Teacher unions and university academics: Unlikely Bedfellows

Session Submission Type: Group Panel

Description of Session

This is a time of change for unions and for universities. Teacher unions provide a complex web of support to their teacher members in contexts that increasingly challenge teachers’ abilities to teach well. Universities place increasing pressure on academics to attract research dollars and to demonstrate their influence by carrying out traditional academic research, while at the same time demonstrating that this research is “impactful”. Both are facing rising and unhelpful pressures. This panel will explore how unions have met the demands of a changing educational system and have been able to produce positive results that engage members in system change, and how comparative research on unions’ responses to educational change can be brought to bear on the work of teacher unions. The papers will identify the theoretical and strategic issues inherent to comparative research for teachers’ advocacy organizations, and the union voice on what teachers’ organizations can learn and build on from their partnership with researchers.

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Chair

• David Edwards, Education International

Individual Presentations

• Resistance, reprochement, and renewal - Nina Basica, University of Toronto

• Activism, access and autonomy - Martin Henry, Education International

• Unions in action - Kathy Buzad, AFT

• Unions in action (shared paper) - Stacey Pelika, National Education Association (NEA)

Discussant

• Felisa Tibbitts, Teachers College, Columbia University