Situating protest in the lived experience of teachers

• In Event: Teacher Activism As Resistance

Proposal

Teachers find themselves in a complex situation in which they should hold to an ethic whereby the are committed to acting in the best interests of the students in their care while at the same time being either directly or indirectly agents of the state (Pitman). This conflict can be viewed through the lens of the curriculum and the restrictions placed upon them through their work (the curriculum) and their actions (see Weick’s loose and tight coupling).
Durkheim wrote of the relation between professional ethics and the State. In a situation in which a teacher is called upon to take a position of protest against an aspect of the moral impositions of the State, employer or professional body, what are the reasonable constraints, if any, on the form of the action? Such action may be overt, through demonstration, strike of other overt public form, or through dealing with curriculum content through not teaching parts of it, to contextualising the content in ways opposed to the intent of the curriculum writers or by teaching an alternative set of contents. Each of these actions can lead to consequences ranging from warning to dismissal.
I will position the discussion in a framework derived from Aristotle’s theory of knowledge, in which three forms are identified: Episteme, techne and phonesis, with the emphasis being on phronesis. Here we have the form identified with the moral – acting for the best. The capacity to act in this way is constrained by multiple pressures, related to knowledge of the work (teaching a curriculum), employment contracts and the mandates of the state.
A concern arises for those who wish to collaborate with teachers in protesting a contested curriculum as to how the interests of the teachers align with their own. Donald Schon came close to this problem in his description of the most powerful form of change, the movement: the aims are generally agreed upon but not clearly defined, with different members having different interests in the objectives. It becomes incumbent on academics and researchers to take account of this difference when engaging in protest activity with individuals from groups other than their own.

Author

• Allan J Pitman, University of Western Ontario