The Global Assault on Teachers, Teaching and Teacher Unions: What Role is there for Educational Research
Author(s):
Jette Steensen Susan Robertson
Lois Weiner
Conference:
ECER 2008
Network:
23. Policy Studies and Politics of Education
Format:
Round Table

Session Information

23 SES 11A, The Global Assault on Teachers, Teaching and Teacher Unions: What Role is there for Educational Research

Round Table

Time:
2008-09-12
16:45-18:15
Room:
B1 116
Chair:
Jette Steensen

Contribution

The global assault on teachers, teaching, and teacher unions: What role is there for educational research? Susan L. Robertson, Jette Steensen, Lois Weiner Background and importance of the subject In prosperous nations, identified by global justice activists as the global “north,” teachers’ wages, their voice in policy, and the quality of their working conditions have been reduced. In the “south,” societies that lack power and wealth in the new global economy, teachers are working for a pittance, sometimes unpaid, too often poorly trained or with no training at all. Though the titles and acronyms of policies differ from one country to another, the basics of the policies are the same: Displace publicly-supported, publicly-controlled system of education; remake the definition of teachers’ professionalism; and weaken or eliminate teacher unions as organizations. Over the last decades a new global consensus about reshaping economies and schools has emerged. Whereas in the post WW2 social compact, most governments assumed the responsibility to ensure that all children are educated, a new ideological current has become hegemonic. Within this new perspective and policies that emerge from it, schools and universities have been reconfigured by policymakers as a potential market. In these educational markets, entrepreneurs set up schools, determine what is taught and how it is taught in order to make a profit. The assumption that schooling is a “public good” is under a sustained attack. Educators and citizens confront the increasing privatization of education services, the introduction of business “quality control” measures into education, and the requirement that education produce the flexible workforce that corporations require. Among scholars and global justice activists, these reforms being made to the economy and education are often called “neoliberal.” Although free-market policies are put forth as solutions to global poverty, much evidence points to a contradictory effect. What is the role of research and researchers in addressing this global transformation of education? How might research illumninate what is at stake in the contestation of education as a “public good”? What can researchers do to clarify what levers are (most) effective in resisting alterations to public education that deepen poverty? How can reseachers work with classroom teachers to empower them in this struggle? To address these questions, this roundtable brings together three researchers who have contributed to an edited collection, “The Global Assault on Teaching, Teachers, and Their Unions: Stories for Resistance.” The roundtable, like the book on which it is based, analyzes the nature of the neoliberal assault and resistance to it, taking up the frequently neglected topic of the role that teacher unions might play in reversing these policies. The volume is the product of collaboration among researchers, teacher union officials, and classroom teachers. Much of the scholarship was produced by members of the Special Interest Group on teachers’ work and teacher unions of the American Educational Research Association. The roundtable discussion will invite discussion about the challenges and rewards of the international collaboration for this book.

Expected Outcomes

need for international movements of teachers, teacher educators and their unions to make the effects of neo-liberalism visible and open to discussion.

References

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Author Information

Jette Steensen
VIA University College
Teacher Education
Sabro
56
Susan Robertson
University of Bristol, UK
Graduate School of Education
Bristol
Lois Weiner
New Jersey City University
Elementary and Secondary Education
Jersey City
220

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