"This Whole Process Has Turned Me Into 'That Teacher'": Teacher Leaders in a Post-Truth Era

• In Event: 63.048 - Teacher Leadership for What? Critical Advocacy for a More Just World

Abstract

We share findings from an ongoing project, Sociopolitical Praxis in Science Education, which aims to better understand and mitigate the challenges teachers face as they work to enact a pedagogical praxis that links science to larger societal issues of inequality, oppression, and discrimination. In this paper and presentation, we discuss how teachers have become increasingly emboldened by neoliberal reforms that have constituted precarious conditions for educators and students. We share how teachers participating in this action research study engage in both small and spectacular acts of resistance in response to these contexts of precarity, taking on both implicit and explicit roles as teacher leaders in a post-truth era.

Authors

• Sara E. Tolbert, Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha University of Canterbury

• Jill M. Williams, University of Arizona