Date of Award:

5-2026

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

English

Committee Chair(s)

Taylor Rose-Dougherty

Committee

Taylor Rose-Dougherty

Committee

Benjamin Gunsberg

Committee

Clair Canfield

Abstract

Nationally, teachers are struggling to simply stay in the career, let alone thrive in it, and many education researchers are recognizing that teaching has become a largely unsustainable career for an increasing number of educators. There are many complex challenges that English Language Arts (ELA) teachers face that contribute to this dissatisfaction and the unsustainability of the career, including the demanding human and relationship-focus of the work, the emotional intensity in this type of caring, intense debates and controversies occurring in national politics that then play into the classroom, and an overarching disillusionment with teaching. This thesis explores such problems of teacher dissatisfaction by considering the term of stuckness, a term used by Clair Canfield, who specializes in the study of communication and conflict. In Canfield’s scholarship, he creates a framework, or tool, designed to help individuals process through conflict, and challenging relationships and emotional experiences. The portions of this tool are known through the acronym of VOCAB—standing for Vulnerability, Ownership, Communication Process, Acceptance, and Boundaries—with each representing an approach to process through stuckness and manage conflict in more satisfying ways. This thesis considers how portions of this VOCAB tool could be tailored to help English educators specifically in the processing of their own relationships, experiences, and emotions—particularly emotions such as disappointment, frustration, feeling powerless, burdened, disconnected, and hopeless. To do this, a literature review of English teaching and education scholarship explores the demands in English teaching that results in common stuck places and makes recommendations for how to apply and tailor Canfield’s tool to English education. To that end, this thesis pursues the following research question: How can reconceptualizing Clair Canfield’s VOCAB framework for the field of English teaching contribute to the ways in which teachers reflect upon, dialogue through, and make decisions regarding their emotional experiences to help process through stuckness and provide alternative options for greater satisfaction, wellbeing, and longevity?

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