SPECIAL ISSUE: Neoliberalism, Gender, and Education Work
SPECIAL ISSUE EDITORS: Dr. Sarah A. Robert, Dr. Heidi Pitzer, Dr. Ana
Luisa Muñoz García
This special issue will explore intersections of gender and education
work in a global, neoliberal reform context By education work, we
purposefully leave the interpretation open and encourage submissions
illuminating the contributions of multiple stakeholders in education
projects. Gender is involved in educational policy (Stambach & David,
2005), embedded in the historical conceptualizations of school actors
(David, 1980; Smith & Griffith, 2004) and the gendered persons who
negotiate the boundaries of new assemblages of governance, the
economy, and education (Ball & Junemann, 2012). However, the gendered
aspects of the current neoliberal context have been under- theorized.
The feminine and feminized nature of educating constructs women and
men as in need of surveillance and discipline. This links with current
neoliberal “solutions” such as merit pay, high-stakes testing,
standardization, hyper-credentialing, the publishing of
ratings/rankings and other so-called performance indicators. Through
the demand for accountability, policies and discourses require that
education workers be made visible— sometimes as technicians, other
times as professionals—but these same policies treat their work as an
absent presence (Apple, 1983; Lather, 1994). How are policies and
notions of education work gendered in these new assemblages? While
scholars have recognized how neoliberalism reshapes “the good teacher”
(Connell, 2009) and redefines “teacher quality” (Cochran-Smith &
Lytle, 2006) in harmful, constricting manners, there has been less
consideration of how gendering of teaching allows for and furthers
this reshaping. What or who is the emergent “global teacher” (Maguire,
2013; Robert, 2014)?
This special issue seeks contributions that examine how gendered and
neoliberal logics intertwine to shape the boundary work of educators
(early childhood, primary, secondary, higher education, and informal
settings) (Seddon, Ozga, & Levin, 2013); we aim to highlight the ways
in which educators negotiate these two forces in and through their
work.
Within the boundaries of neoliberalism, gender, and education work,
papers could address the following themes:
• Conceptualizing the global-to-local movement of neoliberalism
• Demands of and for affective labour
• Intersectional inequities naturalized and neutralized within/by
neoliberal discursive
regimes
• Neoliberal subjectivities, entrepreneurial selves
• Historicizing the transformation of education work/workers
• Science-Technology-
education-to-work
• Migration and schooling
• Sexuality and the body in the neoliberal school/curriculum
Prospective contributors are invited to submit an expression of
interest and extended abstract of up to 750 words by June 22, 2015 to
Sarah Robert at: saraharobert@gmail.com.
By July 20, 2015 the guest editors, working in conjunction with the
journal editors, will contact all contributors and inform them of the
outcome of their submission.
At that stage, a selection of authors will be invited to submit a full
paper for the Special Issue by 14th September 2015.
It should be noted that an invitation to submit a full paper does not
guarantee publication as all papers will be subject to the
double-blind referee process utilised by Gender and Education.
The special issue is anticipated to be published in Volume 28 of the
journal, which appears in print throughout 2016.
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