To Take or Reject State Power? Teachers Unions, Political Strategy, and Educational Change in Brazil and Mexico.

Research on teacher unions is full of implicit assumptions about what reforms improve education. The tendency is to see teachers unions as actors that defend their own self-interest, not proponents of new educational initiatives. However, as my ethnographic research in Brazil and Mexico shows, teachers unions are not unitary actors, but rather, complex organizations with internal factions that embody different theories of social change. In Brazil, the debates within teachers unions are about how to build mass-based political parties, which fight in the interest of working-class groups, and how to transform schools into institutions that raise critical consciousness. In Mexico, the rise of the democratic teachers movement was a rejection of political parties, and an attempt to build the autonomy and capacity of schools for selfgovernance. In this paper, I explore the reasons for these distinct teacher union strategies in Brazil and Mexico, and the implications of these strategies for educational change. I argue that the goals, visions, and values of teachers unions shift, depending on the national politicalinstitutional context and the ideological orientations of the actors who gain power within the unions at particular historical moments. In other words, while I analyze how historical factors influence and shape teachers unions' histories, actions, and theories of social change, I also examine the agency of teachers themselves. In particular, I analyze the role of oppositional union leaders: who they are, why they begin organizing, what they are reacting against, and to what ends. I also explore the implications of these different political strategies and internal disputes for educational change. The findings in this paper illustrate that teachers unions are dynamic social forces directly shaped (and limited) by both their national context and the internal activism of their members--not static interest groups as many scholars claim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]