Cruel Optimism, Precarity, and the Explosion of Short-Term Teaching Contracts in Australian Schools

• In Event: 53.079 - Navigating Work: Considering Context, Conflict, Ethics, and Activism in Teachers' Labor

Abstract

This paper will consider how short-term contracts function as a technology for governing a new generation of teachers in Australia. It will proceed from Foucault’s understanding that neoliberal modes of power seek to ‘guide’ or shape the conduct of the governed. In particular, the paper will consider how the short-term contracts implicate beginning teachers in their own self-government. How the beginning teacher therefore imagines a future within or outside contractual modes of governance will draw upon notions of Precarity (Butler, 2004) and Cruel Optimism (Berlant, 2011) The paper will be anchored to the testimonies of over 10,000 beginning teachers.

Author

• Timothy Mark Bush, The University of Melbourne