This symposium argues that if education systems are to provide learners and teachers with the capacities to act under the social conditions of neoliberalism then we need to find ‘resources of hope’ (Williams, 1989) that enable this competitive market approach to be resisted. This is because neoliberalism is a deeply fatalistic discourse which ‘speaks about the death of dreams and utopia and deproblematises the future’ (Freire 2004:110) in ways that lead to narrow educational processes and developments. Neoliberalism prioritises individualisation of achievement and competition rather than collaboration among teachers and students and so creates a low trust environment where professionals (and students) have to be monitored and efficiency and monetised values are prioritised over other pedagogical and social values such as diversity, equity, well-being and care.This means thatit is a key role of academics to reproblematise the social reality of the present and to foster critical awareness of alternatives rather than acceptance of our current conditions (Roberts, 2005; Olssen, 2009). Our aim in this symposium is, therefore, to offer positive examples of resistance to neoliberal education from across sectors and geographical contexts. 

Resistance has two central dimensions: it must involve action (physical, material or symbolic) and be oppositionalin that actors challenge or subvert dominant discourses and practices in some way.  Resistance also needs to be intentional and interactional because it is ‘defined not only by resisters’ perceptions of their own behaviour but also by their targets’ recognition of, and reaction to, this behaviour’ (Hollander and Einwohner, 2004: 548).  The possible resources and strategies will differ from context to context but a sense of action and of opposition holds them together.  This symposium will also draw on Johansson and Vinthagen’s (2016) concept of a ‘repertoire of resistance’ which is ‘a combined result of the interplay between social structures and power relations, as well as activists’ creative experimentation with tactics and experiences of earlier attempts to practise resistance, together with the situational circumstances in which the resistance is played out’ (ibid. p. 421).  This means that groups develop ways of resisting that are embedded in relationships and processes of interaction between the resisters and their targets.  These repertoires are organised in specific contexts according to the historical and current power configurations, time, space and relationships in which they are embedded. 

The three papers in this part of the symposium show how resistance has been enacted at the local, national and transnational levels in ways that are inclusive and representative of people, their perspectives and their interests. The first shows how parents and community members in New York (USA) have increasingly resisted the neoliberal corporate reform agenda in schooling, including rejecting high-stakes testing.  The analysis utilizes literature about the impact of neo-liberalism on citizens and citizen rights, work on twenty-first century grassroots political movements, and will situate all of this in the contexts of changing neo-liberal politics (Brown, 2017). The next discusseshow activists, students and staff have sought to resist the neoliberalisation of Irish higher education and the ‘repertoires of resistance’ which they have used.  These various forms of resistance will be analysed from a critical realist perspective (Bhaskar, 1979) drawing on resources from cultural political economy and cultural studies. The final paper analyses the role of education across the EU through a focus on the European Semester. It identifies the dominant discourses that shape European education policy in its recommendations to Member States (Stevenson et al, 2017) and how civil society organisations (education trade unions and pressure groups) have sought to ‘open up’ the Semester process to popular pressure.

Bhaskar, R. (1979). The possibility of naturalism: a philosophical critique of the contemporary human sciences, Atlantic Highlands, N.J: Humanities Press. Brown, W. (2017). Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution. New York: Zone Books. Freire, P. (2004). Pedagogy of Indignation, Boulder and London: Paradigm. Hollander, J. A., & Einwohner, R. L. 2004. ‘Conceptualizing resistance’, Sociological forum 19 (4), 533-554. Johansson, A. and Vinthagen, S. (2016). ‘Dimensions of Everyday Resistance: An Analytical Framework’ Critical Sociology, 42 (3) 417-435 Olssen, M. (2009). 'Neoliberalism, Education, and the Rise of a Global Common Good'. In Re-Reading Education Policy: A Handbook Studying the Policy Agenda of the 21st Century, edited by M. Simons, M. Olssen, and M. A. Peters, 433-457. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Roberts, P. (2005). 'Review Essay: Pedagogy, Politics and Intellectual Life: Freire in the Age of the Market, Pedagogy of Indignation.' Policy Futures in Education 3:4, 446-458. Stevenson, H. Hagger-Vaughan, L. Milner, A, Winchip, E. (2017) Education and training policy in the European Semester: public investment, public policy, scoial dialogue and privatisation patterns across Europe, Brussels: ETUCE. Williams, R. (1989). Resources of Hope. London: Verso