Career and Commitment in the Context of Comprehensive School Reform

The present article takes up a paradox: that teachers' involvement in ambitious innovation or large-scale reform may supply rich opportunities for professional growth while also introducing the seeds of longer-term career disappointment. Case study investigations of reforming high schools in the US from 1991 to 2001 illuminate the relationship of teachers' participation in secondary school reform to their teaching commitment and career trajectories. Two of the three successive studies produced a dominant pattern of initial enthusiasm followed by growing disappointment. We draw on the combined data to examine teachers' propensity to remain engaged with innovation or reform, and the ways in which sustained involvement strengthens or weakens teachers' career commitment and satisfaction.