Invisible Features

The reconfiguration of public education in the United States around free-market aims means each charter school must define its product, and its product features, around marketability – specifically their school’s pedagogical practices, aims, and goals. Yet how these are defined may not align with how teachers perceive the aims and goals of teaching. This in turn impacts how individual teachers make meaning of their roles within a school culture, and how they talk about what the purposes and practices of teaching are for them. Invisible Features explores how one group of teachers at an urban charter school react to phenomena (including how the various product features of their school are presented) and how they make meaning of the prominent concepts in contemporary school reform, including teacher autonomy, accountability, failure, choice, and equity.