Recruitment: Transnational Feminist Understandings of the Neoliberal Recruitment of International Women Teachers of Color

• In Event: AERA Handbook Session 2

Abstract

International teachers have been used to fill “teacher shortages” and diversify the teaching force to engage with the increasingly diverse student body in US schools. Much of teacher recruitment efforts hinge on the assumption that these teachers can be easily transplanted from one country to the next and that they come with the cultural and historical knowledge needed to teach students in U.S. urban settings (Bartlett, 2014; Dunn, 2011). While there is budding scholarship in this area, more work is needed to critically examine international recruitment efforts and the experiences of teachers who are recruited through these programs. In this chapter, we examine international recruitment initiatives and problematize how these efforts advance a neoliberal agenda.

Authors

• Kimberly Natalia Williams Brown, Vassar College

• Makini Z. Beck, Rochester Institute of Technology

• Christine Wanjiku Nganga, The George Washington University