Power, Teaching, and Teacher Education: Confronting Injustice With Critical Research and Action

This collection of essays frames the work of teachers and teacher educators within a struggle over what it means to educate a highly diverse public. Visions for public education, as shaped by progressivism and the Civil Rights movements, have emphasized preparation of all children and youth for participation in a diverse democracy. This vision is being challenged by neoliberalism, which frames education as a commodity to be acquired for individual advancement within a competitive marketplace, and as an arena for profit-making. In this book, Sleeter connects incisive conceptual analyses, research reviews, and descriptive portraits of teachers and teacher educators as they &«teach back to power.» She argues that the work of pushing back against neoliberalism, especially as it overlaps with racism, patriarchy, and radical religious fundamentalism, is a political project, but one that research can help to support.