The Opt Out Revolt


Book Description

Learn how to be a New Careerist--blazing trails and redesigning the corporate landscape




Opting Out and In


Book Description

Opting Out and In: On women’s careers and new lifestyles introduces a new perspective and definition of opting out that better reflects contemporary issues and lifestyles. The book offers a timely and comprehensive analysis of the phenomenon of women leaving high-powered careers, adding to current debates on opting out. It investigates the themes of globalization, individualization and the age of high modernity and addresses issues of how gender, in the context of what it means to be a mother and career woman in a masculinist society, affects decisions to opt out. In contrast to previous debates, the definition of opting out is broadened to include leaving prevalent masculinist notions of career to adopt alternative ways of working. To better understand the identity issues and inner workings of the women who opt out, opting out is critically examined through three lenses: agency and autonomy; gender, femininity and the maternal; and, finally, concepts of reinvention. These three areas of inquiry all raise and problematize relevant issues that are present in women’s lives, and that have a deep and defining effect on concepts of the self. The book includes the narratives of six women, interwoven with in-depth social theory and relevant debates. Written in an engaging and accessible style, Opting Out and In will strongly appeal to researchers and practitioners alike, working in areas such as social theory, globalization, feminist studies and identity studies.




Opting Back In


Book Description

Interrupting a professional career is, for women who opt out, a conflicted decision of last resort. Most women envision returning to the labor force even as they leave it. But can they? Drawing on unique research that follows up women first interviewed for Opting Out?, this book profiles the efforts of a group of high-achieving women to go back to work. The good news is that these women, who are able to draw on considerable resources, are successful. The bad news is that they face cross pressures of class and gender that create what we call the paradox of privilege, which reinforces gender inequality in the family and workplace and results in re-entry strategies that either marginalize them as contingent workers or, for the sizeable fraction who radically reinvent themselves, segregate them in female-dominated fields. The book offers an in-depth look at the pressures high-potential women face as they struggle with the mixed signals of their class privilege - promise compromised by patriarchy - and offers up-close and personal insights in to how the twin pillars of gender inequality - the leadership and wage gaps - are created and maintained by the very women expected to transcend them. -- Provided by publisher.




An Activist Handbook for the Education Revolution


Book Description

Contributions by: Rosemarie Jensen, Shaun Johnson, Morna McDermott, Laurie Murphy, Peggy Robertson, Ruth Rodriguez, Tim Slekar, Ceresta Smith, United Opt Out National Forward by Ricardo Rosa, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth This book is intended for educators, parents and community activists interested in reclaiming our public schools and reclaiming the public narrative around education policy. The book infuses research about the recent history of education policy reform, the strategies United Opt Out uses for fighting back against these policies, and proposes solutions that work to create sustainable, equitable, anti-racist, democratic and meaningful public education. This book is for anyone interested in an “insider’s look” behind the scene of forming an organization, or leading a resistance. Simultaneously the book provides scholarly-based research about the broader issues, policies and data around education reform, and the opt out movement. Education policy has been heating up ever since NCLB but especially since the roll out of Race to The Top and the Common Core State Standards. Nationally publicized debates and discord over these policies are garnering public attention of teachers, parents, and whole communities. We hope this book will add to the library of other recent books such as Mercedes Schneider’s A Chronicle of Echoes (2014), Diane Ravitch’s Reign of Error (2013) and Bowers & Thomas (eds) Detesting and Degrading Schools (2012), that have exposed the complex corporate interest in shaping education policies and the destructive influence such policies will have on our children and on our democracy. This book uses first person narratives infused with research and scholarship, to create personalized accounts into the life of education activism. Each chapter includes an Activists Handbook section to provide support for our activist/readers in their own efforts. We hope that our experiences will inspire others to take this charge upon themselves as well.




The Opt-out Revolution


Book Description




Opting Out


Book Description

A 2020 AESA Critics' Choice Book Award winner The rise of high-stakes testing in New York and across the nation has narrowed and simplified what is taught, while becoming central to the effort to privatize public schools. However, it and similar reform efforts have met resistance, with New York as the exemplar for how to repel standardized testing and invasive data collection, such as inBloom. In New York, the two parent/teacher organizations that have been most effective are Long Island Opt Out and New York State Allies for Public Education. Over the last four years, they and other groups have focused on having parents refuse to submit their children to the testing regime, arguing that if students don’t take the tests, the results aren’t usable. The opt-out movement has been so successful that 20% of students statewide and 50% of students on Long Island refused to take tests. In Opting Out, two parent leaders of the opt-out movement—Jeanette Deutermann and Lisa Rudley—tell why and how they became activists in the two organizations. The story of parents, students, and teachers resisting not only high-stakes testing but also privatization and other corporate reforms parallels the rise of teachers across the country going on strike to demand increases in school funding and teacher salaries. Both the success of the opt-out movement and teacher strikes reflect the rise of grassroots organizing using social media to influence policy makers at the local, state, and national levels. Perfect for courses such as: The Politics Of Education | Education Policy | Education Reform Community Organizing | Education Evaluation | Education Reform | Parents And Education




Men, Masculinities and the Modern Career


Book Description

This book focuses on the multiple and diverse masculinities ‘at work’. Spanning both historical approaches to the rise of ‘profession’ as a marker of masculinity, and critical approaches to the current structures of management, employment and workplace hierarchy, the book questions what role masculinity plays in cultural understandings, affective experiences and mediatised representations of a professional ‘career’.




Between the World and the Urban Classroom


Book Description

Borrowing from the ideas of John Dewey, schools and classrooms are a reflection of the world; therefore, in order to make sense of the urban classroom, we need to make sense of the world. In this book, the editors have compiled a collection of nine critical essays, or chapters, each examining a particular contemporary national and/or international event. The essays each undertake an explicit approach to naming oppression and addressing it in the context of urban schooling. Each essay has a two-fold purpose. The first purpose is to help readers see the world unveiled, through a more critical lens, and to problematize long held beliefs about urban classrooms, with regard to race, gender, social class, equity, and access. Second, as each author draws parallels between an event and urban classrooms, a better understanding of the microstructures that exist in urban classrooms emerges. “At a time of serious political, economic, and social uncertainty, we need a book like this, one that showcases how the world can be seen as a critical site of curriculum and pedagogy. A powerful intersectional analysis of the world, word, and urban sociopolitical context, authors in this book push the boundaries of what educators know and do in urban schools and classrooms. Grounded in frameworks of critical race theory and culturally relevant pedagogy, authors center essential societal moments that must be viewed as the real curriculum. These moments can equip students with tools to examine ‘the what of the world’ as well as how to examine, critique, challenge, and disrupt individual, systemic, and structural realities and practices that perpetuate and maintain a racist, sexist, homophobic, and xenophobic status quo. This is an important, forward-thinking, innovative book – a welcome addition to the field of urban education.” – H. Richard Milner IV, Helen Faison Chair of Urban Education, University of Pittsburgh




Searching for Authenticity


Book Description

Volume 2 of the Research in Careers series focuses on the search for authenticity in one’s career. Although there has been growing interest in the topic within the popular press, relatively little academic research has been completed on authenticity and careers. Researchers are still refining the concept of authenticity and are just beginning to investigate how it influences the enactment of careers in today’s turbulent career landscape. This volume offers the first organized effort on the topic. This volume contains seven chapters which examine the search for authenticity derived from the Kaleidoscope Career Model (Mainiero & Sullivan, 2006). Chapters 1 and 2 present a review of the literature and an in-depth analysis of the construct of authenticity. Chapter 1 offers a new lens to view career authenticity based on two dimensions of self-awareness and adaptability. Chapter 2 uses two case studies to define how individuals are authentic in their career. Chapters 3 and 4 examine the authenticity of individuals in different career stages, with Chapter 3 examining recent college graduates and Chapter 4 examining mid to late stage careerists. Chapters 5, 6 and 7 focus on the interplay between social interactions and career authenticity. Chapter 5 offers a process model that traces how, through negotiation, a person’s identities shape and are shaped by relationships with others, leading to the enactment of an authentic career. Chapter 6 explores how individuals remain authentic in their career while negotiating the conflicting expectations of multiple interest groups. Chapter 7 examines the complex relationships among career authenticity, political behaviors, and strain.




Handbook on Well-Being of Working Women


Book Description

This handbook provides an overview and synthesis of relevant literature related to the issue of the well-being of working women. This focus addresses a gap that currently exists in the quality-of-life and well-being fields. The work of the authors answers the following broad questions: Does gender matter in the well-being of working women? Do prejudices against and stereotypes of women still play a role in inter-personal interactions in the workplace that could hinder women from flourishing professionally? Does the organizational context, such as organizational culture, reward systems, and leadership, contribute to the well-being of working-women? What impact does the national context have on the well-being of working women? And finally, how can public policies help enhance the well-being of working women? These are important issues for academics, researchers, and graduate students interested in gender issues in the fields of management, sociology, psychology, social psychology, economics, and quality of life studies. Policy makers and practitioners will also find this book beneficial. Equitable treatment and outcomes for all, regardless of gender, remains a challenging goal to achieve, with various barriers in different contexts and different cultures, and this book provides strong coverage of this important topic of well-being of working women.