This article, which appeared in New Politics in Winter 1968, is not currently in the NP archive... more This article, which appeared in New Politics in Winter 1968, is not currently in the NP archives, although it is available online: https://www.unz.com/print/NewPolitics-1968q1-00005/ I am posting it as a public service. Note the author is Steve Zeluck although the website shows me as the author.
Bringing together leading observers of the 2018 teachers' strikes in the United States, this foru... more Bringing together leading observers of the 2018 teachers' strikes in the United States, this forum surveys the origins, character, and trajectory of the rebellion as a whole. We examine the relations between union bureaucracies and the rank and file, the wider political context of the United States, the geography of the strike, immediate and longer-term grievances in the public-education sector, spontaneity and organisation, local cultural contexts and labour histories, strategies and tactics, social reproduction and gender, race and racism, and the potentialities and obstacles facing the movement in the near future.
Dramatic changes are being made to teacher education internationally and in the United States. So... more Dramatic changes are being made to teacher education internationally and in the United States. Some of the alterations have been recognized as threatening university-based teacher preparation, for instance, the growth of alternate route programs. Many other phenomena that have an impact on teacher education have not been analyzed as such, including for-profit corporations ’ develop-ment of professional development services linked to raising students ’ standardized test scores and the entry of private, for-profit institutions into the market for higher education. The challenge to teacher education’s commitment to social justice has been debated, but its relationship to the other alterations being made to public education has not been explored. Moreover, the common origins of these phenomena and their synergistic impact have been inadequately studied, as have the impli-cations of this synergy for university-based teacher education in the near future.
As a researcher, I study teachers’ work and their unions. However, my most valuable education on ... more As a researcher, I study teachers’ work and their unions. However, my most valuable education on the subject occurred when I began my career as a teacher in a California secondary school more than thirtyfive years ago. I was recruited to the local of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) by another teacher I knew from my involvement in anti–Vietnam war activity. At my first union meeting I heard—and voted on—the “plan of action” presenting union members’ negotiating demands on issues ranging from how curricula were determined to class size maximums, as well as salary and medical benefits. Even before the first meeting of the local, another union member in my school welcomed me—and asked me to help by putting informational material in teachers’ mailboxes.
We analyze elsewhere how teachers unions globally are responding to the Global Education Reform M... more We analyze elsewhere how teachers unions globally are responding to the Global Education Reform Movement or GERM. In this article we interrogate five key premises that drive policy recommendations in the 2014 World Bank report Great Teachers: How to Raise Student Learning in Latin America and the Caribbean and examine the evidence for its prescriptions. We find that Great Teachers report ignores earlier World Bank research on education in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), fails to address contradictions in its own findings, and, as it has done previously, omits acknowledgment of educational research that challenges its analysis. We also scrutinize the World Bank’s research on LAC teacher quality and performance as reported in Great Teachers, identifying significant flaws in methodology that limit the credibility and usefulness of its findings and the recommendations based on its research.
A Book of Advice for Prospective and New Urban Teachers * What's Different About Teaching in ... more A Book of Advice for Prospective and New Urban Teachers * What's Different About Teaching in Urban Schools? * Dealing with the Urban School System * The Urban School Setting * Your Relations with Teachers, the Union, and Administrators * Your Students * Managing Your Classroom * Your Moral and Political Obligations.
Return of the Strike: A Forum on the Teachers’ Rebellion in the United States, 2018
Bringing together leading observers of the 2018 teachers' strikes in the United States, this ... more Bringing together leading observers of the 2018 teachers' strikes in the United States, this forum surveys the origins, character, and trajectory of the rebellion as a whole. We examine the relations between union bureaucracies and the rank and file, the wider political context of the United States, the geography of the strike, immediate and longer-term grievances in the public-education sector, spontaneity and organisation, local cultural contexts and labour histories, strategies and tactics, social reproduction and gender, race and racism, and the potentialities and obstacles facing the movement in the near future.
This article, which appeared in New Politics in Winter 1968, is not currently in the NP archive... more This article, which appeared in New Politics in Winter 1968, is not currently in the NP archives, although it is available online: https://www.unz.com/print/NewPolitics-1968q1-00005/ I am posting it as a public service. Note the author is Steve Zeluck although the website shows me as the author.
Bringing together leading observers of the 2018 teachers' strikes in the United States, this foru... more Bringing together leading observers of the 2018 teachers' strikes in the United States, this forum surveys the origins, character, and trajectory of the rebellion as a whole. We examine the relations between union bureaucracies and the rank and file, the wider political context of the United States, the geography of the strike, immediate and longer-term grievances in the public-education sector, spontaneity and organisation, local cultural contexts and labour histories, strategies and tactics, social reproduction and gender, race and racism, and the potentialities and obstacles facing the movement in the near future.
Dramatic changes are being made to teacher education internationally and in the United States. So... more Dramatic changes are being made to teacher education internationally and in the United States. Some of the alterations have been recognized as threatening university-based teacher preparation, for instance, the growth of alternate route programs. Many other phenomena that have an impact on teacher education have not been analyzed as such, including for-profit corporations ’ develop-ment of professional development services linked to raising students ’ standardized test scores and the entry of private, for-profit institutions into the market for higher education. The challenge to teacher education’s commitment to social justice has been debated, but its relationship to the other alterations being made to public education has not been explored. Moreover, the common origins of these phenomena and their synergistic impact have been inadequately studied, as have the impli-cations of this synergy for university-based teacher education in the near future.
As a researcher, I study teachers’ work and their unions. However, my most valuable education on ... more As a researcher, I study teachers’ work and their unions. However, my most valuable education on the subject occurred when I began my career as a teacher in a California secondary school more than thirtyfive years ago. I was recruited to the local of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) by another teacher I knew from my involvement in anti–Vietnam war activity. At my first union meeting I heard—and voted on—the “plan of action” presenting union members’ negotiating demands on issues ranging from how curricula were determined to class size maximums, as well as salary and medical benefits. Even before the first meeting of the local, another union member in my school welcomed me—and asked me to help by putting informational material in teachers’ mailboxes.
We analyze elsewhere how teachers unions globally are responding to the Global Education Reform M... more We analyze elsewhere how teachers unions globally are responding to the Global Education Reform Movement or GERM. In this article we interrogate five key premises that drive policy recommendations in the 2014 World Bank report Great Teachers: How to Raise Student Learning in Latin America and the Caribbean and examine the evidence for its prescriptions. We find that Great Teachers report ignores earlier World Bank research on education in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), fails to address contradictions in its own findings, and, as it has done previously, omits acknowledgment of educational research that challenges its analysis. We also scrutinize the World Bank’s research on LAC teacher quality and performance as reported in Great Teachers, identifying significant flaws in methodology that limit the credibility and usefulness of its findings and the recommendations based on its research.
A Book of Advice for Prospective and New Urban Teachers * What's Different About Teaching in ... more A Book of Advice for Prospective and New Urban Teachers * What's Different About Teaching in Urban Schools? * Dealing with the Urban School System * The Urban School Setting * Your Relations with Teachers, the Union, and Administrators * Your Students * Managing Your Classroom * Your Moral and Political Obligations.
Return of the Strike: A Forum on the Teachers’ Rebellion in the United States, 2018
Bringing together leading observers of the 2018 teachers' strikes in the United States, this ... more Bringing together leading observers of the 2018 teachers' strikes in the United States, this forum surveys the origins, character, and trajectory of the rebellion as a whole. We examine the relations between union bureaucracies and the rank and file, the wider political context of the United States, the geography of the strike, immediate and longer-term grievances in the public-education sector, spontaneity and organisation, local cultural contexts and labour histories, strategies and tactics, social reproduction and gender, race and racism, and the potentialities and obstacles facing the movement in the near future.
This review of "Workers in a Lean World," by Kim Moody critiques key assumptions of school refor... more This review of "Workers in a Lean World," by Kim Moody critiques key assumptions of school reform in the1980s about how technology and globalization have created changes in the nature of work that are inevitable and to which schools must respond if they are to serve all students well.
Palgrave International Handbook of Marxism and Education, 2023
This chapter explains educational researchers have come late to understanding the new nexus betwe... more This chapter explains educational researchers have come late to understanding the new nexus between work and education in capitalism. I summarize some of those changes then analyze the unique potential of teachers and teachers unions in reviving labor struggles, primarily by educating the Left about reciprocity between support for movements for social justice and union transformation, examining how these can increase political resistance to ruling class power. I suggest the pandemic was used to accelerate and intensify changes so substantial that what has occurred should be understood as a new iteration of the neoliberal project in education, in a process that reflects and reinforces changes in work in the global economy. Public education, structurally and ideologically flawed from inception, is being reconfigured with changes in curriculum, teaching, and funding intended to persist well beyond the pandemic. The chapter ends with implications of how struggles of social movements that contest the shortcomings in public education rooted in historic social injustices might guide our vision about the schools we want and deserve, helping inform further resistance to the new neoliberal project.
Seeking Solidarity:
Understanding “self-interest” in the context of capitalism as a global socia... more Seeking Solidarity:
Understanding “self-interest” in the context of capitalism as a global social system
American Association for Teaching and Curriculum ( AATC ) Keynote Address: Chicago, 6 October 2022 Lois Weiner, Professor Emerita, New Jersey City University
In this contribution to a forthcoming volume about the legacy of James Moffett, I explain why his... more In this contribution to a forthcoming volume about the legacy of James Moffett, I explain why his contribution is even more relevant and essential for our historical moment than when I used his work as an English teacher and subsequently as an educator of English teachers decades ago.
U.S. society and capitalism globally have changed in significant ways since publication of the pr... more U.S. society and capitalism globally have changed in significant ways since publication of the previous Handbook, alterations that are reflected in education policy. This chapter explores how the study of teachers’ work and teachers’ labor activism can help crystallize understandings of most of those changes and support development of alternatives, with the help of teachers’ organization as workers. We use diverse critical lenses that simultaneously recognize the unique location of workers organized as a class in capitalism and the special salience(s) of social oppression to address two questions: 1. What makes an organization of teachers acting as workers a “union”? 2. How do teachers unions conceptualize and carry out their moral, social, political, and economic responsibilities given contradictory ideological assumptions about unions’ and teachers’ responsibilities in a capitalist society marked by systemic inequality though identifying itself as a liberal democracy?
We explore four issues to address how questions: Understandings of teacher unionism reflected in the global context; race and racism in teachers’ collective organization as workers, as seen in Black teachers’ organization; gender and sexuality refracted in teaching and teachers unions; teachers’ labor activism in the “red state walkouts” and “blue cities” strikes. The chapter includes discussion about the reciprocal relationships between social movements organized to win equality and justice and teachers’ labor activism, and we conclude with recommendations for further research across disciplines in education as well as a range of social sciences.
We provide an overview of research on teachers unions in urban school districts, explaining lacun... more We provide an overview of research on teachers unions in urban school districts, explaining lacunae that have led to a striking absence of research about what is happening in teachers unions in cities. We suggest that autoethnography may help formulating the needed research agenda, and we use as a case in point a study of a newly-elected union president's efforts to alter the teachers union's self-definition and relationships with community. The autoethnography describes challenges teachers unions in urban districts and communities face in developing alliances that are difficult and at the same essential to reverse declines in conditions of teaching and learning in urban schools, especially in those districts serving the highest concentrations of low-income children of color.
The starting point to understand what is happening in teachers’ work and teachers’ labor activism... more The starting point to understand what is happening in teachers’ work and teachers’ labor activism and how unions can and should respond is capitalism’s global transformation of work and how this is reflected and reinforced by changes in education. While some aspects of the global project to transform education remain the same, I think a qualitative change has occurred in the past decade. This comes amidst “growth, change, rebellion” in formation of a new international working class, change reflected in teachers’ labor activism, in strikes, walkouts, and formation of reform caucuses in unions, some of which have succeeded in winning office and maintaining their positions in union elections, most notably in the Chicago Teachers Union. I advocate researchers adopt the stance of “critical friends” of teachers’ right to organize as workers and bargain collectively.
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Papers by Lois Weiner
I am posting it as a public service. Note the author is Steve Zeluck although the website shows me as the author.
I am posting it as a public service. Note the author is Steve Zeluck although the website shows me as the author.
Understanding “self-interest” in the context of capitalism as a global social system
American Association for Teaching and Curriculum ( AATC )
Keynote Address: Chicago, 6 October 2022
Lois Weiner, Professor Emerita, New Jersey City University
1. What makes an organization of teachers acting as workers a “union”?
2. How do teachers unions conceptualize and carry out their moral, social, political, and economic responsibilities given contradictory ideological assumptions about unions’ and teachers’ responsibilities in a capitalist society marked by systemic inequality though identifying itself as a liberal democracy?
We explore four issues to address how questions: Understandings of teacher unionism reflected in the global context; race and racism in teachers’ collective organization as workers, as seen in Black teachers’ organization; gender and sexuality refracted in teaching and teachers unions; teachers’ labor activism in the “red state walkouts” and “blue cities” strikes. The chapter includes discussion about the reciprocal relationships between social movements organized to win equality and justice and teachers’ labor activism, and we conclude with recommendations for further research across disciplines in education as well as a range of social sciences.