A Framework for Studying Educator Resistance and Advocacy in the Context of New Professionalism

• In Event: 61.052 - Reengineering Teachers' Identities: Can We Resist, Appropriate, or Reverse the "New Professionalism"?

Abstract

Issue
Neoliberal reforms of public education do more than shape policy and curriculum; they also influence educators’ understanding of themselves as professionals, driving at the very core of what it means to be a teacher (Ball, 2001; Poole, 2008). Relying on an ethic of competition within a standards-based system, public-private partnerships, managerialist leadership, and the use of quantifiable outcomes for accountability, neoliberal reforms leave little room for teacher autonomy (Arellano-Gault, 2010; Court, 2004; Fitzgerald & Savage, 2013; Ward, 2011). Although scholars have examined an array of dissenting voices within schools and their communities, calling for educators to adopt more critical perspectives (Anderson & Grinberg, 1998; Niesche, 2010), there remains a need for more theoretical work on how educators might assert agency in the conceptualization of teaching and learning on a large scale.
Conceptual Framework
This paper offers a conceptual analysis of the major themes of the resistance literature and proposes a new framework for studying educator resistance and advocacy. Our framework sees promise in the notion of discursive repositioning, whereby educators might, in the longer term, assume more agency in the constitution of their identities within school reform discourse.
Literature
Much scholarship on resistance has used the tools of post-structural and critical theory to reveal the insidious effect that neoliberal policy has had on the formation of teachers’ identities. These analyses see possibilities for resistance in collective action, individual agency, and re-appropriation of neoliberal policy toward progressive ends. One vision of collective action sees promise in the notion of repurposing traditional professional associations to take a more active role in legislative advocacy (Thomson, 2008). Some scholars encourage the development of counter-discourses by individuals as well as communities (Niesche, 2013; Poole, 2008; Thomson, Hall & Jones, 2013). Others have urged educators to engage in the introspective work of maintaining a “vigilance” against competing interests that threaten to co-opt their identities (Ball & Olmedo, 2013, p. 86). Finally, those who would re-appropriate neoliberal reforms in the name of emancipatory purposes imply that one can work productively within the constraints of the current policy context (Hayes-Conroy, 2010).
Theoretical Analysis
We argue that each of these approaches contributes an important vision of resistance, but we take this work a step further by advocating for new alliances of educators, students, parents, and communities in order to harness the burgeoning concerns of families regarding the testing regime, the frustrations of urban communities who have lost their democratic voice under mayoral-control and privatization of public services, and the critical thinking of educators regarding the rather narrow and technicist form of education that is taking hold in the era of performance management.
Significance of the Work
Using a combination of post-structural theory (Foucault, 1990) and recent work in cognitive linguistics and metaphorical analysis (Bergen, 2012; Lakoff, 2008), we demonstrate how educators can move beyond the strictly rationalist arguments they have offered thus far and use collective action to fundamentally re-frame dialogues about education reform.

Authors

• Gary L. Anderson, New York University

• Michael Ian Cohen, University of Northern Colorado