The Confucian Educational Philosophy and Experienced Teachers’ Resistance: A Narrative Study in Macau

Abstract

This study investigates experienced teachers’ resistance in an era of neoliberalism in Macau. The narratives of three experienced teachers are examined under a post-structuralist framework. The findings indicate that the traditional Chinese Confucian ideology of education guides the experienced teachers’ professional practice and offers them an alternative subject position to inhabit that makes it possible for them to establish a critical distance from the prevailing norms imposed by the hegemony of neoliberalism. Such a distance allows the experienced teachers to observe, to think otherwise and consequently to live out a different teaching life and to reassemble their identity around an empowered notion of self. The study concludes that the Confucian ideology of education has contributed to the transformation of the contemporary discursive context of Macau by promising a future for education, a future with a revisioned future rather than a neoliberal incorporation of the past.