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Twenty-first century education has been reconfigured to keep up with growing societal shifts in an effort to support a wide variety of learners. As changes occur, the workload for teachers continues to expand with little to no support and resources within classroom spaces to keep up with the current times. Post pandemic, the expectations and systems have shifted emphasizing the need for more programming around social emotional learning and systems to help mitigate the learning disruption. The insurmountable pressure placed on teachers has led to a robust and persistent departure of the profession causing the entire education system to rethink the policies, structures, and systems that influence teacher burnout.

A war still rages in the United States. This is a war with many different battles – one such battle being against queer teachers and students, as well as teachers and administrators who support queer youth and teachers in their schools. While this battle may look new in the social media landscape that is 2022 (TikTok and YouTube videos and anyone with the slightest thought, even if based on someone else's, a regurgitated idea and old tropes, is posting to social media as if they are saying something new and profound, yet is old tried and filled with hate), it is almost the same old battle where queer and LGBTQ2+ are used interchangeably. Queer folks are the ones being sacrificed to save the nation from spiraling into the abyss of debauchery and chaos of a lost moral compass (Gogarty, 2022; Lorenz, 2022; Montpetit, 2022). If this is the case, and queer people are battling for humanity and existence in schools, understanding teacher burnout from a queer perspective poses incredible challenges. Why would one want to be a teacher, especially a queer person, if we are so often the brunt of the attacks in this war to control society?

This chapter uses narrative inquiry to tell the stories of two female neophyte educators experiencing the oppositional misalignment between their idealized perception of female teachers in American society and their personal realities by providing alternate images of women in education. American teachers, especially women, are perceived as a homogeneous group that lives to serve the children of others and inhabit a monochrome, two-dimensional, existence inside the educational landscape of schools (Clandinin & Connelly, 1996). However, the prevailing notions and outdated imagery of teachers is flawed in its lack of acknowledgment of the richly diverse and textured lived experiences of women both inside and outside of the educational field. Furthermore, female teachers face tremendous pressure to imitate these unrealistic ideals and expectations at the expense of the authentic self, which can lead to a myriad of internal dissonances, such as burnout, serving as an umbrella over PTSD, anxiety, compassion fatigue, decreased confidence, and lower job satisfaction. The researchers in this chapter come from nontraditional backgrounds to capture the negative effects of subtle, persistent, and unrealistic expectations of females that contribute to feelings of burnout at the onset of our teaching careers.

Human perceptions, attitudes, and relationships are shaped by worldviews and values. The rich mosaic of worldviews in today's fast-changing global village, where cultures interact and information flows freely, challenge educators and students. Worldviews influence problem modeling and solutions. Worldviews give us psychological confidence that the world is as we see it, safe, secure, and belonging. Each worldview is consistent with the assumptions, ideals, and analytical processes. Values define behavior, attitudes and decision-making. The global higher education system's long history and recent developments in globalization, technological innovations, and internationalization make it even more complex. Globally, higher education is evolving rapidly. Global political, economic, social, technological, and environmental factors promote rapid change. Higher education institutions have struggled to adapt to these developments due to limited resources and capacity. Growing demand has created new business models and institutions. Access, equity, inclusion, and quality are new issues that emerged. To be relevant in a rapidly changing environment, higher education institutions must adapt to the knowledge society and growing need for access. This anthology contains 14 thought-provoking studies on worldviews and values in teaching-learning, curricula, assessment, and outcomes.