In the United States, teachers have been both respected and villainized in popular culture and politics. These varying and conflicting cultural ideas and representations of teachers impact policy design, shaping the distribution of benefits and burdens imposed on teachers. The media play an important role in both crafting and reinforcing cultural…

Teacher strikes have taken place in the United States since the end of the 19th century, became much more common in the 1960s, and have enjoyed a resurgence over the past five years (2018-2023). In this paper, we analyze teacher strikes with two main objectives. First, we examine how sexism and misogyny impact discourse around teacher strikes, as…

This paper engages with the Freirean concept of politicity for critical policy studies in education. The first part lays the ground to expand the conceptualisation of teachers' politicity. I argue this entails an examination of the limits and possibilities within a juncture. To develop the argument, the second part focuses on a teacher strike that…

In 2018, thousands of teachers in West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Arizona walked off the job to protest low salaries and increase school funding. These strikes were significant because they were statewide and took place in "right to work" states. We analyze news media articles published in these states about the teachers' strikes for…

In the last four years, teacher-activists in the United States have engaged in an unprecedented wave of protests and strikes. The developing body of literature seeking to understand this flurry of activity has taken various analytical approaches; for example, distilling movements into their key tactics in the hopes of lending important tools to…

In 2002, approximately two thirds of school teachers in the Canadian province of Alberta went on strike. Drawing on media, government and union documents, this case study reveals some contours of the political economy of labor relations in education that are normally hidden from view. Among these features are that the state can react to worker…