EN:

At a time when the United States Department of Education openly advocates for neoliberal, free market policies, exploration of these efforts is needed. Investigation into one such effort, charter schools, can help provide insight into complicated questions surrounding the value and impact of these schools, especially on the marginalized populations they often serve. In this study, I explored how these neoliberal principles impacted the experiences of special education students at a small, urban charter school in Southern California. Three broad themes emerged from the data: 1) school size in the competitive education marketplace, 2) the illusion of choice and quality in a school of choice, and 3) the unrealized promise of inclusion in a neoliberal environment.  Implications of neoliberalism on the experiences of poor, disabled students are discussed. Future research directions include case studies and ethnographies situated at the intersection of special education, neoliberalism, and inclusion in the United States.

EN:

As early as the 1990s, educationists, and even some governmental policy makers in China, advocated suzhi (quality) educational reform, aiming to develop creative individuals, and to revamp the exam-oriented and authoritarian education system. However, this suzhi educational reform was not entirely successful, with education in China becoming a hybrid of suzhi coupled with the much-maligned authoritarian and exam-oriented system. I believe that students’ quotidian life at school is governed by a disciplinary power that imposes a hidden curriculum. This essay uses Foucault’s major theories as a conceptualizing framework by examining the control of time, space, and body etc. as technologies of power at Chinese primary and secondary schools. The study concludes by depicting a postmodern future for Chinese students in which they flourish with creativity and innovation.

EN:

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to engage with the idea of criticality, specifically as performed by higher education researchers that espouse a critical quantitative approach. We contend there are many inherent hazards, ethical commitments, and contradictions that come with engaging in critical quantitative inquiry. Chief among the hazards and contradictions is the outright foreclosure of criticality as theorized by the very foundational principles cited in the extant conceptualizations of critical quantitative inquiry. To date, and as we will demonstrate through our review of relevant research, critical quantitative inquiry in education has largely failed to establish these recognitions. After examining the primary works on the topic, we offer a discussion of ways to recapture some of the positive potential we find in the early writings on critical quantitative inquiry.

EN:

This is the second of four issues in the special series investigating Contemporary Educator Movements: Transforming Unions, Schools, and Society in North America. This issue focuses on the “red” statewide K12 education strikes in the United States in the spring of 2018, contributing substantive analyses of the relatively understudied contexts of the walkouts for scholars and organizers. Together, the pieces in this issue suggest the importance of attending to the unique and deeply contested political geographies of the nation’s more rural regions and the significance of these regions to contemporary educator struggles.

EN:

Teacher organizing in the twenty-first century presents new and as-yet unstudied challenges and opportunities for union leaders and members. In this article, we explore the structure and function of the secret Facebook group created and used by teachers in West Virginia (USA) prior to, during, and since their historic statewide strike in February 2018. Working from poststructuralist and social movement unionist frameworks, we analyze focus group data generated with the group’s admins and moderators as well as survey data collected from the group’s general membership. Together, these data reveal a number of overt and covert group functions, including allowing members to imagine a new good teacher subjectivity. We argue that supporting members as they test such new subjectivities and make their personal, local activism visible within online communities is critical for organizers aiming to nurture collective action among union members, particularly teachers.

EN:

As a research team, we collected 40 oral history interviews with teachers and support professionals across the state who meaningfully participated in the 2018 Oklahoma education walkouts. The teachers and staff we interviewed are voices not previously cited in local or national news or would be identified readily as prominent or powerful leaders in the strike -- they are everyday folks, like many of the co-authors, whose vision and critical labor made the strike happen. Our collective analysis illuminates the limits in framing the event narrowly in terms of win-lose or as an anomalous event that began overnight with a statewide Facebook group in March and ended April 12th, when schools reopened. Instead, we draw from our interviews to suggest a framing that centers a constructively critical and in-depth understanding of what educators, students, and their communities collectively began and continue to learn and create in preparation for, during, and in the afterlife of the strike. At the same time, we work to understand in our analysis when and how such collective grassroots work was stalled or challenged. Further, we suggest analyses of the historic event should be more discerning of who speaks for the state’s educators and, alternatively, whose voices and perspectives exist only at the margins of the public record, if at all.

EN:

This interview takes place between two Arizona RedForEd movement leaders. The conversation centers primarily upon how Vanessa Arredondo, a central leader in the movement, understands the elements of rural organizing in Arizona. As the interview progresses, increased focus is placed upon the issue of institutionalization and movement engagement with electoral politics. Ultimately, the interview offers insights developed from grassroots organizing for activists and scholars interested in understanding the often-overlooked dimensions of rural organizing, as well as how they relate to issues of institutionalization and the consequent decrease of political capital.