2019 Theses Doctoral

Openings and Constraints: The Professional Learning Experiences of Four Beginning Teachers

Semaya, Beth Allison

This qualitative dissertation explored the professional learning experiences and perceived needs of four beginning high school English teachers in two NYC schools and the ways and means those needs were being addressed or not addressed. Through in-depth interviews with the teachers, my renderings from the interviews focused on how discourse shapes an understanding of the professional learning opportunities that operate as openings and constraints for teachers’ professional growth. I drew on the work of historian Michel Foucault as a theoretical framework to examine the production of a teacher’s sense of “self” as an effect of power/knowledge relations circulating within the dominant school discourses in which they are situated and the larger educational context at this historic moment.