In 2019, Oakland teachers joined the wave of teacher strikes across U.S. cities sparked by teacher activism against neoliberal reforms that cut funding to public schools, increased privatization, and led to school closures. As in other cities, a group of progressive rank-and-file teachers working toward transformative change moved their union…

This article examines the teach-outs organised by staff and students at Lancaster University during the 2021-22 UCU strike. Guided by a critical discourse analysis of blog posts co-produced by staff and students during the strike and teach-outs, this article will examine how the teach-outs developed an education programme critiquing the neoliberal…

This article explores the realm of educational politics and the organization of opposition to neoliberal school reform in the United States of America. A distinguishing feature of the current reform movement--which blends free-market rhetoric with austere governance and undemocratic corporate control--is the callous normalization of educational…

In this paper, we offer a childist reading of school strikes for climate in an overheated world. We argue that school strikes can be understood as offering a dynamic counterweight to formal education, by providing opportunities for children to self-educate, and for others, especially adults, to learn from them. We suggest that taking school…

Public school teachers around the country are engaged in strikes. They walked out of their classrooms and schools to gain attention from state legislators, and not just for better salaries and benefits for themselves (although most Americans agree that teachers need better pay). Teachers are calling attention to a sticky problem in American public…

This article analyses the narratives and counter-narratives which characterised the struggle between the Chicago Public School Board (CPS) and the Chicago Teachers' Union (CTU) preceding the 2019 Chicago teachers' strike. This was an extraordinary event which has received little scholarly attention. The paper explores the types and uses of the…

This article reflects upon the neoliberalisation of higher education and its effects on teaching practice. It is argued that a neoliberal discourse of teaching excellence has the effect of working against, and potentially undermining, the emancipatory potential of higher education. The article reflects upon attempts to navigate disciplinary power…

In this article, I examine key symbols and strategies mobilized by students during the first system-wide strike in the University of Puerto Rico's history. I argue that these acts of creative cultural production not only supported the growth of participatory politics within the mobilization but that they also were tools for enacting public…

As public-sector unions such as teachers' unions used the boon of post-war liberalism to form their political power, they imported many of liberalism's key contradictions: its formation of racial contracts, its misappraisal of affective labour, and its opportunistic collective action logics. This article suggests cracks within liberalism weakened…

We explore how two "happenings" representing different political, social, historical and economic influences converge to shape the narratives of preservice teachers and teacher educators in West Virginia. These happenings are the 2017-2018 edTPA roll out and the teacher strike of February 2018. We use the framework of sensemaking to…

This article analyzes the development of the Egyptian workers' movement in the face of the 25 January Revolution through the notion of dialectical pedagogy. This Gramscian concept is extended by a Vygotskyan analysis of the reciprocal learning processes, which stimulate a proletarian activity system to overcome its economic-corporate predicament.…

The transformation of the historical functions and goals of the European university is producing the transition from mass university to what has been called "corporate university". With this goal, I will examine how the new functions of the university are aimed at providing services and precarious workers to the labor structure of…