Neoliberal Education Reform Research Articles

How the Austerity Agenda Disappeared Over a Million California Community College Students: A Faculty Perspective

The largest system of higher education in the nation, the California Community Colleges (CCC) has disappeared more than one million students in the past 15 years, a 35% decrease in its student body since 2008 despite California’s population increase. This dramatic shrinking of the CCC system was not an accident. It was manufactured by a vast neoliberal policy network and funded by edu-philanthropist foundations, with the goal of disrupting, defunding, and dismantling public education. Tracking faculty and student advocacy against so-called student success policies, this article concludes that edu-philanthropist foundations have created decades of policy designed to shrink and disinvest from California’s community colleges. Building on the literature documenting neoliberal educational reform within the public sector of the United States, this article is based on original ethnographic research and leadership experience within local and statewide faculty organizations, including participation in the CCC governance and legislative processes from 2007 to 2022. The article calls for the nation’s community colleges to build a coalition that will educate the public about the 50-plus-year neoliberal project to defund public education; expose the philanthrocapitalist takeover of community colleges; and advocate for reinvestment in the millions of students who need the community colleges the most.

PISA and teachers’ reflexivities. A mixed methods case study

ABSTRACT Neoliberal educational reforms include extensive use of standardized tests. We examine the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) initiated and developed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Examining previous research on teachers’ reactions to neoliberal reforms altering their work context, we have identified three theoretical frameworks in use: labour process theory, derived from structural Marxism; post-structuralism, relying primarily on Foucault’s conceptualizations; and ‘new professionalism’, which has emerged from the theory of professions. A major weakness in these frameworks is their inability to account for different reactions to the same structural and cultural conditions. Therefore, we suggest utilizing Archer’s theories of reflexivity and reflexive modes to understand these reactions. Presenting one Norwegian lower secondary school teacher’s reflexive engagement with PISA in the Norwegian school context as an example, our mixed methods case study indicates autonomous reflexivity as the prevailing mode. Meta-reflexivity rates second in prevalence.

Incongruencies and Detrimental Effects of Neoliberal Education Reform in the United Arab Emirates (UAE)

Charged with postcolonial educational planning and development activities over the last 50-70 years, the context and content of educational planning and policymaking have evolved considerably in most Arab countries. The methodologies of planning and policymaking have also changed to match changing milieus and national priorities. Despite some accomplishments, many have amassed a record of educational policy and reform undertakings that have been less successful. Moreover, many Arab countries have been shown to continually lag behind other regions with similar levels of development, such as Latin America and South Asia. However, a few regional countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE), have taken a leading role in educational change initiatives in the implementation of globalized neoliberal reforms. More precisely, they have promoted bilingual (English/Arabic) and imported curricula, the modernization of school systems, privatization, standardization, accountability, school choice, and assessment reform. This study examined the implementation of recent UAE neoliberal reforms utilizing a framework derived from postmodern (neo)institutional analysis. This study argues that many policy undertakings have included contradictions and harmful impacts impeding the achievement of intended goals. Furthermore, educational policymaking has been caught between global and centralized national prescriptions for education and its role in society and unique contextual demands, which have created administrative challenges, dissatisfaction, and public resentment.

Incongruencies and Detrimental Effects of Neoliberal Education Reform in the United Arab Emirates (UAE)

Charged with postcolonial educational planning and development activities over the last 50-70 years, the context and content of educational planning and policymaking have evolved considerably in most Arab countries. The methodologies of planning and policymaking have also changed to match changing milieus and national priorities. Despite some accomplishments, many have amassed a record of educational policy and reform undertakings that have been less successful. Moreover, many Arab countries have been shown to continually lag behind other regions with similar levels of development, such as Latin America and South Asia. However, a few regional countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE), have taken a leading role in educational change initiatives in the implementation of globalized neoliberal reforms. More precisely, they have promoted bilingual (English/Arabic) and imported curricula, the modernization of school systems, privatization, standardization, accountability, school choice, and assessment reform. This study examined the implementation of recent UAE neoliberal reforms utilizing a framework derived from postmodern (neo)institutional analysis. This study argues that many policy undertakings have included contradictions and harmful impacts impeding the achievement of intended goals. Furthermore, educational policymaking has been caught between global and centralized national prescriptions for education and its role in society and unique contextual demands, which have created administrative challenges, dissatisfaction, and public resentment.

Education for sustainable development and global citizenship education in the GCC: a systematic literature review

ABSTRACT Countries in the Gulf Corporation Council (GCC) are undergoing tremendous social and economic change in a bid to transform their societies into thriving knowledge-based economies embedded within the global system. Education is at the heart of the agenda. This has led to sweeping, mainly neo-liberal educational reforms. Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and, to a lesser extent global citizenship education (GCED), is a vital part of this shift to achieve post-carbon economies and economic diversification. This paper is a systematic literature review of ESD and GCED in the GCC. It aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of the art and identify common themes, issues, and challenges in implementing ESD and GCED in the region. One important finding is that the vast majority of current studies focus on the multiple dimensions inside educational institutes, such as their students, faculty and curricula. New lines of research might explore alternative means for education and shaping people’s worldviews outside traditional educational settings. The second significant finding is that despite Gulf-specific trends, the broad overarching challenges, bottlenecks, and recommendations are strikingly similar to other countries, particularly Europe. This indicates a deeper structural and epistemological crisis within modern education systems itself.

Cornell Notes from Underground: Whiteness, Neoliberalism, and AVID for Higher Education

Context: This critical narrative study analyzes the discursive means by which the educational nonprofit AVID acculturates teacher educators and teacher preparation programs to its ideological network. Through scenes reconstructed from Cornell notes taken at an AVID Summer Institute, the author examines his double identity as an AVID for Higher Education (AHE) trainee, simultaneously alienated as a social justice educator but complicit in co-constructing AVID’s target white neoliberal identity. Purpose: This article aims to encourage resistant risk-taking among critically leaning educators who may find themselves either avoiding white neoliberal educational reform activities taking place in their programs or complying with them against their better judgment. By co-conspiring to carry out critical interventions during white neoliberal reform activities, or by conducting critical “underground” research as this article exemplifies, white neoliberal educational reform may be decentered and more space opened for anti-oppressive pedagogies in teacher education. Research Design: This study combines autobiographical and arts-informed methods from narrative inquiry to examine the double identity that emerged for the author during AHE training. Beginning with critical Cornell notes taken and kept “underground” during training, the author turns to Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novella Notes From Underground as a guide to analysis, showing that critical resistance to the culture of positivism white neoliberalism promotes is both long-standing and not won by working alone. Recommendations: The article recommends that, in the struggle to center racial and social justice in teacher education, critical educators should co-conspire and actively seek out white neoliberal reform activities, prepared to intervene with knowledge not only from critical theories but from the histories of race that drive the discourses reform organizations use to acculturate teacher educators to their ideological networks.

NEOLIBERALISM AND THE CHANGING NOTION OF INDIAN HIGHER EDUCATION

Neoliberalism is currently the most prevalent political philosophy across the world. It is a term used to describe the 20th-century resurgence of 19th-century ideas associated with free-market capitalism. The typical policies associated with neoliberalism include free trade, globalization, privatization, and changes in government spending to stimulate the private sector. This paper aims to better understand the reasons for this neoliberal turn in higher education and explore the visible and invisible ramifications of this paradigm shift in the policies for higher education in India. The paper focuses on the origins and meaning of neoliberalism, its application and practice in higher education, as well as the issues and critiques that have been raised in this context. The author offers both a critique of the neoliberal paradigm of marketized education and a challenge to academics to act as public intellectuals, both individually and with civil society organizations, to establish a counter-hegemonic discourse to neoliberalism for higher education. The paper concludes that neoliberal education reforms have made higher education much more diverse and have given rise to more learning opportunities; however, in India, which has enshrined systemic inequalities, neoliberalism has further reinforced existing inequalities, and public universities have lost their autonomy and led to knowledge capitalism.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/soc/0058/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Framing neoliberalism: A content analysis of Ley de Reforma Educativa de Puerto Rico

The American educational policy agenda has been fraught with neoliberal laws that center educational improvement and innovation (Barros, 2012). Neoliberalism operates on the premise that market competition will spur excellence in educational opportunities and decrease the education debt in marginalized communities (Fejes & Salling Olesen, 2016). Moreover, in the case of urban education systemic reforms, researchers need to endeavor how marginalized communities relay their concerns or endorsements in the media. News articles are one appropriate unit of analysis for investigating this problem. In this paper, I examine how an education reform law in Puerto Rico, Ley de Reforma Educativa de Puerto Rico (LREPR), was reported on in the four most popular newspapers on the Island. Conducting content analysis of newspaper articles produced findings that contribute to the policy literature by describing three central frames found in the media coverage of LREPR: (a) rhetoric on the “Free Selection of Schools” school voucher program, (b) the effects of mass school closures on municipalities, and (c) rhetoric on Alianza Schools—Puerto Rico’s Charter Schools Initiative. I close with how the frames depart from the Republican-leaning political affiliation of the newspapers and present a collective resistance to the neoliberal education reform policy.

“Who are these for? Is this for the teacher?”: Understandings of expertise and evaluation in the era of ESSA

Understandings of teacher expertise in the US have transformed over the past 40 years, arguably being “narrowed” and “numericized” due to high-stakes accountability and neoliberal education reform movements. While this trend has been thoroughly studied under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and Race to the Top regimes, less consideration has been given since the Every Study Succeeds Act (ESSA) replaced NCLB in 2015, which notably pivoted away from some of the most stringent accountability practices of the previous era. This paper begins a new line of inquiry into teacher expertise in our current federal policy context, especially considering how understandings of expertise are constructed in school districts that never adopted the most high-stakes evaluation measures. By relying on Jessica Holloway’s (2021) technologies of risk management, this paper explores how teachers in one school understand expertise, focusing specifically on how evaluation and assessment technologies engage with and influence these understandings. Ultimately, it was found that teachers in fact held a plurality of understandings, yet complex and sometimes conflicting influences of assessment and evaluation practices also emerged. This paper argues that although risk management technologies have become commonplace, scholars and practitioners alike should continue to scrutinize their use under ESSA, particularly considering how they are being used, who they primarily benefit, and what consequences come from our reliance upon them.

Who is the “Student”? A Critical Analysis of Neoliberal Education Reform Legislation

Neo-liberal reforms in education have been sweeping the globe, undermining education as a public good, and diminishing its contributions to democratic life. Using post-structural perspectives, this article provides a critical discourse analysis of a proposed legislative bill in the province of Manitoba, Canada, as it relates to the construction of the “student.” Using Foucault’s conceptualizations of governmentality and historical ontology of the subject, we interrogate the government’s proposed Bill 64 in order to reveal how policy works to constitute particular subjects. Our analysis reveals that Bill 64 constructs the student—through its relations to knowledge, others, and the self—as objectified and homogenous, and as being valued for economic contributions, thereby marginalizing other ways of being. By revealing the oppressive effects of neo-liberal discourses on students’ subjectivities, this article aims to inform educators, education researchers, and policy makers in the pursuit of more equitable educational policies and systems.

Forcing quality without substance: a critical analysis of evaluating teacher education programmes in South Korea

ABSTRACT In this study, the South Korean policy of evaluating the nation’s entire teacher education programmes regularly, which was introduced amid the globalization and rising popularity of neoliberal education reforms, was examined. Over the years, this policy has been criticized widely for its minimal impact on transforming teacher education. Employing the theoretical frameworks of teacher quality and teacher education accountability, a variety of relevant policy documents and teacher educators’ accounts were analysed to examine this problem. The results reveal that policymakers’ intention of quality assurance through this evaluation affirms an instrumental and neoliberal value, reflecting the global education reform discourse that associates teacher quality with the nation’s economic competitiveness. Aligned with this value, policymakers legitimize government control of teacher education and implement policies based on a narrow conception of teacher quality and the use of high-stake accountability mandates, thereby causing fear-based compliance with the programmes rather than genuine improvement in quality. The results suggest that any teacher education reforms that aim for meaningful teacher learning should reframe their conception of teacher quality based on a thoughtful and collective deliberation on what good teacher education is by actively engaging diverse stakeholders.

Boiling the Frog Slowly: Reducing Resistance to Neoliberal Education Reform Through Window Dressing Strategies

Increasingly partisan perceptions of neoliberal education reforms and resistance to such reforms from communities they negatively impact have created challenges for some neoliberal reformers. This article uses a case study of the state takeover and dramatic reshaping of the Camden, New Jersey school district to examine how some reformers have responded to those challenges. We find that Camden's state-appointed superintendents used multiple messaging and framing techniques to diffuse community resistance to unpopular policies. We refer to these techniques collectively as window dressing because they are intended to create a perception of movement away from neoliberalism without actually changing neoliberal policies. These strategies are intended to move public opinion and discourage resistance without having to fundamentally address critiques of neoliberal reform. We posit that neoliberal reformers are likely to expand their use of window dressing techniques in response to a growing rejection of neoliberal education policies, particularly by Democrats and progressives.

Through the Eyes of Novice Teachers: Experiences with Professional Cultures Within and Outside of Neoliberal “No-Excuses” Charter Schools

As neoliberal education reforms spread globally, including the development of school choice pathways that create different types of schools, a reexamination of teacher professionalism may be in order. Current literature about teacher experiences with neoliberal reforms often focuses on negative aspects of organizational professionalism and managerialism, describing shifts in professionalism as stifling teacher autonomy and diminishing satisfaction through increased accountability, standardization, and supervision. However, studies often only examine single school sites and the views and experiences of veteran teachers. This study considers two novice teachers' experiences as they transition between schools, one with more traditional professional cultures and the other within the hyper-neoliberal professional contexts of 'no-excuses’ charter schools, contrasting how they interpreted aspects of professionalism, development, and satisfaction in different environments. Compared to more traditionally professional school environments, novices’ experiences with managerial approaches to teacher professionalism served to accelerate their development while having drawbacks in terms of workload and turnover. The collaboration and collegiality, bounded autonomy, and shared accountability to mutual goals at these “no-excuses” charter schools seemed to create occupational professional subcultures where novice teachers feel simultaneously challenged and supported. The paper discusses implications for reexamining neoliberal approaches to teacher professionalism, mobility, and school organization.

Conducta autolesiva e ideación suicida en la adolescencia: desafíos en la Educación Profesional y Tecnológica

This article aims to communicate the results of the research entitled “Pedagogy of presence applied to the prevention of suicidal ideation and self-harm in adolescence”, developed at the Federal Institute of Rondônia. The objectives of the study were to contribute to the pedagogical management of the problem of suicidal ideation and self-harming behavior in adolescents, through theoretical reflection and transfer of two educational products. The research was developed in a qualitative approach, based on the Educational Action Research methodology. The results indicate that the school is both a factor of stress and illness and it has the potential to contribute to the promotion of students' mental health, self-care and care for others. It is argued that an omnilateral training, supported by the Pedagogy of Presence is capable of favoring the understanding of the structural and conjunctural factors of our time - which favors the reduction of personal frustrations, the flexibilization of the notions of failure and success among adolescents, and the development of cognitive and socio-emotional skills, in addition to what has been stimulated by neoliberal education reforms.

Examining Preservice Teachers’ Conceptions of Teaching to Consider the Impact of Policymakers’ Neoliberal Reforms on Their Sensemaking of Their New Profession

Policymakers’ neoliberal education reforms have altered teaching and teacher education. These neoliberal policies reframe teaching and teacher education through conceptions of standards, academic achievement, data, and accountability. By doing so, many new and experienced teachers have left the field, and this has caused many who remain to question their ability to attain policymakers’ objectives and what it means to be a teacher. Yet, little is known about the impact of these neoliberal reforms on preservice teachers. In this article, we begin to attend to this issue by examining how a sample of preservice teachers made sense of their role as teachers and the profession they are entering. We then analyze whether such sensemaking reflects policymakers’ neoliberal framing of these constructs. Based on these findings, we outline opportunities for teacher educators to work with their preservice teachers to interpret, critique, and respond to policymakers’ neoliberal reforms.

“Nothing about us without us”: Tending to emancipatory ideologies and transformative goals in participatory action research partnerships

In this paper, a collaborative group of university researchers and a community organizer who participated in a 2-year participatory action research (PAR) partnership reflect upon their inquiry process and analyze its effects. Authors examine the benefits, challenges, and potential of using PAR to advance educational justice and transformative goals amidst austere neoliberal education reforms, such as public school closure and state sanctioned privatization. Authors consider ways PAR can reflect emancipatory ideologies, enable social and political change, and disrupt oppressive dynamics that many urban education organizers and activists oppose. Insights pertain to cultivating community-based norms that foster collective learning, agency, and social action, while also confronting methodological tensions in the work. Such tensions pertained to varied ideas about emotionality in research, research design, and the layered power dynamics of university-community relations. Authors highlight implications for implementing justice-oriented PAR in urban education arenas affected by intensifying neoliberal political contexts.

We’ve Been Had: Neoliberal Initiatives in Urban Education

In this manuscript, we rely on practices of thinking with and through theory to situate and analyze the discourses of three neoliberal educational reform initiatives. We researched public-facing material from these initiatives to surface how commonsense language and colorblindness is often used to disguise agendas that reaffirm the racial status quo in urban schools and society. We offer strategies for educators, teacher-educators, and administrators to critically respond when they encounter such neoliberal reforms.

Neoliberal Logics: An Analysis of Texas’s STAAR Exam Writing Prompts

This article adds to a growing body of research tracing the influence of neoliberal education reforms on policy and practice by showing the ways in which student writers are positioned within market-oriented discourses and values through Texas state exam writing prompts. As a genre-in-use, the writing prompts are seemingly mundane texts that privilege certain perspectives for viewing the world. This article uses critical discourse analysis to examine seven years of Texas state exam high school writing prompts, focusing on how the grammatical design of the prompts and the recontextualization of informational texts or quotes demonstrate traces of neoliberal logics such as individualism, self-reliance, and superficial multiculturalism. We call for critical pedagogies that help teachers and students resist the naturalization of dominant discourses and imagine collective responses to creating a more just world.

Creating entrepreneurs: National curriculum change in South Korea

This article explores national curriculum change initiated by the South Korean state by examining the 2015 curriculum reform. Relying on interviews with policy actors who participated in the curriculum-making process, I aimed to understand how certain reform ideas within an institutionalized, state-led curriculum change made—or failed to make—their way into official documents. Three main themes emerged from interviews: (a) entrepreneurial vision supported by elite bureaucrats and politicians, (b) education professors importing performance standards from the United States, and (c) parent-citizens empowered by education consumerism opposing elitism. Based on the data analysis, I argue cyclical South Korean national curriculum revisions, dominated by Korean elites, function as a social apparatus to disseminate and underpin neoliberal ideology. I also argue parent-citizens’ political activism—empowered by three decades of education consumerism policies—succeeded in challenging Korean elitism and demonstrated anti-neoliberalism potential. As a theoretical framework, I chose critical works addressing neoliberal education reform discourses. I conclude by discussing the future of national curriculum making in the continued process of neoliberalisation.

CARICOM Caribbean’s HRD 2030 strategy: inscribing the neoliberal imaginary through social planning?

ABSTRACT The globalisation’s ‘knowledge economy’ has created a new set of human capital requirements. The guiding policy and planning document, The CARICOM Human Resource Development 2030 Strategy: Unlocking Caribbean Human Potential document, ‘serves as a roadmap for the CARICOM Caribbean’s responses to these human capital demands. I conduct a critical analysis of this document’s policy discourses to ascertain their core values and strategies, as well as their implications for the education and development of the CARICOM Caribbean. I find that the emergent discourses and ideas – neoliberal education reform and state-led social planning – provide a cautionary tale of the potential impact of educational change driven by the neoliberal imaginary of globalisation. A chief concern is that as the discourse of education as a tool for social planning is utilised according to a neoliberal logic of the education system operational reform discourse, the deep social development problems already characterising Caribbean education and other development challenges, may very well be exacerbated.