Teachers as Transformative Intellectuals

Abstract

This chapter examines the ideological and material forces that have contributed to the proletarianization of teacher work; that is, the tendency to reduce teachers to the status of specialized technicians within the school bureaucracy, whose function then becomes one of managing and implementing curricula programs rather than developing or critically appropriating curricula to fit specific pedagogical concerns. There is a need to defend schools as institutions essential to maintaining and developing a critical democracy and also to defending teachers as transformative intellectuals who combine scholarly reflection and practice in the service of educating students to be thoughtful, active citizens. By viewing teachers as intellectuals, we can illuminate the important idea that all human activity involves some form of thinking. Viewing teachers as intellectuals also provides a strong theoretical critique of technocratic and instrumental ideologies underlying an educational theory that separates the conceptualization, planning, and design of curricula from the processes of implementation and execution.

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