Radically Dreaming After Neoliberalism: Teachers' Emancipatory Practices as a "Wicked Problem" of Public Interest Values?

• In Event: Freirean Responses to Colonialism, Racism, and Oppression

Abstract

Here I conceptualise the problem of social and educational inequalities in teachers’ practices after neoliberal/elitism as a new ‘wicked’ problem. I position the problem using a (re)constructivist framework drawing from Freire, Freud and Greene. I use this lens for a critical scrutiny of a select literature that reveals the cruel optimism and ‘safety blanket’ of clarity found in teaching and teachers’ learning understood as evidence-based practices. I question (a) who do we think we are? (b) who do we need/want/desire to become for a good life with self, and with others, in a pluralist democratic society and a just global world? And (c) how might teachers’ emancipatory practices support radical dreaming for new public interest values in an uncertain world?

Author

• Geraldine Mooney Simmie, University of Limerick