Teaching in Neoliberal Times: How Teachers Make Decisions in the Context of Markets, Managerialism, and Performativity

Abstract

This qualitative study examines how teachers perceive the effects of neoliberal educational policies such as Common Core State Standards, No Child Left Behind, and Race to the Top on their self-identity, how they frame the purpose of their work, and how teachers use their agency to resist these external pressures. Research suggests that teacher self-perception has shifted from believing that they are educating students for future preparation in a democratic society. Many teachers now see their role as preparing students to perform on high-stakes tests. This study was conducted with elementary teachers in a large, suburban Pennsylvania school district collecting data through classroom observation, teacher interviews, lesson mapping activities, and document review. Thematic analysis was used to generate themes from the ordered data sets to understand better how teachers are experiencing the phenomenon of educating students in this historical socio-political moment. Analysis revealed various teacher experiences, perceptions, and beliefs about what factors inform what shapes teacher self-identity, what curriculum teachers teach, and how they make instructional decisions. Despite variance among teachers in the study, participants' actions and beliefs are influenced by the neoliberal technologies of marketization, managerialism, and performativity. In particular, teacher actions in the classroom demonstrated anchoring and adjustment tightly aligned with state standards and district-issued textbooks. The refusal to deviate from these anchors despite encouragement from building and district level administrators is centered in concerns about surveillance, evaluation, and an inability to conceive of teaching beyond the neoliberal context of the present. Participants share moral and philosophical uneasiness that they are not doing what is best for students but subject themselves to this reality to satisfy the audit culture that pervades public education. Findings also emphasize a disconnect from teachers' reasons to enter the profession and educators' lived reality in the classroom today.