Cultivating the Fire With(In): Teachers' Principled Resistance in an Age of Corporate Reform

• In Event: 35.061 - Platforms of Resistance in the Lives of Teachers Past and Present

Abstract

The groundswell of resistance to corporate educational reform among teachers over the last few years is palpable. What some have termed “The Education Spring” reflects efforts by teachers from across the nation to develop a collective voice in opposition to the standardization of their students. This presentation provides empirical data on the lives of teachers and their work as teacher activists outside the classroom. Teaching is an inherently political and democratic act that these teacher activists have taken on as a part of their moral integrity and teacher identity. Resistance, then, reimagined as a form of authorship and commitment to one’s work, can be viewed as engagement in the democratic process.

Teacher resistors attempt to make meaning of their social environment and push back on the externally imposed mandates of corporate educational reform. Utilizing a critical constructivist framework (Kincheloe, 2005) which emphasizes the effect of historical and social structures on education reform, policy, and practice as well as social construction of learning and development (Baxter-Magolda, 2000), allows me to explore teachers’ narratives about their identity as principled resistors situated within the macro discourses of corporate reform and the micro discourses of the classroom practice which include the curriculum of high stakes testing.

Using narrative inquiry and critical discourse analysis allows me to complicate and reveal the possibilities and limitations in the complexity of teacher resistors that act within the webs of power of corporate educational reforms. Using narrative inquiry of teachers’ individual and collective participation in acts of resistance in local, regional, and national events, as well as critical discourse analysis of textual sources including interviews, observations, and newspapers, I identify four emergent themes of discomfort, disruption, connection, and sustainability. These emergent themes suggest that a sense of self-authorship is at the core of teacher resistors’ work when they decide to become involved in the struggle for a collective voice. Self-authorship, as defined by Baxter-Magolda (2000) is the internal capacity to “define one’s belief system, identity, and relationships” (p. 42).

Teachers are part of a larger social struggle whether they are cognizant of it or not. The teacher resistors who participated in this study actively chose to take a stand, and become part of a larger social movement. Utilizing sources from individual biographical narratives of the eight participants, ethnographic observations notes from United Opt Out’s national conference, interview transcripts, multiple discussions of representation through member checks, photographs, social media posts, newspaper accounts, and blogs, I found that this movement has elements of both individual development through becoming agentic (self-authorship) as well as collective action.

The movement may have some similarities to previous social movements (i.e., The Civil Rights movement) but is also very different – especially due to social media/virtual networking. This study was not only an opportunity for participants to “talk back” (hooks, 1989) both literally and figuratively to the macro discourses of educational reform, but also demonstrates that “narrative repair” (Nelson, 2001) can intervene in macro discourses of teacher deficiency that populate dominant cultural understanding of teachers’ work.

Author

• Jocelyn Weeda, Miami University - Oxford