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

ABSTRACT

Few studies have attended to the specific influence of neoliberalism on education for social justice, despite the complex ways in which the competing discourses of neoliberalism and social justice work side by side in local educational settings. This article reports data derived from interviews with 28 educators committed to social justice education from across Ontario, Canada. Participants were asked how they perceived the impact of neoliberalism on education and on their teaching practice. Findings were interpreted through critical democratic theory and discourse analysis. An unanticipated finding is the influence of neoliberal discourse on the ways that educators spoke about their teaching practice for social justice. The study found that discourse of performance is one arena where competing discourses of neoliberalism and social justice not only coexist but also intersect. This finding has important implications for the transformative potential of social justice education through more concentrated attention to the power embedded in everyday speech acts. Attending more to the performative potential of neoliberal discourse toward social justice ends can be a mechanism for resistance and teacher agency.     

Standardized Teacher Testing Fails Excellence and Validity Tests

This paper presents and critically analyzes data from a project that sought teacher candidates' responses to the process and content of the Ontario Teacher Qualifying Test (OTQT), a mandatory, standardized, pencil and paper initial teacher qualification test. The aim of the project, guided by a critical democratic perspective, was to critically assess the success of the OTQT in achieving the government's stated objectives of greater competency and accountability. More specifically, the paper focuses on findings relating to teacher competency, with particular reference to criterion, ecolological and consequential validity, and alternative assessment strategies. The teacher candidates' responses raise serious issues about the content and format of the test since they believe that it neither achieves accountability nor does it secure excellence in teaching. These concerns echo the major concerns found in the literature.     

Critical Practice in Elementary Schools: Voice, Community, and a Curriculum of Life

This paper examines the differences andsimilarities in approaches to community, voiceand curriculum among three Canadian elementaryschools with respect to their potential toenact central aspects of a critical pedagogy:to extend voice to students and community;foster participatory, democratic education; andto cultivate critical reflection. The threeschools offer different conceptions andpractices. In one, a deficit model ofeducation seems to dominate; in the second, wefound an individual growth model of education;and in the third, a critical practice model ofeducation was the foundation for moredemocratic educational practices. We argue thatnot all change initiatives and approaches areequally valuable, and that the latter modelprovides a more profound and just educationalexperience for students.     

Language: an important signifier of masculinity in a bilingual context

This paper is based upon a case study in an all boys’ church comprehensive secondary school in Malta which explored teachers’ awareness of boys’ attitudes and interests. It uncovered a number of practices across the school’s official and ‘hidden’ curricula and at its administrative level, which, together with the student peer culture present on site, influence the construction of student masculine identities. This article argues that the decision by boys to speak one language rather than another in a bilingual context, is very much influenced by norms of masculinity. These are strengthened by the student peer group as well as by the male teachers within the institution and suggests that language is an important signifier of masculinity in a bilingual school, a masculinity which, in a post‐colonial context, is shown to be heavily linked to national pride and identity.