What’s the Emergency?: From the Perspective of Those Filling Teachers’ Shoes

Abstract 

Once perceived as a reliable and stable career choice, teaching has in recent decades faded as a viable option for many individuals pursuing post-secondary education. Between added layers of accountability and oversight, additional legal responsibilities, consistently sharp criticism from multiple public sectors, flagging financial compensation, and increasingly stressful working conditions, fewer individuals are choosing to teach. Nationally this is creating a teacher shortage, an issue that seems to be felt more poignantly in specific fields, as well as in specific geographical locations where population attrition is already a problem or where the student population is perceived as particularly difficult with which to work. In response to teacher shortages, state legislatures have instituted alternate pathways to earning a teaching degree for those whose original degree is not in education, but they have also allowed the use of emergency or provisional licenses to fill classrooms that would otherwise remain without a full-time teacher. The research in existence focused on emergency-licensed teachers indicates that they benefit from formal preparation for the job and legislation surrounding provisional licensing. What has not been asked by earlier research or legislators, however, is how the needs of those individuals differ from a traditional undergraduate or post-baccalaureate student and, consequently, how those needs might be met. Dr. Buffington-Adams' research aims to begin addressing those questions by capturing the stories of those working as teachers on an emergency license.

Biographical Statement 

Dr. Jamie Buffington-Adams is the Associate Dean in the School of Education where she focuses on preparing future teachers to identify what they believe about teaching and learning and to work with those students who struggle most to find success in schools.  Dr. Buffington-Adams' teaching experience ranges from working with second-graders to high school seniors and incorporates special, remedial, and alternative education. In the School of Education, she teaches in both secondary education and special education programs, where her coursework prepares future teachers to address the multi-faceted needs of diverse learners. Her work also led to the creation of a unique program tailored specifically to the needs of emergency-licensed teachers, a topic which has also become the focus of her recent research. Dr. Buffington-Adams also currently serves on committees focused on ensuring the quality of academic offerings and addressing issues of diversity, equity, and student success across multiple facets of campus life.  She is a co-author of the book Race and Pedagogy: Creating Collaborative Spaces for Teacher Transformation. Her other publications are included in SAGE Encyclopedia of Curriculum Studies, Review of Disability Studies: An International Journal, SAGE Encyclopedia of Deaf Studies, the Journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies, the Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, and the books Interrupting, Infiltrating, Investigating: Radical Youth Pedagogy and Making Sense of Race in Education: Practices for Change in Difficult Times.