Wrestling Citizenship Education from Neoliberal Agendas: A Case Study of a Progressive US Middle School

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Citizenship Education: Paradoxes, Processes, Struggles, Possibilities of Implementation at Local, National and International Levels

Proposal

This presentation profiles a case study of teachers in a public middle school of choice, who have for decades embedded citizenship education interdisciplinarily and required it for all students, and how they utilized resistance when teacher autonomous practices related to citizenship education were compromised by neoliberal local and state power structures. According to Woodin (2017), neoliberalism has threatened teacher autonomy and identity. Teachers in the case study utilized defiance, refraction, legal action, political mobilization of stakeholders, and political alliances to protect autonomy, professional identity, and school identity. This study utilizes primary source document analysis, autoethnography and semi-structured interviews of educators and student members of the school to address the questions: 1) What non-monetary factors motivate citizens of a school community to form solidarity and act? 2) How and why do educators respond differently to structural threats upon their professionalism and autonomy?

Presenters theorized that teachers were motivated to take action due to an understanding of themselves as champions of children, preservers of a just and democratic society, and agents of a sustainable future. It contributes to the theoretical understanding of strengths and limitations of individual actors in movements. Practically, it provides an applicable critique of common resistance methods used in contemporary educational contexts hampered by the Global Education Reform Movement (Sahlberg, 2023).

Case study is an effective post-positivist research methodology for exploring phenomena and understanding contextualization in complex human societal organizations such as public school (Noor, 2008). The context of this case study arose from a change in building and district leadership that previously supported this school’s teacher autonomy and professional decision-making around citizenship education. The historically progressive school formed out of the Normal School movement in the early 1900s. Mentor and preservice teachers have long coached students enacting change around student-identified community or state issues. For the last two decades, students and teachers used variations of the Center for Civic Education’s Project Citizen model to affect change in sexism, poverty, sustainability, health, and indigenous rights. This work positions students as legitimate community actors, and as such challenges status quo thinking about students as passive reproducers of power-determined culture. This transcendence is realized when community power holders start taking children seriously and respond to them politically. When children ask for legitimate integrity from community powerholders, some adults see them as threats. This transcendence, formerly protected by teachers and leaders as a gain related to the work’s authenticity, perhaps resulted in systematic attacks on staffing and curricular autonomy once leadership shifted. Citizenship education initiatives survived in 2022-2023 due to both individual teacher legal action and the collective action of teachers and parents. Teachers remaining in 2023-2024 strengthened commitment to citizenship education but changed tactics to include refraction and political alliances. The lack of administrative support and resulting responsive teacher action simultaneously hamstrung and salvaged citizenship education efforts at the school. The presenters provide both teacher and student perspectives on why citizenship education persists when threatened.

Authors

• Meredith McLaughlin, University of Wyoming Laboratory School

• Ariel L Chai