UNDERSTANDING THE NEOLIBERALIZATION OF EDUCATION THROUGH SPACES OF LABOUR AUTONOMY PAUL BOCKING A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN GEOGRAPHY YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO SEPTEMBER 2017 © PAUL BOCKING, 2017 Abstract 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 labour’s 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 latter’s 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. !ii Acknowledgements This dissertation has its origins in 2012, when inspired to continue graduate studies by my newly completed Masters, and with no permanent high school teaching positions available in Toronto, I entered York University’s geography PhD program. My decision was in large part due to my supervisor, Steven Tufts, whose research on unions and workers would enable me to continue with labour studies. My peers convinced me that the interdisciplinary nature of human geography would enrich how I approached my existing interests. My focus on labour and political economy in North America emerged from three sources. I had spent years developing contacts and friendships with activists, teachers, academics and union leaders in Mexico, which I wanted to sustain and broaden. I also believed that many contemporary policies had their origins at the centre of the ‘empire’, and so it was useful to study contexts in the US. Finally, I wanted to make my research relevant and directly applicable to the political context in which I was situated in Canada. A desire to draw on my experiences as a teacher and a union activist, fed my interest in teachers’ work. This also led to an interest in qualitative research, including semi-structured interviews with teachers and gaining understanding through observation, sometimes of a participatory nature, of how schools and classrooms function. When I began writing my dissertation in 2012, in the context of a US labour movement broadly in retreat and teachers’ unions on the defensive, the Chicago Teachers’ Union was receiving considerable attention for confronting the agenda of an aggressive neoliberal mayor, and by building meaningful alliances with parents and broad member participation in order to wage a successful strike. Attention on teacher activism in Mexico has focused on the radical !iii teachers of the south, particularly since the ‘Oaxaca Commune’ of 2006. In Canada, British Columbian teachers were prominent for their long battle against a right wing provincial government, including a successful, publicly supported illegal strike in 2005. I was interested in the less attention-grabbing cases, where unions weren’t known for their militancy or radicalism. I thought this could provide lessons for understanding the broader state of North American teacher unionism and the neoliberalization of education. My research benefited enormously from some very fine teachers. They brought me into their schools, introduced me to their colleagues and sometimes had me teach ad-hoc lessons to their students on politics and culture in Canada. Among the dozens of teachers whom I had the privilege of interviewing, thank you to Soccoro Ramses Lopes and Magda Carrera (who brought me on a memorable trip to Puebla’s Primero de Mayo parade) in Mexico City, and Megan Moskop and Mindy Rosier in New York. Your passion and love for teaching are an inspiration for me. Thanks to the colleagues whom I have worked beside in the Toronto District School Board, who helped me grow as a teacher, and gave me insights into Ontario’s education policy, especially Jennifer Mousseau and Sharry Taylor. As I shaped my dissertation, Steven Tufts’ very focused, practical advice was tremendously helpful. He kept me on a writing schedule, took my descriptive empirical research to a higher analytical level, and introduced me to relevant theoretical debates. I also benefited greatly from the insights and guidance of my committee members, Ranu Basu and Viviana Patroni. Thank you also to my external reviewers at York University, Sarah Barrett and Philip Kelly, and from McMaster University, Wayne Lewchuk. I was inspired by the research on teacher unionism of Peter Brogan, fellow York geography PhD graduate, who was of great !iv assistance in providing contacts in New York. Thanks to my geography office mate Kenneth Cardenas for sharing the PhD student life. I am grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for the Joseph Armand Bombardier Doctoral Scholarship which allowed me to focus on my dissertation during the final years of my PhD. Thank you also to graduate program secretary Yvonne Yim. Lois Weiner at New Jersey City University gave me invaluable insights on education reform in the US, as did members of the Movement of Rank and File Educators (MORE) within New York’s United Federation of Teachers. The Secretary of Public Education (SEP) of Mexico City, and the activists of the National Coordination of Education Workers (Coordinadora Nacional de los Trabajadores de la Educación) of Mexico City, were very generous with their time. Thank you to the leadership and activist members of OSSTF Toronto and OSSTF Provincial Office, especially Domenic Bellissimo, who introduced me in 2010 to the Trinational Coalition in Defense of Public Education. My fellow executive members of the Occasional Teachers’ Bargaining Unit since 2010, especially Linda Bartram, Vincent Zambrano and Ann Burke, brought me into the union and always supported my studies. My research in Mexico is indebted to Maria de la Luz Arriaga Lemus at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México (UNAM), who introduced me to countless education activists, Thursday pozole lunches, and brought me up to date on each of my visits. Nicholas Wright, former director of the Casa de los Amigos, one of my favourite places in the world, assisted with transcriptions and took me on journeys to explore Mexico City. My friend Hortensia Escobar, a tireless organizer and luchadora social, also assisted with transcriptions, and introduced me to many movements in Mexico, including the teachers and normalistas of Ayotzinapa in Guerrero. !v Thank you to my family, my sister Emma Bocking, my father Stephen Bocking, the model of a prolific and humble academic, Barbara Znamirowski, and my mother Rita Furgiuele, who first encouraged me to go into teaching, and is my role model as an educator. Finally my fellow comrade PhD student, wife, and friend, benim canim Pelin Asci, who kept me balanced and grounded as a person through this whole process. Seni seviyorum. !vi Table of Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgements iii List of Tables x List of Figures xi Acronyms xii 1. Introduction 1 1.1: Key Ideas, Focuses & Limitations 1 1.2: Dissertation Overview 10 2. Theoretical Areas and Conceptual Framework 17 2.1: Introduction 17 2.2: Neoliberalism 17 2.3: Policy Mobilities 22 2.4: Labour Geography 27 2.5: Neoliberal Education Policy 32 2.6: Teachers’ Professional Autonomy 42 2.7: Teachers’ Unions & Labour 52 2.8: Towards a Labour Geography of Teacher Autonomy 56 3. Methodology 63 3.1: Situating the Researcher 64 3.2: Participatory Ethnography: A Focus on Listening to and Talking with Teachers 67 3.3: Challenges of ‘Rigorous but not Disinterested’ Scholarship