Neoliberalism and Education Reform


Book Description

This book has two primary goals: a critique of educational reforms that result from the rise of neoliberalism and to provide alternatives to neoliberal conceptions of education problems and solutions. A key issue addressed by contributors is how forms of critical consciousness can be engendered thought society via schools, that is, paying attention to the practical aspects of pedagogy for social transformation and organizing to achieve a most just society.




Mapping Corporate Education Reform


Book Description

Mapping Corporate Education Reform outlines and analyzes the complex relationships between policy actors that define education reform within the current, neoliberal context. Using social network analysis and powerful data visualization tools, the authors identify the problematic roots of these relationships and describe their effects both in the U.S. and abroad. Through a series of case studies, each chapter reveals how powerful actors, from billionaire philanthropists to multinational education corporations, leverage their resources to implement free market mechanisms within public education. By comprehensively connecting the dots of neoliberal education reforms, the authors reveal not only the details of the reforms themselves, but the relationships that enable actors to amass troubling degrees of political power through network governance. A critical analysis of the actors and interests behind education policies, Mapping Corporate Education Reform uncovers the frequently obscured operations of educational governance and offers key insights into education reform at the present moment.




Reforming Education in Developing Countries


Book Description

Underpinned in the stream of thought named 'communitarianism', Reforming Education in Developing Countries argues that developing countries need educational reforms that are tightly entwined into their cultural, social, and organizational contexts. It questions the applicability of neoliberal reforms in developing societies, through an analysis of the main elements of neoliberalism in education. It highlights the critical role of the community and suggests new and alternative lines of thought for the practice of reform initiation and implementation in developing countries. The book criticizes major neoliberal ideas in education, illuminates the distinctions between current neoliberal reforms and the characteristics of traditional societies, analyzes major educational ideologies in the developed world, and emphasizes the key role of local communities in this world. It proposes a dynamic model of reforming education in these countries that includes three major phases and integrates both modern and traditional (indigenous) educational purposes and values. Evocative ponderings are outlined throughout the book to promote critical thinking and reframing of educators' views towards educational reform and change. This book will be of great interest to researchers and students in the fields of educational leadership, educational policy, educational change, comparative education, political science, and sociology. It will also appeal to educators, supervisors, and policymakers.




Resisting Neoliberalism in Education


Book Description

Neoliberalism is having a detrimental impact on wider social and ethical goals in the field of education. Using an international range of contexts, this book provides practical examples that demonstrate how neoliberalism can be challenged and changed at the local, national and transnational level.




Public Education, Neoliberalism, and Teachers


Book Description

From pressure to "teach to the test" and the use of quantitative metrics to define education "quality," to the rise of "school choice" and the shift of principals from colleagues to managers, teachers in New York, Mexico City, and Toronto have experienced strikingly similar challenges to their professional autonomy. By visiting schools and meeting teachers, government officials, and union leaders, Paul Bocking identifies commonalities that are shaping how teachers work and public schools function. While arguing that neoliberal education policy is a dominant trend transcending the realities of school districts, states, or national governments, Bocking also demonstrates the importance of local context to explain variations in education governance, especially when understanding the role of resistance led by teachers’ unions.




The New Political Economy of Urban Education


Book Description

Urban education and its contexts have changed in powerful ways. Old paradigms are being eclipsed by global forces of privatization and markets and new articulations of race, class, and urban space. These factors and more set the stage for Pauline Lipman's insightful analysis of the relationship between education policy and the neoliberal economic, political, and ideological processes that are reshaping cities in the United States and around the globe. Using Chicago as a case study of the interconnectedness of neoliberal urban policies on housing, economic development, race, and education, Lipman explores larger implications for equity, justice, and "the right to the city". She draws on scholarship in critical geography, urban sociology and anthropology, education policy, and critical analyses of race. Her synthesis of these lenses gives added weight to her critical appraisal and hope for the future, offering a significant contribution to current arguments about urban schooling and how we think about relations between neoliberal education reforms and the transformation of cities. By examining the cultural politics of why and how these relationships resonate with people's lived experience, Lipman pushes the analysis one step further toward a new educational and social paradigm rooted in radical political and economic democracy.




A Political Education


Book Description

In 2012, Chicago's school year began with the city's first teachers' strike in a quarter century and ended with the largest mass closure of public schools in U.S. history. On one side, a union leader and veteran black woman educator drew upon organizing strategies from black and Latinx communities to demand increased school resources. On the other side, the mayor, backed by the Obama administration, argued that only corporate-style education reform could set the struggling school system aright. The stark differences in positions resonated nationally, challenging the long-standing alliance between teachers' unions and the Democratic Party. Elizabeth Todd-Breland recovers the hidden history underlying this battle. She tells the story of black education reformers' community-based strategies to improve education beginning during the 1960s, as support for desegregation transformed into community control, experimental schooling models that pre-dated charter schools, and black teachers' challenges to a newly assertive teachers' union. This book reveals how these strategies collided with the burgeoning neoliberal educational apparatus during the late twentieth century, laying bare ruptures and enduring tensions between the politics of black achievement, urban inequality, and U.S. democracy.




Neoliberal Transformation of Education in Turkey


Book Description

Neoliberal policies have had an impact on educational systems globally. This book provides a detailed and critical analysis of neoliberal educational policies and reforms in Turkey by focusing on the Justice and Development Party's reform efforts over the last eight years.




Confronting Educational Policy in Neoliberal Times


Book Description

This volume explores how educational policy is changing as a result of neoliberal restructuring and how these issues affect educators’ practice. Evidence-based chapters present a sharp analysis of neoliberal education policy while also offering suggestions and recommendations for future action to bring about change consistent with more robust understandings of democracy. Covering issues relating to historical context, philosophical assumptions, policy implementation, accountability, teacher professionalism and standardization, Confronting Educational Policy in Neoliberal Times critically engages the ways micro- and macro- neoliberal politics shapes the purposes and implementation of schooling.




Neoliberalism and Education Systems in Conflict


Book Description

A call to explore and map the educatıonal challenges under neolıberalısm across the globe / Khalid Arar, Deniz Örücü and Jane Wilkinson -- Challenges of school principals and teachers in private schools : comparison of Turkısh and Palestenian cases / Deniz Örücü and Khalid Arar -- Neolıberal challenges in public schools in Hong Kong : an East Asian model? / Paula Kwan, Benjamin Yuet Man Li and Trevor Tsz-lok Lee -- Principals' leadership tensioned by market pressures In Chile / Romina Madrid Miranda, Claudia Córdoba Calquín and Catherine Flores Gómez -- Polıcy-practıce decouplıng : education inspection reform in China / Meng Tian and Xianjun Lan -- Issues in pre- and primary school education in rural Turkey : teachers' experiences and perspectives / Ecem Karlıdağ-Dennis and Zeynep Temiz -- Stepping up or stepping aside? : the necessity of balancing promise with critique / Maysaa Barakat and Daniel Reyes-Guerraa -- Neoliberalism : the straw that broke the back of Lebanon's education system / Julia Mahfouz -- The neoliberal challenge to leading in disadvantaged public primary schools in Victoria, Australia / Katrina MacDonald, Jane Wilkinson and Corine Rivalland -- Educational administration challenges in the destabilised and disintegrating states of Syria and Yemen : the intersectionality of violence, culture, ideology, class/status group and postcoloniality / Eugenie A. Samier -- Commonalities in schools and education systems around the world shifting from welfarism to neo liberalism : are the kids are okay? / Alison Taysum and Carole Collins Ayanlaja -- Doing social justice leadership in challenging circumstances : principals' perspectives / Rinnelle Lee-Piggott, Dyanis Conrad-Popova and Dennis Conrad -- How leaders of outstandıng Muslım schools in England interpret Islamic educatıonal values in a neolıberal clımate : 'Brıtısh values' and market competıtıon / Fella Lahmar -- Concluding remarks : meeting at the global/local nexus of school challenges : what next / Khalid Arar, Deniz Örücü and Jane Wilkinson.