2017
DOI: 10.1111/aeq.12182
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Negotiating Tensions: Grassroots Organizing, School Reform, and the Paradox of Neoliberal Democracy

Abstract: Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork at a community-based organization (CBO) engaged in parent organizing for urban school reform, this paper examines how organizers engaged with the imperatives of neoliberal reform and the broader neoliberal policy context. It highlights organizers' agency but also shows how hegemonic discourse constrained their agency. It argues CBO involvement can contribute to educational neoliberalization and to neoliberal notions of democracy that, paradoxically, employ processes of symbo… Show more

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Cited by 28 publications
(20 citation statements)
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“…As neoliberal education policies continue to privatize schools, download fees onto local communities, undermine the value of teachers' work, and advocate increased scrutiny over teachers in the guise of “participation” (Compton and Weiner ; Puiggrós ; Silver ), the study of teachers' partial compliance with these processes will become increasingly important. As careful observers have noted, there is an inherent paradox of teachers' positions in neoliberal contexts (Nygreen ), and protesting neoliberal development builds upon local cultures of resilience (Phillips ). Among my Honduran research participants, even when they reluctantly ended up implementing aspects of the policies, they did so for their own reasons, drawing connections with what they experienced as benefits from the state.…”
Section: Toward a Focus On Teachers' Partial Compliance And Selectivementioning
confidence: 99%
See 1 more Smart Citation
“…As neoliberal education policies continue to privatize schools, download fees onto local communities, undermine the value of teachers' work, and advocate increased scrutiny over teachers in the guise of “participation” (Compton and Weiner ; Puiggrós ; Silver ), the study of teachers' partial compliance with these processes will become increasingly important. As careful observers have noted, there is an inherent paradox of teachers' positions in neoliberal contexts (Nygreen ), and protesting neoliberal development builds upon local cultures of resilience (Phillips ). Among my Honduran research participants, even when they reluctantly ended up implementing aspects of the policies, they did so for their own reasons, drawing connections with what they experienced as benefits from the state.…”
Section: Toward a Focus On Teachers' Partial Compliance And Selectivementioning
confidence: 99%
“…Others have specifically sought to study the diverse actions teachers take in a range of neoliberal funding contexts. These studies emphasize the alienation and devaluing of teacher and student labor under neoliberal regimes (Saltman ); how the global flow of neoliberalism converges with national governance agendas (Robertson ); the important role that teachers' unions play in opposing neoliberalism (Compton and Weiner ); how teacher resistance to neoliberalism is experienced in very localized contexts (Lipman ); how teachers' actions in neoliberal contexts are complex and contradictory (Nygreen ); and how teachers may develop strategies for deviating from official policy, cognizant of the frequency with which new ministry officials come to power with different agendas (Silver ).…”
mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Yet even these studies tend to overlook how power operates within participatory, democratic spaces. Recent studies that challenge assumptions about the “public” as immune from powerful schooling and societal discourses offer generative analytic languages for addressing these limitations (Baldridge, 2014; Nygreen, 2017; Pedroni, 2007). To offer one example, Nygreen (2017) illustrates how actors within a Freirean-inspired, community-based organization rallied for more equitable educational reforms but did so within an education reform context constituted by neoliberal discourses of standardization and accountability.…”
Section: Contrasting Perspectives On Ios In Educationmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Recent studies that challenge assumptions about the “public” as immune from powerful schooling and societal discourses offer generative analytic languages for addressing these limitations (Baldridge, 2014; Nygreen, 2017; Pedroni, 2007). To offer one example, Nygreen (2017) illustrates how actors within a Freirean-inspired, community-based organization rallied for more equitable educational reforms but did so within an education reform context constituted by neoliberal discourses of standardization and accountability. By calling attention to the “fields of power relations” and “regimes of knowledge” that limited reformers’ room for action (Nygreen, 2017, p. 56), Nygreen argues that participatory democracy is a necessary but inadequate solution to privatization.…”
Section: Contrasting Perspectives On Ios In Educationmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…As Stovall recounted, it was difficult to convince community members from La Villita to share a school with North Lawndale since the hunger strike emanated from La Villita and given broader tensions between the two communities rooted in histories of segregated housing and schooling policies. This chapter uses historical analysis to build on recent scholarly critiques of taken-for-granted categories, such as "community" (Nygreen, 2017) or "public" (Merry & New, 2017), which are often romanticized constructs set against anything that is "private," "market," or "neoliberal." Stovall details how visions for educational justice do not emanate from harmonious, democratic processes but rather from within contested, place-based struggles that require pedagogies of healing (Ginwright, 2010).…”
mentioning
confidence: 99%