Recognizing the dominance of neoliberal forces in education, this volume offers a range of critical essays which analyze the language used to underpin these dynamics. Combining essays from over 20 internationally renowned contributors, this text offers a critical examination of key terms which have become increasingly central to educational discourse. Each essay considers the etymological foundation of each term, the context in which they have evolved, and likewise their changed meaning. In doing so, these essays illustrate the transformative potential of language to express or challenge political, social, and economic ideologies. The text’s musings on the language of education and its implications for the current and future role of education in society make clear its relevance to today’s cultural and political landscape. This exploratory monograph will be of interest to doctoral students, researchers, and scholars with an interest in the philosophy of education, educational policy and politics, as well as the sociology of education and the impacts of neoliberalism.

Neoliberalism and Education: Rearticulating Social Justice and Inclusion offers a critical reflection on the establishment of neoliberalism as the new global orthodoxy in the field of education, and considers what this means for social justice and inclusion. It brings together writers from a number of countries, who explore notions of inclusion and social justice in educational settings ranging from elementary schools to higher education. Contributors examine policy, practice, and pedagogical considerations covering different dimensions of (in)equality, including disability, race, gender, and class. They raise questions about what social justice and inclusion mean in educational systems that are dominated by competition, benchmarking, and target-driven accountability, and about the new forms of imperialism and colonisation that both drive, and are a product of, market-driven reforms. While exposing the entrenchment, under current neoliberal systems of educational provision, of longstanding patterns of (racialised, classed, and gendered) privilege and disadvantage, the contributions presented in this book also consider the possibilities for hope and resistance, drawing attention to established and successful attempts at democratic education or community organisation across a number of countries. This book was originally published as a special issue of the British Journal of Sociology of Education.

This volume explores how educational policy is changing as a result of neoliberal restructuring and how these issues affect educators’ practice. Evidence-based chapters present a sharp analysis of neoliberal education policy while also offering suggestions and recommendations for future action to bring about change consistent with more robust understandings of democracy. Covering issues relating to historical context, philosophical assumptions, policy implementation, accountability, teacher professionalism and standardization, Confronting Educational Policy in Neoliberal Times critically engages the ways micro- and macro- neoliberal politics shapes the purposes and implementation of schooling.

This volume makes the novel contribution of applying Nancy Fraser’s concept of progressive neoliberalism to education in order to illustrate how social justice efforts have been co-opted by neoliberal forces. As well as recognising the lack of consensus surrounding the very nature of Fraser’s concept of progressive neoliberalism, the book delivers a diversity of perspectives and methodological orientations that offer critical and nuanced examination of the diverse ways in which progressive neoliberalism has shaped education in North America. Documenting manifestations of progressive neoliberalism in areas including anti-racist education, teacher education, STEM, and assessment, the volume uses qualitative empirical research and critical discourse analysis to identify emerging tools and strategies to disentangle the progressive aims of education from neoliberal agendas. Offering a rarely nuanced treatment of the phenomenon of neoliberalism, this text will benefit scholars, academics, and students in the fields of education policy and politics, the sociology of education, and the philosophy of education more broadly. Those involved with the theory of education and multicultural education in general will also benefit from this volume.

This edited collection combines quantitative content and critical discourse analysis to reveal a shift in the rhetoric used as part of the neoliberal agenda in education. It does so by analysing, uncovering, and commenting on language as a central tool of education. Focussing on vocabulary, metaphors, and slogans used in strategy documents, advertising, policy, and public discourse, the text illustrates how concepts such as justice, opportunity, well-being, talent, and disadvantage have been hijacked by educational institutes, governments, and universities. Showing how neoliberalism has changed discourses about education and educational policy, these chapters trace issues such as anti-intellectualism, commercialization, meritocracy, and an erasure of racial difference back to a contradictory growth in egalitarian rhetoric. Given its global scope, this volume offers a timely intervention in the studies of neoliberalism and education by developing a holistic vision of how the language of neoliberalism has changed how we think about education. It will prove to be an essential resource for scholars and researchers working at the intersections of education, policymaking, and neoliberalism.

Susan L. Groenke and J. Amos Hatch It does not feel safe to be critical in university-based teacher education programs right now, especially if you are junior faculty. In the neoliberal era, critical teacher education research gets less and less funding, and professors can be denied tenure or lose their jobs for speaking out against the status quo. Also, we know that the pedagogies critical teacher educators espouse can get beginning K–12 teachers fired or shuffled around, especially if their students’ test scores are low. This, paired with the resistance many of the future teachers who come through our programs—predominantly White, middle-class, and happy with the current state of affairs—show toward critical pedagogy, makes it seem a whole lot easier, less risky, even smart not to “do” critical pedagogy at all. Why bother? We believe this book shows we have lots of reasons to “bother” with critical pe- gogy in teacher education, as current educational policies and the neoliberal discourses that vie for the identities of our own local contexts increasingly do not have education for the public good in mind. This book shows teacher educators taking risks, seeking out what political theorist James Scott has called the “small openings” for resistance in the contexts that mark teacher education in the early twenty-first century.

This book uses a multi-dimensional conceptual framework to demonstrate how neoliberal forces have been manifested through changes to K–12 public education finance policy in British Columbia, Canada between 2001 and 2015. The text offers in-depth critical policy analysis to illustrate how the public education system has been impacted by the emergence of a hybrid model of public-private funding. By examining the impacts of this neoliberalized model, in which school districts must compete for public funding and engage in for-profit activities, the book highlights emerging financial inequalities; exacerbated inequities for students; increased entrepreneurialism; closer alignment of administrators’ subjectivities with a managerial approach to educational leadership; and an illusion of local autonomy. Ultimately, the text makes powerful contributions by calling attention to detrimental processes of neoliberalization, marketization, and privatization within public education, as well as the managerialization of educational leadership. This text will benefit researchers, academics, educators, and educational leaders with an interest in the politics of education policy and finance, school district leadership, international and comparative education, and the sociology of education.