Education Commons^™

The Symbolic Capital Of The Neoliberal University, Chad Lavin

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

The paper examines the concerns about the enduring value of liberal education in the broader context of a shift from a liberal to a neoliberal society. While so much literature on “the neoliberal university” tends to characterize neoliberalism as a hostile force invading the sacred space of the university, the knowledge comprising neoliberalism is in large part the product of research coming out of universities. Using the concept of symbolic capital to explore the role of university researchers in developing and consecrating neoliberal ideas, the paper argues that even in this era of heightened skepticism toward experts and expertise, university …

Critical Race Theory, Neoliberalism, And The Illiberal University, Rodney D. Coates

Journal of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies

No abstract provided.

Working Conditions Are Learning Conditions: Understanding Information Literacy Instruction Through Neoliberal Capitalism, Romel Espinel, Eamon Tewell

Communications in Information Literacy

Neoliberal capitalism’s demands for efficiency and innovation have greatly impacted North American academic libraries and the work conducted in them, including information literacy instruction. The divisive forces of neoliberalism must be met with resistance, and libraries hold the potential for generating an information literacy praxis where learners engage information with a critical consciousness instead of a consumerist one. Using library labor conditions and the contradictions between innovation and student learning as focal points, we argue that academic library workers should seek to center attention to inequities and injustices in the information economy and scholarly information systems in their instruction, identify …

Against The Tide: Indigenous Knowledge And Education For Humanization, Arturo Rodriguez, Kevin Russel Magill

Journal of Multicultural Affairs

Power brokers and their market economies enforce education on a global level. According to the United Nations, the effects of global neoliberal capitalism cause human rights violations in all parts of the world, yet democratic countries scoff at these findings (Pogge, 2002 & 2005). People of the world continue to believe that tying minoritized students to existing structures and ensuring enculturation is the best possible outcome for all involved (Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco, 2015). That is, minoritized children are educated to ensure first-world countries produce a minimally educated and willing labor force. In this paper we argue the following: 1) power …

White Male Privilege, Diversity-As-Deficit, And Tokenism In The North American University: Reflections On Netflix’S The Chair, Annamma Joy

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

Ji-Yoon, an Asian-American woman, is the newly appointed chair of the English department at Pembroke University, a lower-tier Ivy League school. Most of the department’s faculty are older and white and male, but do include a female white professor, Joan Hambling, clearly suffering from marginalization. There is also a young black faculty member named Yasmin McKay, whom Ji-Yoon wants to make the university’s first black tenured professor in the English department. Yaz, as they call her, has published in the top journals and is loved by her students, who flock to take her courses. There are other story dynamics dealing …

Responding To Neoliberal Individualism: Developing An Ethic Of Empathy Through Critical Communication Pedagogy, David H. Kahl Jr.

Journal of Communication Pedagogy

The university’s mission involves educating students to become civic leaders, balancing both individual and collective goals. However, neoliberal influences have shifted the balance to focus on the individual over the collective. Communication curriculum has also shifted over time, with a sizeable percentage of its classes designed to prepare students for individual economic success, with the byproduct being a deemphasis on collective thinking. The communication discipline can resist this neoliberal encroachment by redefining three of its goals and applying commitments of critical communication pedagogy to aid in the process. Doing has the potential to work toward the development of an ethic …

Reading The Word, Not The World: A Critical Analysis Of Close Reading, Jessica E. Masterson

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

This article critically analyzes a Common Core-aligned English Language Arts curriculum with particular attention paid to the ways in which it constructs docile subjects in and through literate practices. Through a critical reading and content analysis of this textbook--one that the author was required to teach to her eighth grade students--this paper argues that under the guise of “college and career readiness,” the curriculum contained within the textbook represents a neoliberal approach to literary criticism, one whose ideology is evident through the material practices of “close reading” and in the disciplinary methods it employs in teaching students the “correct” way …

Supervision To Deepen Teacher Candidates’ Understanding Of Social Justice: The Role Of Responsive Mediation In Professional Development Schools, Megan E. Lynch

Journal of Educational Supervision

Those responsible for supervising teacher candidates have an obligation to promote socially just pedagogies. In this paper, I investigate my own supervisory practice as a novice supervisor in my mediation of a teacher candidate’s understanding of social justice. I rely on a sociocultural theoretical perspective (Vygotsky, 1978) and the psychological tool of responsive mediation (Johnson & Golombek, 2016) for my supervisory practice and an anti-capitalist interpretation of socially just teaching (Apple, 2004; Ayers, 2010; Bowles & Gintis, 2011). Through a microgenetic analysis (Wertsch, 1985) of a post-observation transcript, I empirically document the developmental opportunities that take place over a span …

Book Review Of The Routledge Companion To Theatre Of The Oppressed, Amy Phillips

Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed Journal

In my review of The Routledge Companion to Theatre of the Oppressed by Boal, J., Howe, K., and Soerio, J., eds. (London and New York: Routledge, 2019), I compare the book’s call for Theatre of the Oppressed to embrace a nuanced investigation of social problems with its response: the international movements detailed in its chapters. While demonstrating that the first-hand accounts provide a measured answer to contradictions inherent in a system which Augusto Boal developed in response to a specific political climate, I emphasize the beauty of theory and practice sitting side by side, in paradox, and encourage scholar and …

Collective Beauty, Grace And Care Against Isolation, Mistrust And Lack Of Utopia:" Neoliberalism In Social Justice Theatre Work, Joschka Köck

Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed Journal

Aeport on three recent global online exchanges focusing on neoliberalism in social justice theatre work that represent an amazing example of the circular thinking and complex processes happening in truly dialogic group settings that can be faciliated through TO and PO

Shifting Skins: Becoming Multiple During Emergency Online Teaching, Bianca Licata, Catherine Cheng Stahl

Occasional Paper Series

In this essay, we reflect on the emergence of our (new) teacher identities from the phenomenal space created within online learning, following the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Thrust from classrooms into in-between spaces mediated by digital technologies, the capricious co-inhabited new learning space functioned as a becoming-other space of identity-play, surfacing from centrifugal intra-actions among human, non-human, and inorganic entities and energies—what we have named a thinning space (authors, forthcoming). It called for becoming shapeshifters together through resisting crystallized roles and (re)claiming a multiplicity of vulnerable thin skins. We draw from the possibilities of existing virtual gaming spaces to …

Beyond Brutality: Addressing Anti-Blackness In Everyday Scenes Of Teaching And Learning, Karen Zaino, Jordan Bell

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

While scenes of incredible and troubling violence, such as that of Black children handcuffed or brutalized by school security officers, have sometimes been leveraged to highlight the anti-Blackness endemic in schools, Saidiya Hartman’s (1997) book Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America suggests that we must also attend to scenes in which terror can hardly be discerned to identify and unravel the subtle threads of anti-Blackness that pervade contemporary schooling. That is this paper’s aim: to look beyond the scenes of spectacular suffering and to locate the pervasiveness of anti-Blackness in the mundane routines of teaching and …

Democracy, Neoliberalism, And School Choice: A Comparative Analysis Of India And The United States, Eddie Boucher

Journal of Global Education and Research

India and the United States are the largest democracies in the world, and since the 1990s, both countries have implemented neoliberal economic reforms into most of their social institutions—including their education systems. Even though both countries have long-established commitments to public education as a means for socio-economic equitability for all citizens, in the wake of neoliberal reforms both countries have made significant moves to privatize education. The justification for school privatization was based on policies that redefined democracy in economic terms, and the result is a very undemocratic marginalization for the majority of students who do not have the means …

Re-Envisioning Trauma Recovery: Listening And Learning From African Voices In Healing Collective Trauma, Jean Pierre Ndagijimana, Kissanet Taffere

International Journal of Human Rights Education

This paper critiques the influence of neoliberalism on mental health and the ways in which it denies the knowledge and capacities of Black African immigrants in the United States. It promotes and proposes community-driven approaches to supporting survivors of human rights abuses. The commentary is divided in two major parts: The first section discusses the impacts of monetization of Black grief, psychologization of poverty, and predatory inclusion on survivors of human rights abuses and staff within the humanitarian sector. The last section proposes more culturally relevant and humanizing healing pathways and frameworks for African immigrants in the United States. We …

Encounters With Care: Mentoring Beginning Art Teachers Amid The Pre[Care]Ious Conditions Of Neoliberalism, Christina Hanawalt

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Arguing that significant encounters with care often go unnoticed in a United States’ educational system largely defined by a neoliberal agenda, in this article I undertake a deep investigation of encounters with care that emerged in my experiences mentoring beginning art teachers. I approach these encounters as provocative disturbances that might reveal the nuances and intricacies of the entanglements at work. Through this exploration, I aim to show that these caring entanglements are, in consequential ways, run through with precarity—not only as an existential condition of life, but as a specific set of social, cultural, political, and material relations …

“We Don't Care About These Kids”: Chicago, Ethnic Studies, And The Politics Of Caring, Cinthya Rodriguez

#CritEdPol: Journal of Critical Education Policy Studies at Swarthmore College

This article juxtaposes two recent Chicago Public Schools (CPS) policies and expands upon Angela Valenzuela’s (1999) “politics of caring.” Given the unique space of Chicago for modeling neoliberal school reform policies, I analyze both the 2013 massive CPS closings that targeted predominantly Black communities and the subsequent institutionalization of African American and Latina/o Studies through CPS committees and curriculum. These CPS school closings and ethnic studies policies, I argue, mark a foundational relationship of racial and colonial power between students and communities of color and the settler city-state. Drawing upon community testimonies, news and popular media, and critical caring and …

Neoliberal Reading Interventions And Student Needs, Mahbuba Hammad

Journal of Critical Issues in Educational Practice

This article discusses reading programs within the context of Neoliberalism and the extent to which they address student needs. The rise of such reading programs in the market economy has come at the expense of placing the burden of reading development solely on the shoulders of students after restricting their academic and personal growth. The article explores how this has been done without any consideration regarding the needs of ethnically and culturally diverse students; and without taking into account the relationship between poverty and educational outcomes. Without a doubt, this has affected the ability of students to think critically about …

Restaging World Literature In The Age Of Neoliberalism/Neocolonialism, Shaobo Xie

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Restaging World Literature in the Age of Neoliberal­ism/Neocolonia­­lism" Shaobo Xie argues that Goethe's notion of world literature spells a genuine universalism that contributes to resistance to neoliberal imperialism. In the age of neocolonial­ism/ne­oliberalism all conduct, and all spheres of human life are framed and measured by economic terms and metrics and neoliberalism both as a govern­ing rationality and as an economic policy is penetrating into every part of the world. The politics that is really heter­ogeneous or external to the rule of neoliberal capitalism in the neocolonial global present consists in thinking towards new possibilities of organizing …

Higher Education In The Era Of Illusions: Neoliberal Narratives, Capitalistic Realities, And The Need For Critical Praxis, Ali H. Hachem

Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs

The modern American university is in transition, undergoing major changes to its very structure and function. While few of these changes are reflective of the rhetorical language of economic freedom, liberty, choice, and rights used in promoting the neoliberal state project, many others are clear indications of the re-coronation of a capitalistic oligarchy and the reinstatement of its class supremacy through the exploitation of society. While most of the critical literature in higher education attends to the structural macroscopic effects of the new capitalism, it is the argument in this article that more attention should be paid to the subjective …

Qualitative Research On Youths’ Social Media Use: A Review Of The Literature, Mardi Schmeichel, Hilary E. Hughes, Mel Kutner

Middle Grades Review

In this article we explore how educational researchers report empirical qualitative research about young people’s social media use. We frame the overall study with an understanding that social media sites contribute to the production of neoliberal subjects, and we draw on Foucauldian discourse theories and the understanding that how researchers explain topics and concepts produces particular ways of thinking about the world while excluding others. Findings include that 1) there is an absence of attention to the structure and function of social media platforms; 2) adolescents are positioned in problematic, developmental ways, and 3) the over-representation of girls and young …

Higher Education In The Era Of Illusions: Neoliberal Narratives, Capitalistic Realities, And The Need For Critical Praxis, Ali H. Hachem

Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs

The modern American university is in transition, undergoing major changes to its very structure and function. While few of these changes are reflective of the rhetorical language of economic freedom, liberty, choice, and rights used in promoting the neoliberal state project, many others are clear indications of the re-coronation of a capitalistic oligarchy and the reinstatement of its class supremacy through the exploitation of society. While most of the critical literature in higher education attends to the structural macroscopic effects of the new capitalism, it is the argument in this article that more attention should be paid to the subjective …

Reflections On Symmetries And Asymmetries In The Internationalization Of Higher Education In Brazil And Canada, Vanessa Andreotti, Elisa S. Thiago, Sharon Stein

Comparative and International Education / Éducation Comparée et Internationale

In this article we reflect on how internationalization is articulated in different ways within the context of a relatively new global educational credentials export industry (GEEI). This industry emerged largely as a response to decreased public funding of higher education in specific 'education export' countries. We take Canada as an example of one of these countries, to illustrate how the marketization of internationalization in higher education is reproduced and contested within that context. We contrast how internationalization is articulated in Canada with the context of internationalization in Brazil. We offer the case of a Brazilian university - UNILA, the Federal …

Raising The Charter School Cap In Massachusetts: The Consequence Of An Uncapped Neoliberal Rationality, Nicole L. Semas-Schneeweis

The William & Mary Educational Review

In September 2015, Governor Charlie Baker announced his support for raising the charter school cap in Massachusetts. This announcement has sparked a heated debate about funding for public education that problematically ignores neoliberal ideology. The Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993 began a reign of neoliberalism impacting education policies. An Act Relative to the Achievement Gap in 2010 saw an intensification of this privatization and free market ideology with its explicit support of charter alternatives. Achievement has become based on standardized assessments that presume a static, ethnocentric view of knowledge. Neoliberal ideology reinforces white Eurocentrism and a meritocratic rationale, disregarding …

Articulated Racial Projects: Towards A Framework For Analyzing The Intersection Between Race And Neoliberalism In Higher Education, Jon S. Iftikar

Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs

Scholars have been documenting the effects of neoliberal educational policies, practices, and ideologies on staff, faculty, and students of color in higher education. Their work has raised important conceptual questions about the relationship between neoliberalism and race: Has neoliberal hegemony brought about a significant rupture with previous racial regimes, or does the current racial-neoliberal formation in higher education represent a re-articulation, a recombination of pre-existing elements in new formations? Our ability to answer this question will aid in theory development and lead to new strategies for interventions. In this article, I argue that the intersection between race and neoliberalism should …

Democracy Dies In Dualisms. A Response To “Dewey And Democracy”, Dan Sarofian-Butin

Democracy and Education

This essay reviews Atkinson’s article “Dewey and Democracy” and argues that while Dewey and the social foundations classroom may indeed be important for teacher preparation, it is not in the way Atkinson suggests. Namely, I argue that Atkinson’s essay has three distinct (yet interrelated) issues: his problematic oversimplifications, what I term as “Dewey doesn’t do dualisms”; his misreading of Dewey, where I point out that “Dewey doesn’t do debate”; and his unexamined positionality, where I make clear that “Dewey doesn’t do Descartes.” I conclude this essay with a different perspective of a way forward with Dewey: that Dewey’s antifoundationalism serves …

Spectacular Spaces Of Consumption, Ellen G. Watkins

The Kennesaw Journal of Undergraduate Research

Abstract:

Many pre-professional dance studios have become consumer driven in response to the growing economic practice of neoliberalism. Neoliberal values have become more prominent in today’s economy and inevitably seeped into the lives of dancers and instructors, creating consumer based pre-professional training schools. This paper argues that the current neoliberal state of the United States is negatively affecting dance education by reducing specialized and therapeutic training and as a result numbing the creative mind and the artist’s entrepreneurial abilities. This research begins with the basic definition of neoliberalism and discusses how the theory of homo politicus and homo economicus individuals …

The Medical Student Manifesto, Ye Kyung Song

Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed Journal

Under neoliberal education systems, medical students are unable to critically engage and develop a critical consciousness because they are forced to master standardized test-taking skills and memorize medical minutiae. As insider-outsiders, medical humanists and bioethicists can shed light on the culture and power dynamics inherent in medical education. Furthermore, the medical humanities could teach medical students to critically reflect on their own human values, and to become ethical and humanistic physicians in the face of the hierarchical culture of biomedicine and neoliberal university administrations. Medical educators, through critical pedagogy, can liberate the medical student and create the potential for changing …

High-Impact Practices In Anthropology: Creating A Bridge Between Liberal Arts And Neoliberal Values, Susan Kirkpatrick Smith, Brandon D. Lundy, Cheyenne Dahlmann

Georgia Journal of Science

Neoliberal values are dramatically affecting higher education in the United States, with a focus on running these institutions as businesses and molding students into productive workers. This shift toward training and away from traditional liberal arts education at U.S. universities and colleges has occurred even as studies demonstrate that the ability to adapt in a rapidly evolving marketplace promotes long-term professional success. While neoliberalism and traditional liberal arts education are often seen as antithetical, we show how one anthropology program has combined these values into pedagogical practice through a select subset of high impact practices to improve academic outcomes for …

Neoliberalism And Developmental Education: Complexity And Contradictions In California Community Colleges, Antoaneta Gulea

Journal of Critical Issues in Educational Practice

The egalitarian mission of community colleges to provide an open access to educational opportunities for all often contradicts the high academic standards for college readiness, and therefore establishes the need for developmental education. Beginning in the 1970s, neoliberalism as a form of governmentality gradually invaded schools and public services including developmental education in a community college level. This paper explores the neoliberal influence on developmental education in three aspects: the effect of decreased institutional funding for the community college system and increased cost of higher education for students in developmental education, increased curriculum management and accountability expectations on a state …

Impacts Of Neoliberal Managerial Practices On Faculty Engagement In Student Learning Assessment, Christopher Urban

Prairie Journal of Educational Research

Faculty perceptions of student learning assessment were examined in the context of neoliberal trends in higher education in this exploratory survey study. For this preliminary study, a small department consisting of sixteen faculty members was surveyed. Responding faculty rated themselves as highly engaged in assessment, and rated course uses of assessment as more important than institutional uses of assessment. Faculty perceived administrators as placing more importance on institutional uses over course uses, though the gap between administrators and faculty was less in course uses than in institutional uses. Faculty ratings of neoliberal manifestations at their institution varied considerably, with a …