The Public Work of Identity Performance
Advocacy and Dissent in Teachers’ Open Letters
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12465397 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Katie L Garahan (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 22 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 59-94 |
| Publication date | 2019-02-22 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Rhetoric and Public Affairs (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1094-8392 • E-ISSN: 1534-5238 |
| Publisher | Michigan State University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.14321/rhetpublaffa.22.1.0059 |
| OpenAlex | W2917091683 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 25 |
In the rhetoric of contemporary federal education reform, public school teachers are often blamed for and championed as solutions to educational problems. Representations of teachers as heroic and blameworthy are an integral component of a neoliberal rationality apparent in education reform since the publication of the Reagan administration’s A Nation at Risk, as they allow political actors to promote individual solutions to systemic issues that affect student achievement. After briefly exploring the rhetoric of reform, this essay focuses on the ways teachers negotiate the discourses that implicate their profession. To do so, I analyze a corpus of 18 open letters written and published online by current and former public school teachers in protest of policy and/or specific political actors. I argue that authors of these open letters leverage their professional identities to protest and articulate alternatives to seemingly pervasive neoliberal logics inherent in contemporary education reform. In turn, I maintain that analyzing vernacular exchanges, such as teachers’ protest discourse, is imperative to understanding the material consequences of education policy as well as the full discursive space of policymaking
Dissent · Education reform · Framing (construction · Higher education · Negotiation · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Rhetoric · Social science · Sociology · Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy · Law · Public Administration · Rhetoric and Communication Studies · Teacher Education and Leadership Studies
Discourse and Identity
Women Who Taught
Lyndon Baines Johnson and George W. Bush on Education Reform
The Guardian Genius of Democracy”
There Was No One Coming With Enough Power to Save Us”
The Undeserving Professor
Raising the stakes
Accountability in American education as a rhetoric and a technology of governmentality
(Neo)Liberalism, popular media, and the political struggle for the future of US public education
Indeterminacy, Incipiency, and Attitudes
Education as “the balance wheel of social machinery”
Those Good Gertrudes
American Nightmare
Neoliberalism's War Against Teachers in Dark Times
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,5 |
| Citation span | 2022 - 2026 (5) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |