"I want to be a teacher because I love having my judgment and expertise routinely questioned,” said no teacher ever. And yet, professional development for teachers often assumes otherwise, an assumption teachers resent. Consider the following comments recently made to us by several experienced teachers after attending a summer PD session:
- “It was like they thought we were new teachers.”
- “I found it repetitive and insulting to my intelligence.”
- “We were treated like students, like ‘I told you to do this.’ ”
- “It was very painful because we had to just listen for two days.”
Sadly, sentiments like these have long been (and continue to be) commonplace in PD (Hill, 2009). Years removed from classroom teaching, we can still recall sitting among colleagues in the auditorium, our eyes glazed over, grading on our laptops or glancing down at our phones. Little has changed since then. Many teachers still experience PD as a space where their expertise and agency are disregarded and seldom cultivated.
How can we reimagine PD to be a space for teachers to (re)discover their agency and find purpose in their work? By organizing PD in accordance with the tenets of principled resistance, schools and districts can help teachers feel in charge of their own development and confident to act in service of their educational convictions.
What Is Principled Resistance?
Although the idea of teacher resistance is often framed negatively, typically referring to instances where teachers cling to practices they know to be ineffective, Santoro and Cain (2018) position it as a positive act where teachers attempt to resolve dilemmas that arise when “their beliefs about the purposes, significance, and the standards of their work are in conflict with the policies and practices they are expected to enact” (p. 2). The authors describe three overlapping categories of principles that can motivate teachers’ resistance: pedagogical, professional, and democratic.
Schools and districts can help teachers feel in charge of their own development and confident to act in service of their educational convictions.
Resistance anchored in pedagogical principles relates to teachers’ responsibilities to their students’ academic and social-emotional well-being and the norms of their respective disciplines. Guided by such principles, teachers might refuse to administer assessments they deem ineffective or amend prescribed curriculum they deem harmful to students. Professional resistance arises from concerns that teachers’ judgment, expertise, and agency have been violated—for example, from having little say in school governance or in response to mandates that seek to oversimplify their work. When teachers elevate their voices in response to such violations, such as through their union or through writing op-eds, professional principles are in play. Finally, democratic principles underlie teachers’ concerns over their school’s or district’s failure to fulfill their civic obligations. Democratic resistance may entail taking steps to change zero-tolerance disciplinary policies or refusing to comply with laws that dissuade teachers from teaching about and against systems of oppression.
Bringing Principled Resistance to PD
Teacher resistance, whether motivated by one or more of these principles, gives primacy to teachers’ agency and most cherished values, the latter of which is “the driving force behind any effective form of teacher learning” (Korthagen, 2017, p. 400). Thus, PD must not just be a space where teachers’ values are at the forefront of their learning but, given the highly politicized climate they find themselves in, a space where teachers develop the capacity to resist initiatives that deem those values irrelevant. Drawing inspiration from our experiences researching PD and examples of teacher activism, we posit three ways the substance and structure of PD can be in service of this aim.
1. Fostering pedagogical resistance: Teachers as curriculum generators
Teachers are often faced with prescriptive instructional mandates that position them as merely curriculum implementors. Our recent experiences with a group of social studies teachers who were asked to pilot a new curriculum underscore this point. After using the new curriculum for several months, many of them confided in us several concerns they had with it: Its literacy demands were unreasonable, there was a lack of student-centered tasks, and its content favored students from more affluent backgrounds. When introduced to the curriculum at a two-day summer PD session, teachers were afforded neither the time to collaborate nor the space to consider the myriad modifications it would require for use within their classroom contexts. But as the year went on, and in response to teachers’ concerns, the one-size-fits-all PD from the summer gave way to more frequent, collaborative, and teacher-led PD, where teachers could share their experiences, problem-solve issues, and hear about the diverse ways fellow teachers were modifying the curriculum.
By hearing stories of how other teachers were critically (and successfully) using the curriculum, teachers could strengthen their ability to help students grow.
This PD was meaningful not just for its practical utility, but also because it stood to foster the self-efficacy and autonomy needed for teachers to feel empowered (Short, 1994). By hearing stories of how other teachers were critically (and successfully) using the curriculum, teachers could strengthen their ability to help students grow and their power to enact the curriculum in ways they deemed best.
District leaders who encourage or oversee the adoption of a new curriculum can learn from this example. For starters, any insistence that teachers implement a curriculum without any consideration of how their own principles or values are reflected in it is likely to bear little fruit. At a minimum, at the onset of any rollout, PD leaders would be wise to provide teachers ample space to analyze and critique the curriculum. Ongoing PD should provide opportunities for teachers to lead discussions about their experiences or demo ways they have successfully adapted the curriculum. Such opportunities can give teachers the ownership they deeply crave.
2. Fostering professional resistance: Elevating teacher voice through writing
“Through professional writing, I own my voice and strength as an educator and clarify [the] beliefs I hold to be obvious about what is best for children,” writes one of the teachers who participated in the National Writing Project’s invitational year-long institute, Leadership in the Teaching of Writing (LTW) (Meyer, McCartney, & Hesse, 2018, p. 129). Through the LTW institute, teachers like this, who see their voices increasingly silenced in the age of reform and standardization, use writing as a tool to “reclaim the narrative of [their] profession” (p. 135). In writing groups, teachers privately journal (and later share with one another) their professional commitments and dilemmas of practice, all with the goal of eventually expanding their audience to the public sphere. Through participation in the institute, one of the teachers, Emma, strengthened her confidence to do just that, as she went on to direct a regional workshop for teachers. By amplifying teachers’ voices, the LTW institute positioned them as public intellectuals, worthy of respect and empowered to openly combat “over-simplified stories about themselves as educators” (p. 130).
Within schools, PD can replicate and build upon aspects of the LTW institute and help teachers take public stances on policies and trends that undermine their professionalism. During initial meetings, teachers could be given space to build self-knowledge and write about their work in ways that challenge damaging narratives about the profession, whether the media-driven narrative that teachers are “indoctrinating” students (López & Sleeter, 2023) or the oft-repeated charge of teachers being “selfish” when they advocate for better working conditions (Kahlenberg, 2012). The process can also become more communal, with teachers writing and sharing original works (such as the results of action research) that can help them name and refine their professional principles. Toward the end of the year, the PD could culminate in teachers going public with their writing by drafting op-eds, submitting work to conferences, or sharing their writing through social media. By providing teachers with a public outlet to voice their concerns, such PD can be affirming and empowering.
3. Fostering democratic resistance: Strengthening teachers’ legal literacy
Attempts to frighten and silence teachers are nothing new (Goldstein, 2014; Graves, 2009). But according to a recent study, current legislation meant to prohibit the teaching of “divisive concepts” and limit how issues of gender and race are taught in schools may be unique in its overall effectiveness (Kelly et al., 2023). In Tennessee, for example, researchers found that the vagueness of the language in the Prohibited Concepts in Instruction law, passed by the state legislature in spring 2021, had prompted many teachers to engage in self-censorship on race-related matters and, in some cases, reconsider their career choice. Other teachers, however, viewed the law’s vagueness as grounds for their resistance. According to the study, these teachers conducted a close analysis of the law in focus groups and began to see it as a red herring, not actually criminalizing their teaching but designed to induce fear. One teacher, Ivy, interpreted the wording of certain sections as “loopholes” for teaching about racism, saying, “They’ll have to write a better law for it to affect anything I do” (Kelly et al., 2023, para. 17).
The teachers’ resistance was born out of a deep commitment to democratic principles (Santoro & Cain, 2018), but it may have also been aided by the teachers acquiring (or already having) a certain amount of legal literacy (Siegel-Stechler & Callahan, 2022), meaning they understood the law itself and the protections guaranteed to teachers by the First Amendment.
The implications of the above study should not go unnoticed by those charged with leading PD in states with similar laws. As Kelly and team allude, PD can be a space where teachers’ legal literacy levels are strengthened. This could involve teachers collaboratively analyzing the fine details and language of a law and the impact it has (or does not have) on their practices or even reviewing district policies and case law pertaining to teachers’ speech rights (i.e. Pickering v. Board of Education) (Siegel-Stechler et al., 2022). From these opportunities, teachers may discover, like some in the study, that such laws are not as restrictive as they fear.
Setting the Stage
While we are confident that PD structured in the ways we describe would be meaningful and empowering for teachers, we harbor no illusion it can happen easily, let alone with regularity. For such PD to take place in schools, school leaders and administration should heed the following advice.
Take a “back seat.” Putting teachers in the “driver’s seat” of PD means school leaders need to learn to take a “back seat.” That is not to imply they have no role at all, far from it; for example, a “back seat” could entail leaders inventorying teachers’ needs, ensuring they have sustained space (and resources) to address them, and even participating as learners in sessions led by teachers (Macias, 2017). Such efforts send the message to teachers that the principles underlying the focus of their PD matter, and by extension, that teachers themselves matter. Internalizing this message from the onset of and throughout PD is paramount.
Be a “shield.” Socially or professionally, the PD we advocate for may incur risks for teachers, some more than others, depending on their location, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or other factors. Thus, school leaders must do everything in their power to mitigate or “shield” teachers from these risks and make them feel safe and secure in their convictions, especially at a time when such feelings may be in short supply (Foster, 2023). Such protection can range from small gestures—for example, supporting teachers’ deemphasis on test preparation—to larger ones, such as having zero tolerance for anyone who would threaten teachers for using a student’s preferred pronouns. In many ways, allowing space for the PD we advocate for can be an avenue for shielding teachers. Strengthening teachers’ legal literacy, for example, is essential to preserving their sense of safety and their confidence to continue taking risks.
School leaders must do everything in their power to mitigate or 'shield' teachers from these risks and make them feel safe and secure in their convictions.
Nurture solidarity. Finally, while PD grounded in principled resistance stands to strengthen solidarity among teachers, the seeds for such solidarity must be planted beforehand. Leaders cannot assume that all teachers in a school share the same concerns, and that solidarity among them is already strong, especially given the traditionally siloed nature of the profession (Johnson, 2020). However, by affording more time and space for teachers to observe and collaborate with one another, “a mutual recognition of shared values and commitments, such as meeting the needs of students,” (Santoro, 2018, p. 66) can emerge. From this recognition, teachers may be better equipped to identify how (and on what) their PD and resistance efforts should be collectively focused.
The Need for Empowering PD
Professional development cannot be considered professional so long as it remains contrived and neglects the most pressing issues facing teachers. By reimagining PD as a space of empowerment, teachers stand to (re)affirm their reasons for teaching and better act upon the beliefs they hold dear.
Reflect & Discuss
➛ How does your school encourage teachers to be activists for themselves or their students?
➛ The authors provide a few ways that leaders can set the stage for empowering PD. What is one other way you can think of that leaders can support teachers to become smart activists?
