“Caught in the Nets of ‘Discipline’”: Understanding the Possibilities for Writing Teachers’ Resistance to Standardization in Local Policy

Abstract

This article contributes to the practice of critical policy analysis by using de Certeau’s concept of consumption to analyze how writing teachers resist policies that work to systemize and commodify student writing. Through narratives, we represent the ways teachers tactically and strategically sidestepped the mandated curriculum in an effort to support their sociocultural views of writing. We use a poem built from participant responses to represent discomfort that teachers felt from dominant forms of organization that tried to define writing instruction. These multiple forms of representation extend the practice of critical policy analysis by allowing us to evoke the grind of resistance to local policy.

“We’re in compliance”: Reconciling teachers’ work as resistance to neoliberal policies

“…For example, critically conscious educators are able to meet the demands for increased achievement through authentic, culturally relevant pedagogy (Duncan-Andrade, 2007. Additionally, teachers may subtly enact enclaves of resistance within the school yet outside the scope of the neoliberal policy (Dua rte & Brewer, 2019). This points to "the difficulty of seeing where the state ends and the subjects of the state begin" (Silver, 2007, p. 271).…”

“Part of Their Chemistry”: The Reproduction of Neoliberal Governmentality in Principal and Teacher Subjectivities

“…Ball, Maguire, and Braun (2012) describe policy enactment as the process in which educators interpret, translate, and create responses to external policy demands placed upon them. While working within the neoliberal policy context, this process can produce a tension (Duarte and Brewer 2019). For example, despite skepticism toward standards and accountability (Troia and Graham 2016), some teachers live in a state “characterized by fear, compliance, and pressure to conform” (Picower 2011, 1112).…”

The Influence of Teacher Discipline on Teaching Effect and Students’ Psychology in Universities and the Normative Suggestions for Discipline Behavior

“…In the medieval era of the West, “stick education” has become the main form of school education. The club was an indispensable tool in the medieval school (as shown in Figure 2 ; Duarte and Brewer, 2019 ; Afandi et al, 2021 ).…”