This book describes how neoliberalism as societal philosophy works to limit human potential in our school systems. Analyzing contemporary school reform and control, punishment, and pathologization in schools, this book outlines a theory of emancipation and a process by which pedagogy can build solidarity in classrooms and society more broadly.
This volume makes the novel contribution of applying Nancy Fraser’s concept of progressive neoliberalism to education in order to illustrate how social justice efforts have been co-opted by neoliberal forces. As well as recognising the lack of consensus surrounding the very nature of Fraser’s concept of progressive neoliberalism, the book delivers a diversity of perspectives and methodological orientations that offer critical and nuanced examination of the diverse ways in which progressive neoliberalism has shaped education in North America. Documenting manifestations of progressive neoliberalism in areas including anti-racist education, teacher education, STEM, and assessment, the volume uses qualitative empirical research and critical discourse analysis to identify emerging tools and strategies to disentangle the progressive aims of education from neoliberal agendas. Offering a rarely nuanced treatment of the phenomenon of neoliberalism, this text will benefit scholars, academics, and students in the fields of education policy and politics, the sociology of education, and the philosophy of education more broadly. Those involved with the theory of education and multicultural education in general will also benefit from this volume.
Neoliberal education reforms promise (but often don't succeed) to improve student outcomes and provide more equitable educational opportunities to students with different backgrounds. They hold schools accountable for their performance through high-stakes testing and linking performance to rewards and sanctions, and by empowering parents. This book presents a critical and objective appraisal of these neoliberalist education reforms. Mustafa Toprak considers the practical elements of neoliberal reforms, including voucher systems, choice, accountability, competition within and between schools, educational inequalities, and high-stakes testing, and in doing this, contributes to social justice debates and the idea of education as a common good. He uses reforms in Chile as a case study and offers a critique of its neoliberal educational reforms. Rather than discrediting all the central tenets of neoliberal education, Toprak considers the pros and cons of these reforms for students, teachers, schools, and societies and proposes new reforms to ensure that policies accurately and responsively address the needs of all stakeholders.
Horizons of the Future: Science Fiction, Utopian Imagination, and the Politics of Education examines the relationship between science fiction, education, and social change in the 21st century. Global capitalism is ecologically unsustainable and ethically indefensible; time is running out to alter the course of history if humanity is to have hope of a livable future beyond the next century. However, alternatives are possible, offering much more equality, care, justice, joy, and hope than the established order. Popular culture and schools are key sites of struggles to imagine such alternatives. Drawing on critical theory, cultural studies, and sociology, Slater articulates the promising connection between science fiction and the future of education. He offers cutting-edge engagement with themes, perspectives, and modes of imagination in science fiction that can be mobilized politically and pedagogically to envision and enact critical forms of education that cultivate new utopian ways of relating to self, society, and the future. This thought-provoking book will be of interest to scholars and students in the social sciences and education.
This Handbook explores the discourse within the field of educational leadership and management. It provides a clear analysis of the current field as well as older foundational ideas and newer concepts which are beginning to permeate the discussion. The field of educational leadership and management has long acknowledged that educational contexts include a variety of leaders beyond school principals and other school officials such as informal and middle level leaders. By looking at the knowledge dynamic rather than a static knowledge base , this Handbook allows research to be presented in its multidimensional, evolving reality.
Psychological constructs - such as emotion regulation, creativity, grit, growth mindset, lifelong learning, and whole child - are appealing as pedagogical aspirations and outcomes. Researchers, policy-makers, and educators are likely to endorse and accept these constructs as ways to make sense of students and inform pedagogical decision-making. Few critically interrogate these constructs, as they are associated with students' academic achievement, psychological well-being, civic virtue, and career readiness. However, this book shows how these constructs become entangled in a neoliberal vision of selfhood, which is tied to market prescriptions and is thus associated with problematic ethical, psychological, moral, and economic consequences. The chapters draw attention to the ideological underpinnings in order to facilitate conversations about selfhood in schooling policy and practices.
This book empirically examines academic conferences in the social sciences, and explores the purpose and value of people interested in the social sciences attending and presenting at national and international academic conferences. Using a highly original structure and style, the book considers the damaging impact of neoliberalism on conferences, and academia more widely, and explores the numerous barriers to conference attendance. It will be of interest to students and researchers who attend conferences in fields spanning the social sciences, as well as those interested in the effects of neoliberalism on academia.
Given the current social climate this book interrogates capitalism’s relationships to and influence on education. More importantly, this book is part of a greater effort to re?humanize society by generating dialogue, encouraging solidarity and providing analyses of power and avenues for agency in supporting a life beyond the logic of the state and its implied structure, global neoliberal capitalism. The authors speak to the conceptual and material manifestations of neoliberalism that order education. Imagining education is an informed public working against what is understood as self?interest, a reconsideration of a world beyond ideology; popular education aiding social transformation for community, a move away from divisiveness and social struggle. We do not offer easy answers to the problems of global neoliberal capitalism in education, instead the authors in this book offer frameworks for contextualizing neoliberalism, its history, and what education might be on the day after the end of capitalism. This is the rupture of the rationality of global neoliberal capitalism where we examine the potentialities of a world beyond the capitalist organization of consciousness.
The Handbook of Critical Approaches to Politics and Policy of Education provides a broad overview of educational policy and politics from critical perspectives engaging with both foundational and cutting edge topics. In critical perspectives, educational policy debates and programs for reform are about more than narrow questions of efficacy say to raise test scores or for simply more educational inclusion, fairer school spending, or even cultural responsiveness. Rather, policy and reform debates represent contested visions for schools and society by social groups vying for hegemony. Critical approaches to educational policy and politics see schooling and education more broadly as contested terrain in which competing visions for education are imbricated with the material and symbolic interests and cultural ideologies of different classes and cultural groups. Chapters in this volume are organized into five sections. The first three sections provide a foundational overview to educational policy and politics, covering culture and politics of education, political economy of education, and subjectivity and education. These chapters address longstanding and current policy and political debates as well as foundational theoretical debates. The last two sections are organized around two themes that address some of the most significant recent directions of educational politics and policy: disaster politics and technology.
Walking away is both refusal and production (Tuck & Yang, 2014), a seeming paradox taken up in work on fugitivity and marronage (Diouf, 2021; Grant, Woodson, & Dumas, 2021; Harney & Moten, 2013; Hartman, 2007), survivance (Powell, 2002; Sabzalian, 2019; Vizenor, 2008), testimonios (Calderon-Berumen, 2021; Delgado Bernal, Burciaga, & Flores Carmona, 2012; Latina Feminist Group, 2001), and other forms of critical pedagogy and curriculum. In other words, walking away presumes both the rejection of a form of status quo (walking away from something) and a new direction taken (a walking toward something else). In the context of education, many teachers and researchers have reached that breaking point where/when no more curricular/pedagogic violence can be survived, and it is in that moment that those researchers and teachers actively remove themselves from those systems and assert new courses with new possibilities. This edited volume is a collection of works chronicling acts of refusal that manifest as walking away. In some cases what is walked away from is the erasure of experience in curriculum while in others it is a fundamentalist religious experience. In still other cases what is walked away from is the carceral nature of school discipline policies. In each case walking away is resistance, refusal, and re/co-producing new possibilities and agencies. What is walked toward is a new curriculum/pedagogy of resistance sometimes within and sometimes without that place ENDORSEMENTS: "Walking Away provides a window into what it is for educators to form a new world: Enter Walking Away and walk into..." — Leonard Harris , Purdue University "Walking away is sure to inspire pre-service educators, practicing teachers, and others to participate in the construction of more just and equitable worlds." — Tristan Gleason, Cal Poly Humbolt "Ultimately, Walking Away represents the capacious thinking that emerges from the various connections, conversations, and profound contributions of each author." — Boni Wozolek, Pennsylvania State University, Abington Campus "This important book insists that we, as curriculum scholars, seriously ask ourselves what our roles and responsibilities are as academics, researchers, and educators in these dire times." — Jennifer A. Sandlin, Arizona State University
