Teachers Blaming “Other Teachers”: Considering Neoliberal Constraints in Urban Education

• In Event: Pushing Back as a Means of Moving Forward: Disrupting Neoliberal Pedagogical Approaches

Abstract

Starting with a critical view of the current neoliberal context in which public school teachers are devalued, this qualitative study considers teachers’ perspectives on being blamed for the “failures” of urban schools. Drawing on in-depth interviews with urban teachers, this paper specifically examines teachers’ tendency to blame other teachers for school troubles—what I call “other teacher talk.” Rather than resist outright the neoliberal logics that produce the teacher-is-to-blame explanation, I argue that teachers often employed other teacher talk in response to a heightened surveillance of teachers, hyper-accountability practices, and other constraining working conditions; teachers blamed other teachers to avoid being blamed themselves. This paper also discusses connections to deficit discourses that construct urban youth as targets of blame.

Author

• Heidi Pitzer, St. Lawrence University