UCLA

This dissertation features the three-manuscript format, and each inquiry was designed with different research aims, theoretical frameworks, and analytical methods. Their abstracts are presented below.

Paper 1. Although teachers of color (TOC) are often assumed to be better suited to serve students of color, little is known about how TOC navigate to such settings and what motivates them to stay. In this exploratory study, TOC in Los Angeles County high schools were interviewed about their career pathways, identities, and sense of fit. Participants were most driven to serve students with whom they shared compounded traits beyond race, like having the same ethnic/cultural identities and hometowns, and similar experiences with poverty. Additionally, TOC shed their own assumptions of congruence in order to grow in the profession.

Paper 2. Heavy personnel turnover persists across U.S. public schools. In this exploratory study, I examined interview data with 20 teachers employed in Title I high schools in LA County, each with 6-14 years of classroom experience, to determine why they stayed in their jobs. The most frequently-mentioned source of educator satisfaction was the familial sense of love they felt for and conveyed to the students, that motivated teachers to improve their pedagogies, to learn about and from the youth, to better prepare relevant lessons. Teaching with love was fun for the educators and brought a cascade of other career-sustaining benefits. First, student discipline issues disappeared and learning outcomes improved, as engaged students came to class on time, behaved respectfully, and took greater learning risks for teachers who loved and supported them. Teachers who were respected by students also earned the admiration and trust of colleagues and supervising administrators, as well as greater classroom autonomy. Thus, educators who held this radical, liberatory, and engaged pedagogical worldview (hooks, 1994) redoubled their commitments to remain in the service of their students.

Paper 3. Research of teacher dissatisfaction often focus on the perspectives of educators new to the profession or former educators. This study examined the expressions of workplace dissatisfaction of high school teachers, to reveal key motivators and moderators of their turnover intentions. Through affective coding, expressions of workplace dissatisfaction and turnover intentions were excerpted then categorized, using Johnson’s schools as workplaces framework (1990). Teachers’ job persistence was most challenged when authority figures intruded on instructional features (e.g., classroom teaching approaches, workload) or disrupted the structures that reified teacher specialization and classroom autonomy. Their dissatisfaction was allayed through acts of defiance, individually (e.g., transferring schools) and collectively (e.g., designing new schools with a value-driven community of peers, joining the teachers union). My new urban schools as workplaces model illuminates what teachers most value about their work. Applying the framework will help educational administrators improve relationships with educators in their employ, resolve sticky staffing issues, and strengthen collegial culture at their schools.