Learning on Other People’s Kids: Becoming a Teach for America Teacher

A review of the book Learning to Teach on Other People’s Kids: Becoming a Teach for America Teacher, by Barbara Torre Veltri (Information Age Publishing, 2010)

Teach First's Theory of Teacher Education for Social Justice: Distributive Justice and the Politics of Progressive Neoliberalism

Thesis advisor: Marilyn Cochran-SmithIn this critical ethnography I examined Teach First, the U.K. teacher education program modeled after Teach For America (TFA). Teach First described itself as "a unique business-led programme dedicated to addressing educational disadvantage by placing elite graduates in the schools that need them most" (Teach First, 2010). Teach First was thus problematically positioned at the crossroads of both neoliberal and progressive ideologies. My research addressed this problem by uncovering Teach First's theory of teacher education for social justice by applying a framework developed by Marilyn Cochran-Smith (2010) to interviews, observations, and artifacts that I collected at the 2008 Teach First Summer Institute. I then critiqued this theory using the tools of "Policy Sociology," a British research tradition that examines the political, ideological, and economic assumptions that drive education policy. My research led me to identify Teach First as a "progressive neoliberal" (Lahann and Reagan, in press) organization which is driven entirely by a theory of teacher education for social justice based on the idea of justice as distribution. This theory explains why the staff of Teach First appreciated the organization to have a mission of social justice while at the same time endorsing and promoting neoliberal policies which conflict with many theories of teacher education for social justice that draw from theories of justice as recognition.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2010.Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education.Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction