Teach for America and Sister Program, Ensina!: How Recruit Thinking Changes from Before to After
Rolf Straubhaar is an assistant professor of ed leadership and school improvement at Texas State University. He is also a Teach for America (TFA) alum.
Rolf Straubhaar
Straubhaar’s research agenda includes alternative certification initiatives, like TFA and its global version, Teach for All.
On April 29, 2019, Straubhaar published a research article entitled, “Teaching for America Across Two Hemispheres: Comparing the Ideological Appeal of the Teach for All Teacher Education Model in the United States and Brazil,” in the peer-reviewed Journal of Teacher Education. He was kind enough to send me a copy of the full article for personal review and to allow me to generously quote from his work in this post.
In sum, Straubhaar examined perceptions of TFAers and their Brazilian counterparts in Ensina! both before and after the actual TFA/Ensina! experience. As he notes in his abstract, “many left their 2-year commitment questioning the underlying theories of change driving it.”
Below is the abstract, in full:
The last several decades have seen significant growth among private options in alternative teacher education and certification. In this article, I draw on two parallel ethnographic studies of the experiences of participants in variants of one particular alternative teacher education model, developed by Teach For America in the United States and spread internationally by Teach For All. Through analysis of interviews with recruits from Teach For America and its Brazilian sister organization Ensina!, I explore the thinking processes that leads young people to join CONTINUE READING: Teach for America and Sister Program, Ensina!: How Recruit Thinking Changes from Before to After | deutsch29