Understanding Teacher Union and Community Group Mobilizations: Rethinking the Role of Leadership and Agency

• In Event: Mobilized Teachers: Social Justice and Social Movement Unionism

Abstract

This paper presents research relating to the experiences of union and community-based campaigns that have sought to challenge the establishment of academy schools in England. The research draws on social movement literature, and particularly mobilization theory, to better understand the dynamics of such campaigns and the contexts in which they can either thrive or wither. However, leadership of such campaigns, and the role of human agency, is often neglected in mobilisation theory. This paper challenges this neglect and presents a conceptualisation of individual agency in the context of collective acts of resistance.

Author

• Howard Stevenson, The University of Nottingham