The Emergence of Dissident Teachers in Neoliberal Times: From an Absent to a Collective and Politicized Subject in Chile

• In Event: Teachers Strike! Comparative Perspectives

Abstract

Chile's education struggle has gained recognition as an example of resistance to the expansion of privatization reforms in education (Presenter). However, despite the important role that teacher unions have played globally and historically in these struggles, during the intense wave of public demonstrations, strikes, and school take-overs sustained by students since 2006, teachers appeared to be absent (Cornejo & Insunza, 2013). The center-left government of Michelle Bachelet (2014-2018) won the elections with the promise of a major educational reform based on the public demonstrations, one of the four fundamental changes proposed was improving social perceptions of teachers’ professionalism by means of a new Teaching Career Policy (TCP). The government counted on the leadership of Chile’s major Teacher Union, who was affiliated to one of the parties in the government coalition. However, in 2014/2015, a grassroots movement of teachers rallied and called for a strike against the new TCP. This movement was called ‘the dissidents’ because of their organization beyond the reach of the union’s leadership. The ‘dissidents’ argued against TCP because it responded to a “business and productivity” logic (Moreno, 2016). In 2016, the ‘dissident’ teacher organizations joined with other organizations within the Teachers’ Union to dispute its leadership. They had an unprecedented victory.

In this presentation we aim at understanding the transition from an ‘absent teacher subject’ to an ensemble of politicized ‘collective’ subjects’ who were able to organize themselves and put up an electoral fight with successful results. Additionally, we explore and problematize the 'agenda' that gathers these emergent teacher organizations and what limitations, potentials and contradictions do we identify in their political stance?

In order to address this inquiry, we rely on diverse data sources: documented discussions about the social images of Chile's teachers, bibliographic searches for documents that analyzed the teaching profession from a political perspective in Chile, and focused interviews with teachers at the roots of these emergent movements. Based on these, we provide a reflection about the unsettling context of today's Chile's teachers.

Our preliminary results show that:

Chilean teachers are moving from a gremial struggle to a political-pedagogical one.
The articulation among the diversity of organizations that are part of the current ‘dissident’ sector is promising but fragile.
It is clearer to understand what the ‘dissident’ sector is fighting against than what they are fighting for.

We hope this analysis will provide teacher union scholars with situated accounts about how emergent movements are organizing to face a neoliberal educational agenda. Our reflections provide a way to conceptualize the forms in which teachers take action, in this case collective action, against neoliberal reforms and the conditions that constraint and foster these actions.

Authors

• Felipe Acuña, Institute of Education - UCL

• Andrea Lira, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Ivan Salinas, Universidad de Chile

• Javier Campos-Martinez, University of Massachusetts - Amherst; Centre for Research in Inclusive Education, PUCV