The Neoliberal Etiology of Educational Failure

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 13
  In Roundtable Session: Curricular Futures: The Challenges and Possibilities in Policies and Practices

Abstract

Blaming teachers and schools for perceived or actual educational failures is a popular trope in making the grounds for educational reforms in the United States. Critical educational research identifies neoliberalism as the key driver for the currently normalized positioning of teachers and schools as the prima facie key suspects in educational failures. This paper critiques the etiology of neoliberalism through a critical analysis of the assumed causal relata and causal relations in causal claims attributing educational failure to teachers and schools. Further, borrowing from the insightful explorations of causality in disaster forensics and epidemiology it makes the case for understanding educational failure from complex causality frameworks.

Author

• Ajay Sharma, University of Georgia