher preparation is linked with positive outcomes for teachers or the students they teach. Rather, we argue that at this moment the shifting ecology of education toward more digital and privatized teacher education where program models continue to move away from human interaction and in-person teacher training would be further detrimental to the connection teachers feel to their professional identity, their colleagues, and the communities of students they will serve. As one way to mitigate this shift, educational leaders should provide collaborative teacher-led communities of practice—a researched-based approach to professional development proven to increase professional autonomy and retention (Kemper, 2017; Stuart, 2020). Recent empirical work demonstrates that teachers—especially teachers of color—feel more supported and are more likely to remain in their current position when they have a voice and can contribute to policy decisions at the school level (Bristol and Shirrell, 2019). And as a component of the educational ecology in states that allow for collective bargaining, unions represent an important pillar of support for younger cohorts of teachers. When historically marginalized groups of teachers feel silenced and under-supported by their colleagues and educational leaders, unions and professional advocacy groups can provide voice and representation through activism for teachers who entered the profession to serve communities of color (Burant et al., 2010; Córdova, 2018).

Prior research also indicates that the effectiveness and quality of school leaders drive teachers' career decisions, thus the support for teachers must also include support for school leaders who are themselves experiencing high levels of work burnout due to the pressure of reopening schools during a pandemic (Snodgrass Rangel, 2018). One element of this support for teachers and leaders is the curriculum that they utilize. In the next section, we examine how and in what ways teachers and leaders can generate and implement an authentic curriculum in this moment of upheaval—and how this is dependent on decoupling our educational systems and policies from an overemphasis on accountability and the slow creep of technology.

Breathe life into curriculum and resist technology

Dismantle test-based accountability systems

We argue that curriculum should shift and become more responsive to the needs of students and teachers in this moment of change. Historically, educational responses to national and global crises have led to the calcification of new policies for future generations of students. Such examples demonstrate the relationships between curriculum and the state and have, in part, served as propaganda to further the goals of the state. Initiatives might include a more patriotic curriculum after 9/11 or referencing the need to increase science literacy and test scores to defeat the Soviet Union during the Cold War (e.g., A Nation at Risk) (Apple, 2002; Mehta, 2015). Therefore, above and beyond the way that we support and (re)humanize our teacher workforce, we should also consider the tools and resources that teachers have, to guide students’ learning. The most important tool that a teacher has is access to a rich and meaningful curriculum. Unfortunately, the recent history of the educational curriculum can be characterized as rigid, standards-focused, punitive, and unwelcoming to creative localized ideas about learning and student needs. Yet, we see opportunity within this moment of change—an occasion to check the way that current systems are evolving where the curriculum is so closely tied to accountability.

A focus on accountability and white ideology is a way to provide the state with additional power (De Lissovoy and Brown, 2013; Leonardo and Manning, 2017). We argue for a shift in policies that will diminish accountability-based curriculum decisions and allow teaching and learning to evolve organically rather than as top-down and prescribed. Current test-based curriculum systems have limited what teachers are allowed to teach and what students are allowed to know. Ideally, these documents are supportive, but in practice, they are stifling creative and authentic learning. To move away from such systems, future policies must first minimize the emphasis on annual testing, which in some ways has already occurred due to logistical disruptions caused by COVID-19 forcing many states and districts to waive testing requirements (Perry, 2021). Thus, in this moment of change, there is an opportunity to critique the status quo of testing, to deemphasize the importance of teaching to a test by dismantling policies that require and mandate such forms of accountability.

Shirk politicized attempts to de-historicize curriculum

Much like testing helps to frame what will be presented, limiting the history and contexts that illuminate the dialectics of the current moment cause simplistic interpretations about humanity. The current political conversation about Critical Race Theory (CRT) demonstrates the white ideology and privilege that pervades the curriculum. The inability of policymakers fighting CRT in schools to even acknowledge that race and class are social concerns and should therefore not be part of the curriculum illustrates the limitations of current systems. This problematic approach to curriculum essentially rejects parts of a student’s identity and depersonalizes education. In more progressive states like California, the teeth have been taken out of the ethnic studies curriculum serving to decomplexify the oppression found in historical examples (Conklin, 2021). In other states like Texas, Conservative backlash has been used to justify social oppression (McGee, 2022). Part of this effort has been to frame CRT as a terrorist ideology to justify clear injustice and racism. We argue that curriculum needs to be grounded in the lived experiences of teachers and students rather than cast aside. Further, teachers should be able to understand why these topics become political issues and how to navigate the realities they create. Teachers can be supported in working past right-wing identity politics to engage with students in curricular exploration that helps improve society, promote scientific exploration, and helps them read the world.

Teachers have the agency to work past the antagonisms that situate the curriculum (Magill, 2021; Magill and Rodriguez, 2015, 2022). Scholars are optimistic that teaching the skills of critical inquiry, is one avenue for helping students reveal the oppressive historical realities that underpin political conversations. For example, historical documents demonstrate how social constructions like race have been used as class constructs to further the interests of the economic and political elites. Similar inquiries in science have the potential to help students and teachers clarify the illegitimate positions taken around issues of climate change, vaccination, and other such concerns. However, these teachers require cover and support to do this work and must be supported in their efforts to develop the political and ideological clarity and pedagogical content knowledge to develop such activities. Some of this support should come from unions and collective bargaining agreements that offer teachers protection when local leaders abdicate their responsibilities due to political pressures.

Slow creep of technology

To re-humanize teaching, our policymakers and educational leaders must consider the new role that technology plays in schools and school systems. Technological change in education likely represents the most visible shift in the educational ecology of a post-COVID school context. Teachers were immediately asked to transform their daily practice in a way that made what they do impossible without the use of technology. A few examples of these technologies included video conferencing, asynchronous online learning, management systems, and smartphone integration. This shift is accelerating retirements amongst older teachers, who have decided that adapting to new technology is not worth the investment in time and frustration in the short term. For many teachers, the essence of what they do is impossible unless students are in the classroom. Furthermore, in person, humans can interact and create knowledge in a way that is more lasting and meaningful compared to what is available through online learning (Heinrich et al., 2019). Recent research demonstrates the increased level of frustration felt by teachers during the pandemic. As the pandemic caused technology to become ubiquitously linked with learning environments, teachers reported deteriorating working conditions. National survey results suggest that roughly 40 percent of teachers who now work within a mostly online and remote teaching/learning context have a negative perception of their career path and their work–life balance (Kraft et al., 2021).

Thus, as we consider the shape of this new educational ecology, it is important to waver and think about teachers’ experiences now that technology is central to their daily practice. Learning should be driven by authentic human interactions where teachers and students can use technology to enhance components of the classroom learning environment without letting it get in the way of relationship building. The alternative is a future where an increasing proportion of K–12 students prefer an isolated learning experience (Brown et al., 2021). This could lead to fewer interactions with peers and community members and a future society that is less cohesive and even more polarized. It could mean students retreat from other forms of social participation allowing policy that those in power continue to dictate to them in ways that exploit. The modern construction of schooling has done much to discourage critical social interrogation, and unfettered technology will add another layer of monolithic and limited thought. School buildings are essential democratic meeting places for communities, a physical space that is always there for students, and an environment where children and community members can reflect on what is happening in their lives, gaining new insights and new perspectives while helping each other learn. Teachers are there to facilitate this; however, learning through a screen makes it difficult to fully engage as humans, understand someone, and feel the emotions of learning.

Demands for permanent online learning

School leaders across the country have made recent technological investments go as far as they can, by creating permanent online learning contexts for students. Groups of parents want this, and there is emerging evidence that superintendents and local policymakers are working to create permanent access to online learning for students and families who opt in (Asmar, 2021). There are public health and efficiency arguments that defend such policy changes—the surge in COVID-19 cases driven by the delta and omicron variants proves that we are not at the end of this pandemic, thus the effects on the learning environment are far from over. However, we argue that as online learning becomes a permanent fixture of the educational ecology, leaders and policymakers should offset this learning environment shift with increases in authentic, in-person, social educational experiences. Within this new educational ecology, we need to think about the ways that teachers can be allowed to step back from technology at times and put more emphasis on their own lived learning experiences in person and professional collaboration.

Opportunities for teacher collaboration are linked with increases in collegiality and retention (Papay and Kraft, 2016), and American teachers are historically allowed less time to collaborate compared to teachers internationally (OECD, 2014). Darling-Hammond and Hyler (2020) also argue for a renewed focus and more time for teacher collaboration as we move through the pandemic. They note that collaboration should be innovative and non-traditional, leveraging expertise in the areas of mental health and social-emotional wellness to provide teachers with training to care for themselves and their students during this historic crisis. Ultimately, technology must be a tool rather than the centerpiece of the experience of learning. If the medium is the message (McLuhan, 2017), then we must ensure that the technology is not dehumanizing, part of the capitalist power grab, or diminishing teacher prestige.

Discussion

If we accept the educational ecology as given, then existing and future policies affecting education will cause us to lose the freedom, agency, and humanization that education is supposed to protect and further. Thus far, we have presented a conceptualization of the educational ecology as it pertains to support for teachers and (re)humanization of their work as districts and schools continue to navigate the COVID-19 public health crisis. Specifically, we underscored two critical components of our modern K–12 educational ecology that stand to change teachers’ work the most due to the collective effects of COVID-19: teacher support/preparation policies and a curriculum threatened by an increasing encroachment of technology. In the following paragraphs, we leverage an “in-process” lens—we use this moment to ponder how crisis mode changes might alter our educational systems decades from now. In doing so, we can organize such changes into themes that help to understand their potential impact. We also offer strategies and policies meant to push against and dismantle what we see as opportunistic, market-based, and purely capitalist forces that have brought detrimental changes to education amid prior national/international crises. Importantly, we discuss the implications of changes to these key components of our educational ecology for the future of teachers’ work and student learning.

Capitalist education

The social relations of production in education and educational ecology continue to be situated within a capitalist ideology that often leads to educational alienation in the promotion of accumulation (Allman, 2019; Hall, 2018; Klees, 2020; Wei and Peters, 2019; Zajda, 2018). Further complicating the educational ecology, the base and superstructure are becoming more complex. Schooling mechanisms and methods are becoming more fetishized, foregrounded, and obscuring many in society’s ability to see the complex relationships of power that constitute educational experiences, particularly in challenging times (Bartolomé, 1994; 2004). As Hudis (2005: 1) observes, “The question facing us today is not to have development but what kind of development can meet human needs without relying on the value-form of mediation.” The reality of value mediation is affecting every aspect of education from policy to pedagogy to curriculum, to human relations. It is time to rethink things like the educational labor of teachers and students to reflect the needs of humans and the ways participants exist within the social relations of production of teaching or the relationships teachers must enter and accept to be a teacher. Students are asked to produce widgets that represent mastery of a limited and narrow curriculum and teachers are asked to administer it.

Currently teachers—and students—do not control their own labor. Great teachers spend many extra hours planning lessons, attending to the material well-being of students in and beyond the classroom. Teachers are asked to give their labor for the good of the community when the community requires that they be technocrats and bureaucrats. Rethinking the ecology of the classroom must begin with supporting teacher work beyond capitalist forms of mediation. We argue for infrastructure support for teachers much like the Biden Administration passed for the greater public. This would include increasing teacher pay, providing subsidized professional developments, reducing periods, making it easier for teachers to unionize and collectively bargain, and encouraging teachers to include culture, inquiry, and dialogue within their educational experiences. It also includes investments in recruiting and supporting a more diverse teacher workforce. Neoliberal and anti-public educational policies could be reversed, and supportive policies could be clarified and provided improved accessibility. Consider the federal aid for loan relief for teachers who worked in Title 1 Schools. The policy has been slow to offer benefits since its implementation in 2007. However, recent Trump administration policy has gutted the governmental organizations used in its administration making it virtually impossible to receive. This has caused many teachers to give up on receiving their earned benefits despite the Biden administration’s plans to reinstate these policies (Allegretto and Mishel, 2020; Turner, 2021).

Capitalist education is similarly affecting schools. In the past, the type of seismic shift brought on by a national crisis has led to the continued marginalization of historically disadvantaged communities. One apt example is what happened in New Orleans, obviously a more localized context but still a moment in which an area crisis suddenly adopted a more market-based response toward solving an educational problem. We argue that this should be an immediate red flag for any type of policy and planning shifts regarding curriculum and schooling at this current moment. And in regards specifically to curriculum, we think that one way to do this would be to create space in schools where students can think more deeply about what’s unfolding in front of them. No Child Left Behind increased the power of textbook and educational materials companies and forced schools to adopt problematic curriculum and pedagogical practices when they did not meet testing standards. Capitalism is placing value on our students and teachers based on their performance within inappropriate and hegemonic standards.

Intersectional identities

As researchers, policymakers, and educational leaders we must also attend to the many intersections that exist between capitalist education, other aspects of the educational ecology, and how the many identities within the ecology come together and are situated. For example, teachers might be supported in awareness of the ways capitalist education, technology and racism can work together to dehumanize students and limit their access. Research indicates that during the pandemic, students of color as well as economically disadvantaged students were less successful and provided fewer meaningful supports compared to their white affluent peers when asked to attend school online (Bailey et al., 2021; Dorn et al., 2020). Furthermore, clear examples of teacher racism caught on tape during the pandemic highlight a need for increased teacher development and training approaches that draw from culturally relevant and culturally sustaining pedagogical frameworks (Ladson-Billings, 2009; Love, 2019). One teacher was caught on Zoom stating, “The family is a piece of s---, they are Black, they are Black” (Salcedo, 2021) which demonstrates the need to educate teachers on socio-historical relations, how they exist in schooling, how they understand students and helping them rethink how they see themselves as teachers. The objectification and alienation of students as passive recipients and regurgitative performers exists for most students, but teachers need to be supported to understand how particular intersectional elements further dehumanize historically marginalized groups of students.

Rethinking technology

The pandemic and current approaches to social life have revealed fundamental hypocrisies and flaws in social systems within the educational ecology. Things like automation and post-truths continue to be baked into the tools we use to make sense of the social world. Algorithms are now used in almost every aspect of human evaluation as big Tech and others collect all our data to sell and create predictive profiles of everyone. Biased algorithms are used by mortgage companies that determine they should offer worse rates to people of color (Lee and Floridi, 2021). Amazon used an algorithm to sort employee resumes which overwhelmingly eliminated women and to a lesser degree people of color from consideration (Kodiyan, 2019). Similarly, algorithms have been used to assess teachers. In Houston, secret algorithms were used as part of the educational Value-Added Assessment System, or EVAAS, created by the private technology firm SAS (Amrein-Beardsley and Geiger 2020). Many teachers who had previously received positive evaluations including one teacher of the year, were now fired or in danger of being fired. The continual push toward educational automation and purely online learning have dangerous implications for dehumanizing education if these issues are not considered. Calls for increased focus on digital infrastructures, for example, may be well-intentioned and could indeed support educational experiences, but we must be aware that they are very likely to become mechanisms through which corporations and other individuals extract capital from students and teachers on the ground. The tendency to fetishize educational tools and methods are likely to increase within post-pandemic lockdown contexts. Key to future visions of educational success are systems that can help reframe the idea of teaching and teacher education outside capitalist discourse and practice, to create an ecology through which students and teachers are supported to do transformational and meaningful work.

The living curriculum

Students and teachers have the potential to make and remake the curriculum. We know that teachers often reproduce the social codes they have been taught. New teachers and students from non-dominant backgrounds continue to be marginalized in classroom experiences. Further, the curriculum and pedagogy continue to train students for obedience, be the passive recipients of culture, and exist as compliant members of the workforce. Gramsci’s (1971) analysis of curriculum, its creation and practice, are that it is used to manufacture consent via shared and required understandings of history (Herman and Chomsky, 2010). We argue that a living curriculum should be implemented to offset this detrimental cycle of curricular reproduction—and instead be used to better serve student needs and center their learning around lived experiences. Waves of societal change are crashing across society—for example, the physical context of jobs and dynamics of work relationships are shifting which will as a result change how students learn and navigate technology for the rest of their lives. Students will need to develop the skills and political/ideological clarity to decipher false claims about things like environmental catastrophe and vaccine safety. One of the ways that we can do this—to breathe new life into the curriculum—is by recognizing, reflecting, and acting upon historical injustices, including the long-standing discrimination against Black and Latinx teachers and the historical realities that are foundational to the current moment. In Texas and elsewhere students should learn that Mexican American students were physically beaten when they spoke their home language in the classroom (Hurtado and Rodríguez, 1989). In teacher preparation programs, future teachers should understand how after the Brown v. Board (1954) court decision, thousands of Black teachers lost their positions because of short-sighted integration policies (Madkins, 2011). We should support helping teachers understand frameworks that help them argue for engaging with these ideas such as legal versus substantive justice (Shue, 1996), epistemic injustice (Fricker, 2007), socio-historical inquiry of social realities (Federici, 2004; Roediger, 2017), and how the social relations of production situate life (Marx, 1975).

A living curriculum can be the means of centering the lived experiences of new teachers and students toward emancipatory outcomes. Students understand a living curriculum through dialogue with their peers, they build a culture in interactions with caregivers and as they re-imagine the world with their teachers. A focus on the living curriculum can help students and teachers engage in the mutually humanizing process of laboring toward critical social agency and self-determined humanity (Magill and Rodriguez, 2015).

Teacher prestige

Research reveals the limited view the public has of teachers. This is not surprising given the de-professionalization of the field and the increase in teachers without adequate, critical, and diverse preparation. What is more, teaching can be isolating. Therefore, “educators must not simply interrogate the oppressive nature of the curriculum; they must also fight the isolation the profession often creates” (Magill and Rodriguez, 2015). School leaders are oftentimes in charge of the hiring process. School leaders are also in charge of setting the agenda for the school, the culture, the tone, the way that people are greeted when they enter the building, the way that people’s backgrounds and interests, and cultural identities are accepted within the walls of the school. Included in our reconceptualization are new types of training for school leaders, which focus on leveraging the assets that teachers bring into the school and allowing teachers to embrace an important emancipatory role once they are given more voice and autonomy (Biesta, 2017; Khalifa, 2020). But beyond training school leaders we should also look to policies that incentivize school leaders to establish practices that we know will support a more racially and ethnically diverse workforce. One example could be the way that school leaders communicate and network to share resources. It could also be the way that school leaders recruit and the partnerships that school leaders feel they have with local communities in terms of identifying potentially effective teachers. If school leaders had incentives, they might partner with university systems, as well as other organizations in improving their recruitment and adding layers of equity to their recruitment and hiring practices (D’Amico et al., 2017; Noonan and Bristol, 2020). Finally, as an important section of the educational ecology, newer generations of teachers will need increased opportunities to collectively organize, unionize, and advocate for the communities they serve. Together, these efforts have the potential to push against rapid changes brought on by COVID-19, that only serve to further dehumanize, devalue, and degrade teachers and the work they do to support student learning.

Conclusions and recommendations

The COVID-19 crisis is reshaping the systems of K–12 education at an unprecedented pace. And as schools and districts continue to navigate a shifting educational ecosystem, teachers are often left out of the discussion. In this conceptual paper, we argue that teachers should be at the center of any plan to move forward and that support for teachers and humanizing approaches to teaching and learning should be at the forefront of any change. A recent financial analysis of how 30 states plan to spend the infusion of federal dollars passed by the U.S. Congress within the American Rescue Plan suggests that educational leaders and policymakers are turning to familiar neoliberal strategies in a time of educational crisis. For example, third-party non-profit and for-profit vendors represent the most popular destination for new federal relief funds—whereas only a few states reported that they would send money directly to teachers and communities (Roza et al., 2021). At the same moment, we are asking teachers to do more for their pay which remains stagnant nationwide. We envision a reconceptualized ecology of education to adequately compensate teachers which recognizes their importance as frontline workers supporting our nation’s youth through a once-in-a-lifetime public health crisis. Therefore, instead of diverting important resources to the market, our reconceptualization calls for a reinvestment in the human, social, and cultural capital that already exists in schools, districts, and communities.

This should start with a reaffirmation that teachers are more likely than any other aspect of school to drive positive academic, social, and emotional growth for students. Yet now, support for the future of the U.S. teacher workforce is rarely discussed in times of crisis. Therefore, our conceptualization of the educational ecology as it pertains to support for teachers and (re)humanization of their work can be useful toward the formation of future educational policies and as districts and schools continue to navigate the COVID-19 public health crisis. In this moment of stark change, educational leaders and policymakers would be at a loss not to consider forward-looking systems of support for historically underrepresented groups of teachers, advocate for more a human-centered curriculum, and to take a cautious approach to the presence of technology for instructional and pedagogical purposes. The future of K–12 educational systems is being decided now. Thus, now is the time to embrace change and reinvest in the well-being of teachers—like healthcare, democracy, and basic human rights—as a sacred pillar of the public sphere. It is critical for the education community to collectively send a strong signal to future generations of prospective teachers, demonstrating that we understand their well-being, support their development as professionals, as well as their efforts toward creative inquiry.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Wesley Edwards

Kevin Russel Magill

Wesley Edwards is an assistant professor in the Department of Teacher Education and Administration at the University of North Texas. His research interests include teacher and school leader career trajectories, school organizational work environments, and the politics and policy of educational leadership.

Kevin Magill is assistant professor of secondary education at Baylor University. He is particularly interested in how teachers understand the social relations of production in teaching and how power and ontologies/ideologies unfold as pedagogical practice.

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