In this chapter, I focus only on the subject of the decline in teacher satisfaction over the twenty-year period, examine two related changes that appear to be major contributors to that problem, and conclude with some implications for the current efforts to improve schools and redefine the roles of teachers. I begin with a limited number of our comparative findings from our surveys and then look for explanations for these results in our analyses of interviews.

Interview data from a study investigating perceptions and attitudes of teachers toward their work provides the basis for this article which examines the metaphorical language teachers use to describe their experience and sketches an outline of the meaning of work as perceived by teachers, school systems and society.