Teacher Union Participation in the English for the Children Campaigns

• In Event: AERA Graduate Student Research-in-Progress Session 3
  In Roundtable Session: Historical Perspectives on Teachers Unions, Financial Aid, and Military Training on University Campuses (Table 8)

Abstract

This interpretive study uses the discourse-historical approach to critical discourse analysis to understand and analyze the ways in which teacher unions participated in the English for the Children campaigns in California, Arizona, Massachusetts, and Colorado, as well as a failed initiative in New York. Using archived newspapers and broadcast media, this study aims to provide an account of teacher union participation in these campaigns using resource mobilization theory as well as recommendations for how teacher unions could more effectively participate in similar campaigns in the future, using social movement unionism as a lens. Data will first be analyzed with quantitative corpus analysis to provide initial codes for contextual text coding to find patterns of participation that will lead to useful recommendations.

Author

• Seth B. Zeiter, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign