"Global Competitiveness Starts Here": The Predicament of Education in Neoliberal Society and Possibilities for Change
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2012
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ndltd-OhioLink-oai-etd.ohiolink.edu-osu13377032702021-08-03T06:05:02Z "Global Competitiveness Starts Here": The Predicament of Education in Neoliberal Society and Possibilities for Change Riley, Christopher P. Education Education Policy Geography Neoliberalism Educational Policy Urban Geography Foucault <p>This dissertation focuses on the pressures that the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) places on local actors as the policy impacts the pedagogical practices in individual districts, schools and classrooms. Many understand NCLB as a high-stakes accountability policy, which refers to educational policies designed to hold teachers, principals, and other proctors of education responsible for aggregated student scores on standardized tests. I argue that the rise of high-stakes accountability policies in the US is tied to a broader process: neoliberalism. My research interprets how one neoliberal high-stakes accountability policy, NCLB, touches down, in practice, specifically in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) in North Carolina. I am not only interested in how NCLB unfolds from the federal government to classrooms, but also recognizing the extent to which federal policy is shaped by local actors. Most critiques of NCLB suggest that the policy has been crippling to local actors’ autonomy over his/her classroom, school, district, etc. At issue, then, is the extent to which local actors are, indeed, systematically denied creative control over the lessons they teach to their students. Most studies that critique the policy point to apparent negative impacts of NCLB on a societal-wide basis in the aggregate, without, however, nuanced, on-the-ground analysis of specific effects in specific places. I suggest that these views are totalizing and incomplete because they do not connect a local analysis to how a prominent neoliberal high-stakes testing policy has actually impacted pedagogical practice in specific classrooms to a broader critical reference point. I explain and will argue throughout my dissertation that the strength of NCLB’s (and neoliberalism’s) impact on issues of inequality and on the possibility of local adaptation of federally conceived policy depends largely on the dynamics of local context.To address neoliberalism's role in public education and possibilities for change, I pursued a two-phased research strategy. First, the policy component of my research began with analysis of documents at different scales (national, state, school district). Policy analysis revealed differences in interpretation of federal education policy at state and district scales, clarifying the possibility for agency for local actors (including teachers, other school officials, parents and students). The second phase of my research strategy focuses on the daily routines of individual actors via participant observation, interviews with administrators, policy makers (at the district, state, and federal scale), teachers, and students to evaluate the changes (and their impacts) NCLB has made to actual pedagogical practice in CMS. In total, I interviewed 73 people and have observed 28 CMS classrooms.</p><p>My findings suggest that neoliberalism is a dominant influence in education, but I also offer empirics suggesting NCLB’s local impacts are complex, including: apparent domination, possibilities for resistance, and other practices that do not fit a tidy domination/resistance or structure/agency framework. What I offer is an explanation of the dynamics by which a neoliberal mentality penetrates classroom processes, as well as how such a mentality sometimes is translated into something more complex and possibly at odds with that mentality.</p> 2012-06-22 English text The Ohio State University / OhioLINK http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1337703270 http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1337703270 unrestricted This thesis or dissertation is protected by copyright: all rights reserved. It may not be copied or redistributed beyond the terms of applicable copyright laws. |
| collection |
NDLTD |
| language |
English |
| sources |
NDLTD |
| topic |
Education Education Policy Geography Neoliberalism Educational Policy Urban Geography Foucault |
| spellingShingle |
Education Education Policy Geography Neoliberalism Educational Policy Urban Geography Foucault Riley, Christopher P. "Global Competitiveness Starts Here": The Predicament of Education in Neoliberal Society and Possibilities for Change |
| author |
Riley, Christopher P. |
| author_facet |
Riley, Christopher P. |
| author_sort |
Riley, Christopher P. |
| title |
"Global Competitiveness Starts Here": The Predicament of Education in Neoliberal Society and Possibilities for Change |
| title_short |
"Global Competitiveness Starts Here": The Predicament of Education in Neoliberal Society and Possibilities for Change |
| title_full |
"Global Competitiveness Starts Here": The Predicament of Education in Neoliberal Society and Possibilities for Change |
| title_fullStr |
"Global Competitiveness Starts Here": The Predicament of Education in Neoliberal Society and Possibilities for Change |
| title_full_unstemmed |
"Global Competitiveness Starts Here": The Predicament of Education in Neoliberal Society and Possibilities for Change |
| title_sort |
"global competitiveness starts here": the predicament of education in neoliberal society and possibilities for change |
| publisher |
The Ohio State University / OhioLINK |
| publishDate |
2012 |
| url |
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1337703270 |
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AT rileychristopherp globalcompetitivenessstartsherethepredicamentofeducationinneoliberalsocietyandpossibilitiesforchange |
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1719430619705901056 |