“They’ll Be Needing Us”: A Mixed Methods Study of the Lived Experience of Secondary English Teachers

The purpose of this explanatory sequential mixed methods study was to explore the lived experience of secondary English teachers and the complex interactions between those teachers’ working conditions and the other dimensions of the school ecology. In particular, the researcher was interested to discover how the consideration of teacher working conditions as part of the school ecology can help education leaders reform schools. The teachers in this study worked in a large urban school district in the Rocky Mountain West of the United States. The study was iterative, which ensured credibility and validity in the results. From a quantitative survey of 58 secondary English teachers, qualitative interviews of ten of those teachers, observations of three of those teachers, and a third-person self-portrait, the researcher distilled these three primary findings: 1) secondary English teachers value human connection, which makes the working conditions of workload, lack of time, and lack of autonomy primary obstacles to their work; 2) in order to protect that value of human connection and to persist in the profession, secondary English teachers engage in principled resistance; 3) in spite of the challenges, these English teachers feel the work is worth it. These findings should compel education leaders to focus on improving the crucial aspects of workload, time, and autonomy for English teachers in order to better support teaching and learning in secondary English.