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Theorising new potentials for teacher activism: union and grassroots activist responses to COVID-19 school reopening plans in Canada

Taylor & Francis
Globalisation, Societies and Education
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Abstract

Using post-structural theories, this paper explores the public discourses of several Canadian teacher unions and grassroots teacher activist groups around the issue of school reopening plans in Canada amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper aims to highlight the ways in which these two forces of teacher activism can influence and impress upon each other to create a different possible future for collective resistance to neoliberalism in education – an assemblage of union and grassroots activism intra-acting, shaping, and impressing upon one another.

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... However, in general, they initially focused on collective bargaining for salaries and later expanded to address educational issues like class size and assessment (Bascia 2015). More recently, teachers have also engaged in professional associations, often through grassroot groups and informal networks, independent of their unions (Keil and Osmond-Johnson 2024). ...
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