Introduction

This book arose from a seminar presented at the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER) in September 2017. The seminar itself was prompted by a concern that although there was much discussion and many publications that critiqued neoliberalism, very few actually suggested how its impacts might be resisted. The seminar generated a lot of interest and so we felt that it was important to bring together ideas from across the spectrum of education into a book.

In one of his last books, Pedagogy of indignation, Freire (2004:110) argues that neoliberalism is a deeply fatalistic discourse that ‘speaks about the death of dreams and utopia and deproblematizes the future’. He reminds us that one of the key roles of critical intellectuals is to re-problematise the social reality of the present and to foster critical awareness of alternatives (see Roberts, 2005). Our aim here, therefore, is to offer positive examples of resistance to neoliberal education from across sectors and geographical contexts, and to show how these enable neoliberalism to be challenged and changed. In this introduction, we discuss what we mean by ‘neoliberalism’ and ‘resistance’, and go on to show how this book can provide ‘resources of hope’ (Williams, 1989) in troubled times.

Neoliberalism in education

We understand the defining features of neoliberalism to be a system within an institutional framework characterised by strong private property rights, free markets and free trade that involves deregulation, privatisation and the withdrawal of the state from many areas of social provision (Harvey, 2005). In education, this leads to a competitive market approach within which educational goods (such as qualifications, curricula, institutional reputation, expert labour) are branded and exchanged in an international arena (Rizvi and Lingard, 2010). This approach prioritises individualisation of achievement and competition rather than collaboration among practitioners and among students. It creates a low-trust environment where professionals (and students) have to be monitored and assessed by external yardsticks. The result is that efficiency and monetised values are prioritised over other pedagogical and social values, such as diversity, equity, well-being and care. Under neoliberalism, education systems have been mandated to develop efficient, creative and problem-solving learners and workers for a globally competitive economy, leading to the neglect of its social and developmental responsibilities (Olssen, 2009).