A Teacher's Right to a Private Life

Community Control or Professional Autonomy

Todd A. DeMitchell, Richard Fossey

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2025
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350533509
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Do American professional public school teachers have the same rights to a private life as other citizens? This is an astute and incisive analysis of every teacher's dual life – as responsible exemplars to society's youth and as their own professional and private selves. Using historical and legal analysis to capture the tension between these two guises, it explores the balance between the weight of expectation from teachers' communities on one hand and the need for autonomy in professional environments on the other.
A Teacher's Private Life explores some of the core questions that surround this debate: what kind of out-of-school behaviour should constitute dismissal, and what should be protected? To what extent should teachers serve as role models adhering to the values of the community in which they work? How does the special position of trust and responsibility enjoyed by teachers weigh up against their liberty to fashion a life for themselves? Should their private lives be subject to greater scrutiny than those in other professions? This is an enlightening guide for education and legal scholars, local and state level policymakers, community leaders on how the legal framework around these core issues has emerged and evolved over time.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Also Available from Bloomsbury
• Table of Contents
• Front Piece
• Chapter 1 Introduction: The Private Lives of American Teachers. Exemplar and Nexus
• Chapter 2 The Emergence of America’s Common School and the Enduring Tension Between the Teaching Profession and the Community
• Chapter 3 Who Decides Who Will Teach Our Children? Community Control versus Professional Autonomy: The Gusfield Model of Ownership of Public Problems
• Chapter 4 The Professional Teacher
• Chapter 5 Teacher as a Mandatory Role Model, Community Control: Exemplar, Adverse Notoriety, and Court Cases
• Chapter 6 Morrison and the Rise of Professional Autonomy: Finding a Nexus
• Chapter 7 Ongoing Tensions About Teachers’ Out-of-School Conduct
• Chapter 8 Exemplar and Nexus: The Continuing Tension Over Who Shall Teach Our Children
• Appendix A Rules for Teachers in Three Eras
• Appendix B Efficiency Reports on Teachers from 1923 to 1928
• Appendix C Table of Court Cases
• Index
• About the Authors
• Copyright Page