Social movements and the transformation of teachers’ work: case studies from New Zealand

Abstract

The major aim of this article is to explore the potential of teachers as transformative agents within schools. The study first looks at theoretical perspectives which analyse both the class location of teachers as well as the kinds of relationships and structural constraints into which they enter -both in their pre-service training, and throughout their work as teachers. The paper then presents ethnographic data to argue that despite the overwhelming and hegemonic restraints on teachers, when they, individually and/or collectively, are inspired by social movements outside of the school, then total institutional and ideological incorporation is less likely to take place. Case studies are presented to illustrate how such politicized teachers and schools struggle to establish a space in favour of progressive and democratic agendas.

Teacher Power and the Struggle for Democracy: an educational movement in Malta

“…The same sense of despair, prevalent in the earlier accounts, re-emerged as the likelihood of enrolling teachers in sufficiently weighty numbers in the struggle for a participatory democracy which addressed not only the educational, but the political and the economic sphere as well seemed remote (cf. Sultana, 1987Sultana, , 1991a. As Archer (1986, p. 78) points out, with particular reference to the work of Anyon (1981) and Apple (1982), the new emphasis on resistance simply led to a more complex form of correspondence theory: this time round, incorporation was to take place through contestation.…”

Education and social transition: Vocationalism, ideology and the problems of development

“…Teachers, both because of their class extraction and those cultural processes specific to the labour setting in which they participate (Sultana 1991a), have been generally reported to represent the industrial rather than the democratic imperative through the knowledge forms and content, and classroom social relations they transmit and encourage in schools. Within their structures and curricula, overtly and covertly, schools generally inculcate those qualities appreciated by employers, developing social relations that are authoritatively hierarchical, and thus promoting passivity, docility and silence.…”