Performance power: the impact of neoliberalism on social justice educators’ ways of speaking about their educational practice

MacDonald-Vemic, Angela; Portelli, John P.

doi:10.1080/17508487.2018.1428642

Cited by 14 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…This illustrates some of the ways in which social practices of which the participants are critical are also to some extent internalised in and reproduced by them. A phenomenon which has also been observed elsewhere in relation to neoliberal practices (MacDonald-Vemic and Portelli, 2018).…”

Section: The Interplay Between Valuing Teaching and Other Aspects Of Professional Identitysupporting

confidence: 57%

Academic identities in contemporary higher education: sustaining identities that value teaching

McCune

2019

Teaching in Higher Education

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This paper investigates how academics in the current global higher education system -which often prioritises particular metric proxies for research activity and income generation over rich conceptualisation of teaching -can sustain identities that encompass deep care for students' learning and positive values in relation to teaching. This is a significant area that has been little researched, particularly with experienced academics in mainstream roles in research-intensive universities. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twelve experienced academics in a research-intensive university. A thematic narrative analysis illustrated important ways in which it can be possible to maintain academic identities that encompassed deep care for teaching. The ways in which narrative processes are significant for identity development which underpins deep care for teaching and strong values in relation to teaching are drawn out.The interplay over time of tensions and synergies between different facets of participants' identities were shown to be important for maintaining strong teacher identities. Implications for how identities focused on transformative teaching can be prioritised in institutions are explored in relation to the institutional changes and reflexive processes which would be required.

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Section: The Interplay Between Valuing Teaching and Other Aspects Of Professional Identitysupporting

confidence: 57%

Academic identities in contemporary higher education: sustaining identities that value teaching

McCune

2019

Teaching in Higher Education

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“…Changing work conditions are inviting a variety of responses from educators. In some cases, schoolteachers are exercising their agency against the prescribed pedagogical framework (see MacDonald-Vemic & Portelli, 2018;Ball & Olmedo, 2013) and promoting social justice through their teaching performance in the classroom (MacDonald-Vemic & Portelli, 2018). In other contexts, teachers are navigating the education market by adopting new practices, such as offering after-school paid tutoring support (see Dawson, 2009;Zhang & Bray, 2017;Kobakhidze, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teacher-entrepreneurialism: a case of teacher identity formation in neoliberalizing education space in contemporary India

Gupta

2019

Critical Studies in Education

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This article examines the processes underlying the formation of the identity of teachers as entrepreneurs in neoliberalizing education landscape in contemporary India. Drawing on interactions with 38 schoolteachers at two private schools in Dehradun, this article explores why and how educators adopt specific entrepreneurial strategies to navigate precarious, competitive market conditions. It subsequently illustrates how, in their pursuit of career advancement, educators commodify their knowledge and skills and promote the market logic of choice and freedom. By elucidating the mechanisms through which educators reproduce the processes and practices that nudge their search for promising career opportunities in the formal education system and the tuition industry, this article argues that teacher-entrepreneurs are both products and carriers of the neoliberal agenda. It introduces the concept of teacherentrepreneurialism, a manifestation of neoliberalism, which shapes educators' entrepreneurial dispositions; it suggests that teacher-entrepreneurs sustain neoliberalization in its varying forms and bolster its legitimacy. By illustrating the variegated, processual existence of neoliberalism, this article makes a case for investigating education as a neoliberalizing space in the increasingly profitcentric, market-driven, and performance-oriented schooling sector that prevails across societies, particularly in contemporary India.

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“…This article seeks to throw light on how teachers negotiate the education field (Bourdieu, 1977; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1996) and how they position themselves in the everyday classroom space. Studies have demonstrated that teachers mediate their agency and professional habitus against the prescribed state-led policies to promote social justice (Ball & Olmedo, 2013; MacDonald-Vemic & Portelli, 2018), despite teaching in ability classes. There is little research documenting experienced teachers’ classroom practices, their beliefs on how they teach and their constructs of differential pedagogical treatment.…”

Section: Outline Of the Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The micro-practice of ability grouping implies that it potentially affects not only what teachers do or act but ‘who they are’ (Ball, 2003, p. 215). It reifies teachers, making them solely and indignantly responsible for ‘academic success and failure regardless of systemic factors’ (MacDonald-Vemic & Portelli, 2018, p. 5). This ‘responsibilising’ (Neumann, 2019, p. 2) of teachers makes them accountable to the data-driven micropractices of the school.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teachers’ Voices, Pedagogy and Discursive Practices in Ability Grouping Classrooms in Delhi Government Schools

Bali

2023

Contemporary Education Dialogue

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This article discusses the pedagogic practice of ability grouping in government schools in Delhi. Despite practical evidence against homogenous student settings, ability grouping is implemented as a policy solution to reduce the huge variance in students’ learning levels within a classroom. Research data is drawn from interviews with 110 government schoolteachers in Delhi, where achievement data from baseline surveys conducted by the Delhi government was used to group students. Using Bourdieu’s (1998) theoretical tools, this article explores how the objective practice of ability grouping positions teachers and their pedagogical practices as intending to obtain performance measurement. Ability grouping creates an environment for teachers in which they submit to consigning students with low achievement results to low ability classrooms. Their habitus is less empowering as teachers’ ability to be teachers and in developing their own curricular content is curtailed by ability setting. The findings of this study reveal that most of the teachers’ pedagogic practice take the shape of educational triage. This had implications for enacted pedagogies and curriculum, as there is an extensive application of the exam-oriented technique of teaching, including selective and abbreviated curriculum in low-ability classrooms as teachers selectively cover less curriculum.

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Performance power: the impact of neoliberalism on social justice educators’ ways of speaking about their educational practice

Cited by 14 publications

References 31 publications

Academic identities in contemporary higher education: sustaining identities that value teaching

Academic identities in contemporary higher education: sustaining identities that value teaching

Teacher-entrepreneurialism: a case of teacher identity formation in neoliberalizing education space in contemporary India

Teachers’ Voices, Pedagogy and Discursive Practices in Ability Grouping Classrooms in Delhi Government Schools

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