“Sometimes giving up is the strong thing:” How women charter school teachers remain resilient in an educational marketplace

The purpose of this three manuscript dissertation is to explore the habits and enduring patterns created by neoliberal structures that dictate how women teachers should behave within the culture of a charter school and uncover how participants resist and describe their own resiliency within the charter school institution. Specifically, this work is grounded in the assumption that teacher success in the labor force is inhibited by institutional rules that are ultimately harmful, and cause teachers to leave the field of teaching (Boe et al., 1997; Olsen & Anderson, 2007; Peske et al., 2001; Standeven, 2022; Wenk & Rosenfled, 1992). To critique the culture of charter schools, and to interrogate systemic inequities I will explain how Practice Theory can add insight to the education process, and how agents have the possibility to change their habitus and resist (Bourdieu, 1977). The research questions that will guide this dissertation include the following: How can documentary narrative analysis be used to allow a researcher, with insider knowledge, to give voice to the stories of participants, in order to examine the neoliberal structures, inherent in charter schools, that create a habitus?; How did I use agentive action, as a woman teacher, to remake the social structure of the charter school institution?; Do women teachers resist the hidden rules of the charter school institution? If so, how?; and How do women who work as charter school teachers describe the techniques they have developed to in order to remain working as teachers?

This application will add nuance to the current research landscape, but on a broader level it introduces a new approach to considering educational policies through the bodies and fields of women teachers. This approach has the potential to provide insights into how women charter school teachers might maintain resilience in the field, and highlight the ways in which teachers who have become disillusioned with the field can make sense of their role within the charter school field which could lead to retention in the field, and recreation and disruption of ways of policy embodiment.