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In recent years K-12 school systems from New York to Mexico City to Toronto, serving vastly divergent students and communities, have been subject to strikingly similar waves of neoliberal policies by governments. A key manifestation has been the de-professionalization or deskilling of teachers. Organized labours response has been highly uneven geographically. Professional autonomy means a capacity and freedom of teachers to exercise their judgement in interpreting broad curriculum guidelines, into their day to day classroom activities. It is the primary obstacle to the further neoliberalization of education. The expansion of standardized instructional and evaluative techniques and technologies are necessary for opening new markets within schools and for weakening the collective power of teachers and their unions. Their proponents are limited by the existence of the classroom as a space of labour autonomy, run by experienced and highly educated teachers. Recognizing the significant crossover of policy at the North American scale alongside significant economic and political linkages, this dissertation centres on case studies in three cities, New York, Mexico City and Toronto. This dissertation assesses challenges to teachers professional autonomy from 2001 to 2016 across five dimensions of comparison. First are changes in governance, namely the centralization of authority, often legitimized by mobilizing policies from elsewhere. Second are policies which have shifted workplace power relations between principals and teachers, as with School Based Management programs that download budgetary, discipline and dismissal practices to school administrators. Third are the effect of standardized testing of students and teachers on the latters capacity to exercise professional judgement in the classroom through designing unique lesson plans, pedagogy and evaluation. Fourth is the creation of school choice for schools competing for enrolment and thereby funding, which has tended to perpetuate class and racial segregation. Finally, the ability of teachers unions to construct a multi scalar strategy is considered, including alliances with parents, communities and other sectors of labour. This dissertation concludes with recommendations for how teachers unions could respond to the challenge to professional autonomy with a stronger engagement on teacher practice and professional self-regulation.
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The article reviews the book, "Red State Revolt: The Teachers’ Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics," by Eric Blanc.
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Focusing on a case study of a union organizing effort at the La Platosa mine in northern Mexico from 2009-2012, this paper studies the challenges facing labour activism at Canadian mining companies in Mexico within the context of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The positions of the Mexican and the Canadian governments in relation to contemporary workers’ struggles in Mexico’s mining sector are considered, particularly the latter’s adoption of a ‘corporate social responsibility’ approach to addressing the activities of Canadian extractive firms abroad. By studying the outcome of the request for mediation filed by La Platosa miners with the Canadian government’s Extractive Sector CSR office in 2011 and evaluating the evolution of this government’s policy approach to extractive companies abroad since 2009, we find that CSR as practiced by the Canadian government has been ineffective at mitigating abusive practices by Canadian mining companies in Mexico and that an alternate outcome is not to be expected under existing policy structures. The relative strengths and weaknesses exhibited during labour organizing at the La Platosa mine are evaluated to find both locally specific and more broadly applicable strategies which could be applied to union renewal, both by workers employed under NAFTA’s transnational sector, and by the general labour movement.
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