Markets, Metrics, and Opportunity Gaps: Turkish Teachers’ Perspectives on Neoliberal Restructuring

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 7:45 am - Gold 1
  In Roundtable Session: Markets, Media, and the Politics of School Choice

Abstract

This study examines how market funding, high‑stakes metrics, and flexible employment policies reshape teaching and deepen inequality in Türkiye’s neoliberal schools. Grounded in Ball’s performativity, Apple’s market critique, Bourdieu’s symbolic violence, and Standing’s precariat, we analyze how governance tools, insecure labor, and symbolic legitimation intersect in educators’ experiences. Based on semi‑structured interviews with 15 public and private‑school teachers, we used inductive coding strategies. Five inter‑locking themes reveal that market logic stratifies resources, recasts school‑community ties as service exchanges, fuels a private‑school boom, narrows curriculum/childhood, and re‑shapes teacher autonomy through performative metrics. By contextualizing Turkish data within reforms, the paper “unforgets” local equity struggles and imagines futures that restore schooling as a civic good.

Authors

• Orbay BAŞARAN, Eskişehir Osmangazi University

• Hamit Ozen, Eskisehir Osmangazi University