Globally, educators are at the forefront of community efforts to reinvest in communities and fight for the schools that their communities deserve. From the #RedForEd U.S. strike wave to Brazilian teachers taking to the streets to condemn fascism and Japanese teachers organizing for better public health conditions during the Olympics, educators are directly involved in struggles to transform both schools and society. Teachers’ unions, however, are infrequently the focus of educational scholarship. This special issue re-centers the role of teachers’ unions and educator organizing in global struggles for educational and social justice.
For the past two decades, global education reforms have attempted to reduce teachers’ professional autonomy and educators’ and communities’ participation in school governance and educational policy making. The special issue focuses on how teachers’ unions fight to reinvest in public education and defend teachers’ and communities’ right to engage in the policy discussions that shape their educational experiences. The special issue will also focus on the relationship between teachers’ unions and broader social movements, including how those social movements transform the strategies and goals of teachers’ unions. For example, how the Arab Spring, community organizing for access to water in South Africa, and the rise of Black Lives Matter and global struggles against anti-Black police violence, engage teachers and influence the character of educator organizing. In addition, the special issue will analyze the internal dynamics of teachers’ unions, such as the oppositional movements and internal factions and caucuses that emerge within unions’ rank-and-file and how that internal teacher activism shifts teachers’ unions priorities and demands. Of particular interest is the shift in many locations towards social justice unionism, which includes teachers prioritizing racial justice and the rearticulation of teachers’ unions as feminist movements responding to a crisis of social reproduction. In many locations, teachers’ strikes are also on the rise, as well as other forms of direct action. The global pandemic directly transformed teachers’ working conditions, and while in many locations this public health and political crisis destabilized teacher organizing, in other locations government ineptitude in response to Covid-19 created opportunities for new educator organizing.
This special issue will examine teachers’ unions in diverse countries, from Latin America and the United States to Africa, Asia, and Europe, in order to increase our understanding of educators’ organizing efforts in and across geographical contexts. Although the focus of the special issue is on educator organizing in primary and secondary school contexts, the relationship between K-12 teacher organizing and higher education struggles is also an area of interest. The themes of the special issue will include, but are not limited to:
- Social movements’ influence on teachers’ unions;
- Relationship between teacher activism and teachers’ unions;
- Social Justice unionism and struggles for the schools that communities deserve;
- Racial justice and teachers’ unions;
- Teachers’ unions as feminist movements;
- Oppositional unionism, dissident unionism, caucus organizing;
- Educator resistance to neoliberal/market-based educational policies;
- Teachers’ unions, curriculum, and pedagogy;
- Teachers’ unions, political parties, and electoral politics;
- Transnational educator organizing and teachers’ unions networks;
- Educator organizing during Covid-19;
- Teachers’ Strikes.
We welcome contributions from early career researchers and activists.
