Neoliberal Reforms
Link: http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/
As many of us have documented in our scholarly work, the past five
years have witnessed a full-fledged attack on public school teachers
and their unions. With backing from Wall Street and venture
philanthropists, the public imaginary has been saturated with images
and rhetoric decrying teachers as the impediments to 'real' change in
K-12 education. Docu-dramas like Waiting For 'Superman,' news stories
like Steve Brill's, "The Teachers' Unions' Last Stand," in The New
York Times Magazine and high profile rhetoric like Michelle Rhee's
mantra that students, not adults, need to be "put first" in education
reform, all point to this reality: teachers face an orchestrated,
billion dollar assault on their professional status, their knowledge,
and their abilities to facilitate dialogical spaces in classrooms.
This assault has materialized and been compounded by an austerity
environment that is characterized by waning federal support and a
narrow corporate agenda. Tens of thousands of teachers have suffered
job loss, while thousands more fear the same.
Far from being silent, teachers are putting up a fight. From the
strike in Chicago, to grassroots mobilizing to wrest control of the
United Federation of Teachers in New York, to public messaging
campaigns in Philadelphia and boycotts in Seattle, teachers and their
local allies are organizing, agitating and confronting school reform
in the name of saving public education. In collaboration with parents,
community activists, school staff, students, and administrators,
teacher are naming various structures of oppression and working to
reclaim the conversation and restore a sense of self-determination to
their personal, professional, and civic lives.
This special issue of Workplace calls for proposals to document the
resistance of teachers in the United States, Canada, and globally.
Though much has been written about the plight of teachers under
neoliberal draconianism, the reparative scholarship on teachers'
educating, organizing, and agitating is less abundant. This special
issue is solely dedicated to mapping instances of resistance in hopes
of serving as both resource and inspiration for the growing movement.
This issue will have three sections, with three different formats for
scholarship/media. Examples might include:
I. Critical Research Papers (4000-6000 words)
Qualitative/ethnographic work documenting the process of teachers
coming to critical consciousness.
Critical historiographies linking trajectories of political activism
of teachers/unions across time and place.
Documenting and theorizing teacher praxis--protests, community
education campaigns, critical agency in the classroom.
Critical examinations of how teachers, in specific locales, are
drawing on and enacting critical theories of resistance (Feminist,
Politics of Love/Caring/Cariño, Black Radical Traditions, Mother's
Movements, and so on).
II. Portraits of Resistance
Autobiographical sketches from the ground. (~2000 words)
Alternative/Artistic representations/Documentations of Refusal
(poetry, visual art, photography, soundscapes)
III. Analysis and Synthesis of Various Media
"Critical book, blog, art, periodical, music, movie reviews. (1500-2000 words)
400-word abstracts should be sent to Mark Stern (mstern@colgate.edu)
by April 15, 2014. Please include name, affiliation, and a very brief
(3-4 sentences) professional biography."
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