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Abstract: Teachers unions are notorious figures in state politics, asserting influence over elections and education policy with their large memberships and well‐funded PACs. Nonetheless, during the Great Recession Republican‐controlled state governments repeatedly clashed with teachers unions over their members’ compensation and collective bargaining (CB) rights. Conversely, public safety officers were less frequently targeted—and in some cases explicitly shielded—from CB conflicts. Is this because teachers support Democrats, while cops support Republicans? I evaluate this proposition considering state reform patterns and union partisan campaign donations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years mentorship has become a popular 'solution' for struggling boys of color and has led to the recruitment of more male of color teachers. While not arguing against the merits of mentorship, this article critiques what the author deems 'corrective representations.' Corrective representations are the imagined embodiment of proper and productive masculinities that male of color educators are asked to perform. This discourse perpetuates confining representations of identity and locates the problem of boys of color within their own actions. Designed as an ethnographic case study, this article explores the life of one Latino male teacher as he navigates discourses of corrective representation as coordinator of his school's Latino boys program. This project provides a detailed account of the cultural politics of Latino male mentorship and offers the notion of a critical borderlands approach to identity as an avenue to problematize essentialist and deficit approaches to Latino boys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The protests against the Budget Repair Bill in Wisconsin during the spring of 2011 provide a powerful moment in which to examine social studies teachers’ curricular, pedagogic, and personal political decisions in the context of a local, controversial current event. We engaged 7 middle and high school social studies teachers from small and large, liberal and conservative communities who participated in the protests in in-depth, semi-structured interviews using direct prompts rooted in critical incident scaffolding and open questions in keeping with oral history traditions. The teachers’ stories reveal the profound significance of that moment in their lives, the ways in which teaching through turmoil deepened their political awareness and activism, a range of factors influencing their decisions of whether or not to disclose their opinions to their students, the importance of the need for “balanced” teaching of controversial issues, and the ways in which they feel their voices have been silenced in the aftermath of the legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

While studies of the New York City Teachers Union (TU) generally attribute its eventual demise to the Red Scares of the 1940s and 1950s, this article situates the TU in the history of New York City teachers’ associations more generally. It argues that the Union’s fate was a consequence not simply of anticommunism, but of competition between the Union and other city teachers’ associations. In particular, the Teachers Guild fought with the Union for the mantle of teacher radicalism. While the two organizations fought for some of the same issues, the liberal Guild was accommodating to the government, while the radical Union was confrontational. When it came to the Union’s ideology, however, the Guild consistently sacrificed its commitment to academic freedom by collaborating with public authorities to reveal the extent of the Union’s Communist commitments. Using archival data – private correspondence of teacher unionists, minutes of Union meetings, and articles from the teachers’ unions’ official periodicals – this article documents the Guild’s efforts at subverting the Union, particularly at moments when the Union’s political commitments became salient in public affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This case study on nine bilingual teachers in Texas during their first year in a graduate education program examines both the development of critical consciousness among the educators and the ways in which critical consciousness shapes how these teachers come to understand their roles as teachers and leaders of a sociopolitically marginalized student group and community. Our analysis supports the proposition that teacher leadership programs can influence the development of social justice leadership, and it suggests that engaging teachers in certain types of structured learning opportunities can promote risk taking and a willingness to assume responsibility through the development of a sense of agency and efficacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses educational reforms and a revolt by Transylvanian Saxon church school teachers in Sibiu, Romania in 1948. Factors contributing to the revolt including teachers' wages, monetary reform, and inflation are investigated, the role of the nationalization of Evangelical Lutheran schools in the teachers' discontent is examined, and political and economic aspects of the teachers' revolt are described. The article emphasizes the conflict between the teachers' association and the leadership of the Evangelical Lutheran Church.

Finnish school teachers are unlike their colleagues in many countries, for their ethos and skills have traditionally formed the basis for a profession which has been very loyal to the state and to the changing educational ideologies of the government. Critical historical periods of wars and social revolutions have, however, produced – to a small degree – different kinds of tendencies. This article discusses the political agency of comprehensive and upper secondary school teachers by looking at a particular point of rupture in the Finnish “master narrative” of a neutral and impartial teacher image. As an example of a counter-narrative, the paper presents a small leftist teacher association called the Democratic School Workers Association (Demko) which existed between 1973 and 1989. Demko’s manifesto texts are analysed with the help of A.J. Greimas’ actantial model in order to find the possible kind of political agency that is constructed for teachers. The analysis shows a major change between the 1970s and 1980s. The early Demko narrative draws from the vocabulary of the neo-leftist student movement, inviting progressive teachers to join the “common struggle”. Demko aims at lobbying the more established political actors, whereas individual agency is shackled by the ideals of monolithicity and unanimity. In the 1980s, along with the fading of societal radicalism, Demko’s narrative evolves into a more polyphonic space for identity debates. Political agency is transferred from the collective to individuals who are supposed to critically reflect Demkoian ideals against their everyday praxis. All in all, Demkoian narrative is interpreted as having enriched the gamut of “possible discourses” in the era of the early Finnish comprehensive school. With its distinctively socio-political orientation, Demko tested the boundaries of the political agency of Finnish teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The success of Spain’s transformation from a dictatorship to a stable democracy has triggered a lively discussion about the factors which contributed to the process. The question of civic participation in Spain’s political transformation has proved highly controversial and I suggest that observing professional domains and their implications for citizen formation processes provides a new way to evaluate the civic contribution to Spain’s democratization. Spanish teachers mobilized in the 1970s around two main issues: their working conditions and pedagogical methods. This article focuses on the implications of their common struggle to articulate, construct and disseminate democratic citizenship. It shows how they contributed to free deliberation, civic involvement and citizen empowerment, aspiring to supplement the concept of citizenship with those of active participation in community organizations, knowledge of governmental procedures, critical assessment of social, political and economic structures and addressing areas of injustice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Deliberate investigation into practice is an essential of the National Association for Professional Development Schools' defining elements of a Professional Development School (PDS). This article reports on the pilot efforts of one PDS as it initiated deliberate investigation through action research with a small group of teacher candidates. The process of implementation across a semester is detailed as the authors attempted to integrate action research into an already existing internship structure. There is a particular focus on how action research can serve to prepare social justice oriented teachers and help them to develop the necessary inquiry stance for such an orientation. The candidates' own stories of their action research are told and the PDS supports that enabled their success are detailed--critical friends groups, clinical mentor faculty, and the very process inherent in action research. Two of the interns additionally share their experiences during their first year and a half of in-service teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study seeks to introduce what we call recognition-based pedagogy as a conceptual frame through which teachers and instructors can collaboratively develop educative experiences with students. Recognition-based pedagogy connects the theories of critical pedagogy, identity politics, and the politics of recognition with the educative experiences of students. Helping teachers understand and implement recognition-based pedagogy is essential to developing democratic and inclusive educational contexts. A case study of a group of teacher candidates demonstrates how pedagogy focused on recognition of student assets can be utilized to create the type of recursively elaborative experience that help future teachers come to value students' intellectual, social, and political experiences. Having experienced deficit, teacher candidates come to understand the impact of the deficit perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the history of teacher unionism in Ghana between 1931 and 1966. The author examines the history of educational development in Ghana, discusses the formation of several teacher associations, including the Gold Coast Teachers Association (GSTA), the Assisted School Teachers’ Union (ASTU), and the Gold Coast Teachers Union (GCTU), and explores the relationship between teachers’ associations and the state.

Although Teach for America (TFA) members encompass a tiny portion of the teaching workforce, the organization both attracts and creates disproportionate attention as part of its quest to develop educators with strong leadership skills. Because TFA's mission goes beyond individual classrooms, it has strategically grown its presence in policy arenas and other venues for advocacy and reform in order to create broad influence. This approach is a controversial departure from traditional preparation programs that prioritize developing sound pedagogy and teaching strategies over leadership capabilities or public activism. However, it distinguishes TFA participants by positioning them as empowered to drive a particular brand of change. We can better understand how TFA characterizes its role by examining the messages within its Teaching as Leadership manual and comparing them to themes within mainstream texts like The First Days of School, while considering the implications of differences in the way teaching is defined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the tensions that sometimes arise between educational researchers and policy makers. The recent history of the relationship is described and it is suggested that part of the reason for current disenchantment (on both sides) is that the two groups approach research with different expectations and priorities. Two particular examples, one from the 1970s and one from 2011, are considered in some detail, to illustrate how issues of power and control can lead to the adoption of 'political' stances that lose sight of the potential value of research. It is suggested that while issues of funding are important, researchers need to be self-critical about the quality of their research output and to identify potential growth areas for future activity. At the same time, policy makers should be less concerned about the short-term 'public relations' aspects of research and more willing to think of the longer-term benefits of good research evidence, even if it sometimes causes political sensitivities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This mixed-method case study explored teacher union members' beliefs about the teacher union and their reasons for being active or inactive in the union. Findings suggest that teacher unions have gained pragmatic and cognitive legitimacy (Chaison and Bigelow in Unions and legitimacy. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, ), but that participants' perceptions of the union's moral legitimacy (Chaison and Bigelow in Unions and legitimacy. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, ) influenced their beliefs about the union. Specifically, participants' beliefs about the union's role in job protection, especially the protection of ineffective teachers, and social-professional supports (or lack of) strongly influenced their decisions to be active or inactive in the teacher union. These findings have implications for how effectively teacher unions are able to engage current members and sustain member engagement in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Al-Jami'ah: Journal of Islamic Studies is the property of UIN Sunan Kalijaga, Al-Jami'ah Research Centre and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article discusses how Teach Plus organization and its Teacher Turnaround Team (T3) program empowers teacher leaders in the U.S. It is said that the T3 program assign top teachers to lead the improvement effort of schools while allowing them to earn 6,000 U.S. dollars annually. In addition, organizations like Teach Plus present teachers with opportunities to influence their profession and U.S. public education. INSET: Teach Plus.

The article offers steps for U.S. teachers to effectively advocate for education in 2013. It states that teachers need to work with other individuals and organizations to increase the scope and power of their voices, that they have to understand how a bill becomes law and how the law can be changed, and that they have to thoroughly study the history and complexities of the issue that concerns them. Positive relationships with decision makers at all levels should reportedly also be cultivated.

The article discusses the geopolitical operations of student resistance in global feminisms classrooms and the author's pedagogical negotiations with such resistance she witnessed in three classes. Topics mentioned include the literature on student resistance to feminist pedagogies, an overview of the teacher, the course structure, the student composition of the classes, and the institutional site, and the basic elements of the course. Suggestions for managing student resistance are offered.

This qualitative study focused on educators who participated in grassroots social justice groups to explore the role teacher activism can play in the struggle for educational justice. Findings show teacher activists made three overarching commitments: to reconcile their vision for justice with the realities of injustice around them; to work within their classrooms to create liberatory space; and to work collectively against oppression as activists. To enact these commitments, they engaged in particular practices common across the teachers despite their years in the classroom or their geographic location. A framework of teacher activism is revealed through the commitments and practices of the teacher activists, which can help support other teachers who are interested in working toward equity and justice in their classrooms and in the streets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role of politics in education, with particular focus given to what the author describes as the increasing influence of legislation on classroom instruction. Responses to the question of whether aspiring teachers should be educated about the role of politics on their future practice as teachers from members of the journal's editorial board are presented, and what the author describes lack of political involvement from teachers and lack of political power on the part of teacher unions is commented on.

The article discusses the best communication methods for teachers to use when corresponding with legislators. Several tips are given on how teachers should prepare for meeting with legislators, including learning legislative terms, keeping up to date with legislative activities, and identifying individuals and committees relevant to education. Additional tips include taking surveys, considering equity, and focusing on a specific issue.

Copyright of Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal is the property of Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article argues for the participation of teachers in educational policy debates in U.S. gifted and talented education that impact their students and schools, not only at the school level, but also at the district, state, and national levels. Topics include the social advocacy of gifted education by teachers, the importance of teacher cooperation and leadership to further gifted education awareness, and the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) gifted education organization.

The author reflects on the obligations of contemporary teachers in the U.S. He notes that teacher educators should foster a transparent critical discourse to prepare young practitioners in addressing tensions in the educational systems in the country. He says that teachers should recognize and observe the difference between illusions and reality in the society. He adds that teachers should participate in political debates to guide academic conventions in preparing the new generation of teachers.

Within the city-state of South Australia, the problem of attracting teachers to teach in rural schools is of long standing. We propose that "metrocentricity" can be viewed as a personal trait inhibiting teachers from considering country positions. In this project, 148 preservice teachers responded to an online survey concerning their desire to teach in the country after graduation. Twenty three per cent indicated this was their intention, and an additional 37% were undecided. Desire to teach in the country was predicted by being schooled in the country as a child, but path modelling revealed this relationship was fully mediated by the participants' self-ratings on a scale of personal metrocentricity, described as personal identification with the city. Metrocentricity predicted desire to teach in the country even within the subgroup of individuals not schooled in the country. Metrocentricity also predicted the disposition to endorse more negative aspects of country teaching experience, and fewer positive aspects, as indexed on checklists, and these measures were found to stand as significant mediators within the descriptive partial least squares path models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debra Askwith is a teacher, union member, and environmental health and safety activist in the public schools of Springfield, Massachusetts. In the following interview, she talks about her experiences organizing around the right to public information as a teacher and a union member. Working with the assistance of lawyers, she has learned to maneuver in the hierarchy of city and school administrators as well as the city's department of education, finding allies and meeting resistance in a variety of places. She has worked on asbestos, mold, indoor air quality, infectious disease, and civil rights to protect all students and workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the December 2008 special issue of the Oxford Review of Education John Furlong focused upon Tony Blair's modernisation of the teaching profession and associated attempts to harness teacher professionalism to a broader reform agenda. This article responds to Furlong's contribution through an examination of the evidence base used to support his conclusions, the way in which different types of evidence are used in this process and the criteria used to judge Blair's success in this venture. It is suggested that Blair's reforms of the teaching profession might be better viewed as a mere technicality within a wider scheme rather than the 'big prize' claimed by Furlong. It concludes by suggesting an alternative approach to writing the history of Blair and New Labour in this context which foregrounds the relationship between teachers and the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Horizontes Educacionales is the property of Departamento de Ciencias de la Educacion, Universidad del Bio-Bio and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Recent social movement research has focused particularly on movements whose lack of organizational structures makes their emergence rather mysterious. The study of identity politics has been an important paradigm in this line of research, most of which examines the 'new social movements' of the past four decades. But, as Calhoun and others have noted, identities have always been a constitutive element of social movements. Analysis of new social movements has simply added a few new markers, like gender and race, to the standard identity repertoire of class and nation. The nineteenth century French teachers' movement is an excellent example of a resource-poor movement and, I argue, would not have been possible without a particular self-understanding on the part of the teachers. But, rather than draw from one of these standard identity markers and research paradigms, I use two tools derived from social scientific studies of how states impose identities on subject populations: categories and professionalism. I explore the rise of the teachers' movement by studying the ways that state elites sought to impose categorical distinctions between secular and religious educators. Teacher training institutions created a model for politically orthodox, professionally competent schoolmasters: hard-working, modest, and subservient to the parish priest. The attempt at introducing secular teachers into primary education, a realm traditionally dominated by the priests, created friction between secular and religious schooling authorities. The teachers' anticlericalism was the unintended consequence of the French state's school reforms. When the French state secularized the education system in the 1880s, the teachers' appropriated their teacher training institutions for the purposes of political mobilization. Their demands for professional autonomy from state employers were the legacy of decades of localized oppression by ecclesiastical authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has established that a variety of factors predict educators' perceptions of students' performance; however, no studies have looked at the impact of educators' political views. The present experiment investigated the effect of educators' political biases on their grading of student essays. Participants included 122 volunteers who were randomly assigned to read an essay that supported or opposed the reelection of President Bush. Participants then evaluated the essay by assigning a holistic grade using a 4.0 grading scale and by assessing the essay's components using a rubric. Essays that matched educators' self-reported political views received higher holistic grades than those that did not. This same relationship, where essays that matched educators' views received higher grades, was found when educators used a rubric, indicating that a rubric was not an effective tool in preventing grader bias. The experiment suggests that educators' political views affect evaluations of student performance; the implications of these findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on advocacy for children of diversity in U.S. early childhood education. The author begins with three scenarios describing teachers who attempted to stand up for groups of children but were hindered by community and faculty bias. She describes potential risks in child advocacy due to others' discriminatory attitudes, and she presents a framework for ethical analysis to be used to develop purpose and efficacy in addressing situations that call for child advocacy.

Within an Australian context of diminishing opportunities for equitable educational outcomes, this paper calls for teacher engagement in a ‘politics of resistance’ through their focused gaze in relation to the ways in which they are positioned in their everyday practice. Our belief is that the resultant knowledge might equip teachers to see more clearly the managerial and economic rationalist discourses that constrain them in their pursuit of more equitable educational outcomes. Through the interpretative lenses of feminist poststructural theory, the paper presents snapshots of the practice of three Australian teachers. These snapshots, along with an analysis of them, highlight pedagogy as a political activity that is partial, interested and potentially oppressive. It is not argued that reflection alone will challenge inequities in educational outcomes for the diverse range of students, but that teacher interrogation of practice might better position teachers to exert their voices and take action in the challenging and complex times associated with neo-liberal reforms. The politics of resistance argued for here proposes an awareness and action beyond the micro-politics of the classroom to alliances that work towards transformation of inequities within economic and social power relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Acta Universitatis Carolinae Historia Universitatis Carolinae Pragensis is the property of Charles University Prague, Karolinum Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The study assesses the role of autonomous teachers' trade unions in Anglophone Cameroon during the period 1959-1972. The region's political and educational reforms were apparently followed closely by the emergence, development and dissolution of these unions. It argues that the preservation of trade union autonomy and the union demands for a substantial improvement in members' conditions of service formed a constant source of conflict between the government and these unions.

This paper examines campaign contributions from educational political action committees (PACs). Using a new and unique data set of political activity of the educational PACs across the fifty states and throughout the decade of the nineties, the authors describe the contributions' patterns of these groups. The authors argue that teachers occupy a low cost position for organizing. Approximately 90 percent of educational PAC spending is on behalf of teachers' organizations. Generalized least squares analysis of the state-year variance in contributions indicate that competition between teachers' groups and other education interest groups is a significant factor that influences the educational PACs expenditures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article studies the impact of union activities on teacher salaries using data on individual teacher's salaries. Two hypotheses were tested using ordinary least squares regression of various teachers' characteristics and extent of union activity in the district on individual salaries. The hypotheses tested were the lump-sum or shifts hypothesis that union activity affects all salaries equally and the hypothesis that union activity changes the values of specific characteristics, such as extent of teachers' education. The two major points determined in the study are, the existence of union activity significantly increases teachers' earnings and this increase is accomplished by inflating the value of educational attainment and years of service in the district.

This paper presents the authors' reply to Liz Gordon's review of their book Governing Education. We can quite see that our personal identities will have shaped the questions we asked and our ability to elicit evidence from our interviews and other sources but not that our identities determine the validity of our case. She contends that there is no space in this research for Marxist interpretations of history. Gordon claims that we ignore the concepts of hegemony and ideology and that we privilege the dominant account of the education system. Nor would it be right to claim that we are concerned here merely with minor differences of opinion among policy-makers. For example, we discuss the resistance to dominant beliefs on the part of schools and pupils. The destabilising effects of an expansion that the dominant ideology could not channel or contain is a theses that permeates the book. In relation to teacher unrest, on the other hand, the evidence does point towards the importance of teacher resistance and ideological breakdown. The rejection by many teachers of the dominant ideology of Scottish schooling had a similar significance, putting them beyond the moral pale of the Scottish policy community.

This article explores the relationship of teacher to the State during the first decades of this century. It argues that teachers had a particular ideological, political and economic role within the State. It takes issue with the recent studies of Ozga & Lawn which have invested teacher's trade union militancy with an anti-statist politics. This article employs a different approach to explain teachers' politics, especially those of feminist teachers. Exploring the objective and subjective relationship of teachers to the State, the article concludes that teachers' strategies were statist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Narrates a personal experience of the author as a public campus figure. Presiding over and participating in student rallies; Moral issue of teacher interference; Refocus on teaching technology and research.