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The development of neoliberal educational reforms has repeatedly shown its target to be teachers and teaching (Ball, 2000, 2003; Ball & Olmedo, 2013; Biesta, 2017; Buchanan, 2015). Educational accountability in neoliberal terms has turned into a managerial tool of surveillance (Biesta, 2017) that deprofessionalized and then reprofessionalized teachers into new ethics where performance substitutes professional judgment (Ball 2003, p. 218). Giroux (2018) argued that it is urgent for educators and researchers to develop a discourse of educated hope against the neoliberal imposition in education. A language of critique and possibility that exposes and challenges the unchallenged neoliberal narrative of our time (Giroux, 2019). In this study, I used narrative inquiry to address the following research questions: (i) how do teachers narrate the deprofessionalization of teaching imposed by accountability mandates / neoliberalization processes through their everyday practices? (ii) how does resistance manifest in teachers’ narratives of themselves as professionals? (iii) how can/do stories function as a language of resistance that fosters further acts of resistance? Findings show that teachers reclaim their authority using different types of tactics (de Certeau, 1984) and insurgent pedagogies. This study identified tactics of resistance such as: (i) the Madagascar Penguin tactic; (ii) the sabotage of public documents; (iii) a dog and pony show; and (iv) the reappropriation of neoliberal places. Teachers go through deprofessionalization processes that include: (i) a psychological war about how to behave; (ii) the commodification of teacher practices; (iii) the bureaucratization of teaching; and (iv) the precarization of teachers’ work. The findings also indicate that stories connected to grand narratives about teaching can serve as political resources for teachers to reimagine possibilities to engage in critical pedagogy practices under situations of oppression.

This research presents a narrative exploration of how economics students understand and experience their activism in the age of the neoliberal university and how their experience as students is transformed by social action. The primary focus of this study is to understand economics students experience as part of an effort to better understand student activism within the neoliberal university. This dissertation offers seven narrative themes that illustratethe experiences of economics students as they are transformed by social action and also presents a portrayal of the relations between students’ experiences of activism and as economics students. This research discusses the implications and contributions that student activism generates in the student life and in the identity of students and future professionals in economics. The narrative themes were created to familiarize readers to curricular activism in economics and to help them to interpret and analyze economics students’ perspectives andexperiences participating in curricular activism. One of the main arguments of this dissertation is that activism and social action are contributing to a re-imagination and reinvention of the experience of being an economics student in the age of the neoliberal university. Activism transforms the way economics students see themselves and how they understand their role in society, the role of economics and the urge to change economics education as new economic, social, environmental and health crises affect everyday life.

The purpose of this study was to examine how teachers’ experiences combining their activism for education and racial justice can inform social justice unionism theory in practice. To explore this topic, this study examined the lived experiences of 13 rank and file teachers in the Chicago Teachers Union as they engage in education justice work and the broader Movement for Black Lives in the city. The research questions were: 1.) How do rank and file teachers in a social justice union engage with racial justice movements? 2.) What types of tensions, conflicts, or moments of dissonance emerge in this engagement and how do teachers deal with those? 3.) How can teachers’ lived experiences in this context inform theory around building social justice unionism in practice?This study employed thematic narrative inquiry and utilized ethnographic data collection methods to examine participants’ storied experiences of union activism, racial justice struggle, and personal struggle to balance both. Data collection involved one year of on the ground field work in Chicago where I engaged in participant observation of teachers in their activism. In addition to participant observation, 13 semi-structured interviews were carried out with teachers, all whom identified as active in the work of their union and broader social justice struggles.The results of my data analysis are presented in the form of an ethnographic performance text called ethnodrama. Selected narratives from interviews, participant observation, and document analysis were edited and adapted into a play script which allowed me to engage a plurality of voices and capture multiple aspects of teachers’ experiences in the struggle for racial and educational justice in a dynamic way.Findings suggest that the teachers experience internal union tension and disagreement on the topics of race, police violence, and the definition of social justice unionism itself. Moreover, in addition to struggling with colleagues on the above topics, teachers also struggle personally to maintain their commitment to their activism amidst ongoing attacks on their profession and working conditions. Findings illustrate that social justice unionism is as an ongoing, dynamic process that is continuously unfolding and in the making.