New Right 2.0: Teacher populism on social media in England

Abstract

This article is concerned with teacher populism on social media in England. This has grown in the last 10 years, facilitated by Twitter. While it appears to be a response to challenging working conditions and declining pay, it has largely been driven by conservative political strategy, an adaptation of the New Right coalition between social conservatives and economic liberals of the 1970s. New Right 2.0, as I frame it here, is a New Right project for the social media age, but also goes deeper into society to promote civic capitalism-so-called 'Big Society'. New Right 2.0, like its predecessor, is an attempt to create an aggregated passive acceptance of free-market ideology by creating division and indifference, setting one group against another, using the state to reward its proponents and to discipline its objectors. Teacher populism, though modest in numbers and specific to a particular public service, uses the language of populism to promote its cause, wanting to give voice to the ordinary teacher against a liberal educational elite which includes academics, local education authorities and teaching unions. This article contributes to an understanding of the social, cultural and political processes that are at play as part of a populist rupture.

School choice, teachers’ work, and professional identity

“…Employability and teachers' perception of the job market therefore played an important role in how teachers strategically aligned and presented a "first-stage" professional identity for their top choices in the primary sector, then subsequently adapted this identity according to their status in the job market. Ultimately, this type of market segmentation can generate ideological polarization related to teachers' professional identity, which, according to Watson's (2020) interpretation of micropopulism can lead to an 'us' and 'them' "populist antagonism" (p. 3). Indeed, studies previously noted that charter teachers and some alternatively prepared teachers formulate professional identity and socialization processes in sharp contrast and in opposition to perceptions of TPS teachers Weiner & Torres, 2016) or those in traditional preparation programs (Thomas & Mockler, 2018).…”

“…Similarly, another teacher stated, "Public school is where I substituted…so me being new, I veered towards what was more familiar to me." Across our sample, we found that teachers with less familiarity with the charter sector, typically prospective teachers-traditionally or alternatively prepared-constructed professional identities that often reflected a 'micro-populist' (Watson, 2020), anti-charter sentiment or, at least, were resistant to charter schools by excluding charters from their initial job search.…”

Networks of power and counterpower in social work with children and families in England

“…It is also important to re-iterate at this stage that, setting aside their potential value as a space for promoting counterpower, so far new ICTs have been far more effectively used by dominant networks to entrench and expand their power within the network society. Dominant networks are highly active on new media platforms, for example Twitter, and in conjunction with their networked access to traditional media sources, use these to disseminate their message, trivialise opposition, and intimidate dissenters, often using highly sophisticated means (Lee, 2015; Watson, 2020). Slavina and Brym (2020) suggest that because digital communications media are ultimately controlled, surveilled and marketised by people in dominant networks, they are actually highly effective in thwarting any progressive activism that relies on these modes of communication.…”

Principles for the design of a fully-resourced, coherent, research-informed school mathematics curriculum

“…This has led to the rise of grassroots organizations, such as ResearchED, 12 which is focused on improving research literacy among teachers, and the growing interest shown in the research syntheses and reports published by the Education Endowment Foundation and disseminated through the Research Schools Network. 13 This impetus has coincided with a recent proliferation of teacher-facing blogs, podcasts and books, and the rapid rise of 'eduTwitter' (see Watson, 2020). In the last few years, there has also been an explosion of resources (books, websites, conferences, blogs) devoted to making use of evidence from psychology and cognitive science (e.g.…”