VIRTUAL: Applying Education

Abstract

Neoliberal agendas (e.g., privatization, marketization) are negatively influencing education practices globally with respect to curriculum, public perceptions, and teachers’ professionalism. Employing narrative inquiry, the proposed presentation draws upon data from a study which explored how Canadian teacher activists enacted advocacy to resist detrimental neoliberal reforms both within their union and beyond through grassroots activism (e.g., social media). It is informed by semi-structured interviews with ten teachers in addition to two focus groups with the same participants. Guided by Harding et al.’s poststructural framework of Alliances, Assemblages, and Affects (2018) the study explored how teachers function within complex political environments in which human (e.g., teachers, the public, government officials) and non-human entities (e.g., curriculum, protest, ideologies) continually interact and influence one another. Moreover, within assemblages, affect circulates as emotional energies (e.g., anger, empowerment) that draw like-minded people together with the passion and drive to act. To envision alliances, it draws upon Diani (Towards a network theory of (new) social movements, 2000) who imagined networks as groups with shared political beliefs who are essentially stuck in a rut. Grassroots activist groups are less entrenched than established political parties or teacher unions and can move more easily to form new alliances. Study findings then, expressed as poetry-like vignettes, suggested that contextual factors (i.e., unfavorable political environment, fear of repercussions) influenced teachers’ sense of professionalism yet, despite risks, they strategically persisted in advocating for public education. It offers potentialities for destabilizing, reconceptualizing, and subsequently realizing more activist interpretations of teacher professionalism.