Teachers’ Professional Fulfilment and Why It Matters

featuring Dr. Sarah Barrett
Professor and 2022 Dean's Research Impact Award recipient

Teachers’ professional fulfilment might be viewed as a pleasant side effect of an altruistic professional practice dedicated to helping students to realize their potential. However, it might also be conceived as a deliberately sought outcome of a systemic standard of care that extends to all participants within a classroom, school, school system, and profession. In her research, Dr. Sarah Barrett explores how elementary and secondary teachers experience their practice. The focus of this presentation will be on the significance of teachers’ professional fulfillment for teaching and learning. Specifically, she will discuss different conceptions of professionalism, the teacher’s status as a member of multiple communities, and the importance of teachers’ professional fulfilment in the teaching learning endeavour. At a time when teacher shortages loom large in Ontario’s school systems and beyond, this talk will provide a compelling argument for re-thinking our ideas about the teaching vocation.

Dr. Sarah Barrett is a professor in the Faculty of Education at York University, in Toronto, Canada. In 2022, she received the Dean’s Research Impact Award for her work exploring the ways in which classroom teachers experienced the COVID-19 pandemic. As a scholar, Barrett has a long-standing interest in understanding teachers’ experiences of how their values and beliefs influence their practice. This forms the foundation of her research on the ethical aspects of environmental education and professional teaching; teaching science for social justice; [science] teacher education; and developing more inclusive high school science curricula.