Bolivian Teachers’ Agency: Soldiers of Liberation or Guards of Coloniality and Continuation?

Cardozo, M. Lopes

doi:10.14507/epaa.v23.1713

Cited by 9 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Moje and Lewis (2007) see it as "the strategic making and remaking of selves, identities, activities, relationships, cultural tools and resources, and histories, as embedded within relations of power" (p. 18). Anderson (2010) argues that teachers are agentic when they use their "capacity to make choices, take principled action, and enact change" (p. 541), and Cardozo (2015) sees agency in educators' "space to manoeuvre … [and] the consequent strategies they adopt as potential agents of change" (p. 3).…”

Section: Agency Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Leaving a Profession after It's Left You: Teachers’ Public Resignation Letters as Resistance Amidst Neoliberalism

Dunn

2018

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education

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Context Though there is a growing field of research on what makes teachers leave, little research includes an analysis of narratives written directly by teachers. Yet, amidst a growing body of teacher writing and a surge in digital media, there has emerged a new genre of teachers’ public resignation letters, many of which go “viral” when posted online. This research is contextualized by literature on teacher attrition and neoliberalism and framed within theories of teacher agency and teacher resistance. Purpose Within a context where the letters themselves are becoming more popular and the rates of teacher attrition continue to rise in troubling ways, this study explores a new genre by investigating the content and strategies employed in public resignation letters from teachers around the United States. Research Design This research employed a qualitative design, drawing on methods of content analysis, to analyze 23 publicly available resignation letters. Conclusions I argue that these letters represent a new form of public discourse. This discourse allows teachers to exercise their personal and professional agency in the form of resistance to dominant narratives about what public education is and should be and what current neoliberal reforms are doing to teachers and students. These among other reasons I uncovered through thematic coding are linked to contextual factors rather than individual ones, pointing to the limits of retention in a climate that does not support teachers’ agency. Further, the majority of reasons for leaving are explicitly or implicitly tied to current neoliberal educational policies. According to their letters, teachers left the profession because (1) neoliberal reforms and policies threatened learning conditions and (2) these reforms had negative consequences for teachers’ working conditions and beliefs. Specific neoliberal reforms and policies that were mentioned in the letters include: increased standardized testing and restrictions on curriculum, which teachers argued reflected a lack of care for students’ socioemotional needs; decreasing pay/benefits; and punitive teacher evaluation systems. In addition, the consequences of these reforms meant that teachers felt: a lack of time, a mismatch between their beliefs and the reality of teaching in today's educational climate, and a lack of trust and respect for their profession, and a lack of control over their working conditions.

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Section: Agency Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Leaving a Profession after It's Left You: Teachers’ Public Resignation Letters as Resistance Amidst Neoliberalism

Dunn

2018

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education

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“…Taking up the experiences of Freire (1973;2002), this approach would engage problem-posing to decolonise education, critical dialogue, the transformation of teacher-student relations, and the incorporation of indigenous knowledge. At school, people are called to become «critical, auto-critical, reflexive, proactive, innovative» (Lopez Cardozo, 2015), teachers are also social researchers exploring democracy and integral inclusion.…”

Section: Buen Vivir: Living In Harmony Educating To Diversitymentioning

confidence: 99%

From a different perspective. The Pedagogies of Others for an Intercultural and Sustainable Relationship among Humanity, Nature and Society

Pescarmona

Gozzelino

2020

MeTis

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Nel quadro dello sviluppo sostenibile promosso dall’Agenda 2030, il contributo entra in dialogo con le proposte culturali, sociali ed economiche del Buen vivir (Ecuador e Bolivia) e dell'Ubuntu (Sud Africa) come occasione di riflessione pedagogica e interculturale. Ascoltare diverse interpretazioni di sviluppo umano, realizzate in comunità (attraverso prassi di responsabilità, educazione e partecipazione) e in equilibrio con l’ambiente (nel rispetto dei diritti della natura), non è solo un modo per conoscere la storia degli altri, ma diventa un atto di giustizia sociale se si riconosce il diritto di voce a altre visioni e si mette in discussione la nostra prospettiva, basata su un assunto individualista e eurocentrico. Nuovi sguardi ci insegnano la necessità di nutrire la diversità culturale, sociale e biologica come responsabilità pedagogica e economica per educare alla ricerca di risposte alternative e aprire le porte dell'oikos al mondo.

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“…The strategic choice of this particular teacher trainer to become involved in the implementation process is in contrast to the resistance to the new reform of her colleagues. It also is an exception to many in-service teachers in Bolivia, who have simply felt uninformed and hence not in favour of yet another reform (Lopes Cardozo, 2011, 2012a, 2012b, 2015). This illustrates how teachers’ individual strategies and choices are often closely related to collective strategies around them, as well as both individual and collective political and societal discourses and beliefs, to which we will now turn.…”

Section: Teachers’ Strategic Responses To Reformmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transformative teachers or teachers to be transformed? The cases of Bolivia and Timor-Leste

Shah

Cardozo

2016

Research in Comparative and International Education

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Applying the Strategic Relational Approach, this paper analyses the circumstances behind and educators’ strategies in response to education reforms in two nation-states undergoing socio-political transformation – Bolivia and Timor-Leste. Despite the starkly different histories and contemporary context of each nation, we suggest that transformation in both settings is driven by a desire to unshackle histories of colonisation and social conflict. Education reform, at least discursively, aims to dislocate past practices and replace them with a new material reality. In such spaces, we find that teachers are acting as strategic political actors, but in ways that are historically situated and driven by real and perceived personal and professional constraints. Their actions lead to particular types of ‘resistance’ and strategic action, leading to outcomes that are simultaneously continuous and disconnected from the past.

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Bolivian Teachers’ Agency: Soldiers of Liberation or Guards of Coloniality and Continuation?

Cited by 9 publications

References 31 publications

Leaving a Profession after It's Left You: Teachers’ Public Resignation Letters as Resistance Amidst Neoliberalism

Leaving a Profession after It's Left You: Teachers’ Public Resignation Letters as Resistance Amidst Neoliberalism

From a different perspective. The Pedagogies of Others for an Intercultural and Sustainable Relationship among Humanity, Nature and Society

Transformative teachers or teachers to be transformed? The cases of Bolivia and Timor-Leste

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