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Journal of Educational Change

, Volume 13, Issue 2, pp 191–216 | Cite as

Forty years in the union: Incubating, supporting, and catalyzing socially just educational change

  • Cindy Rottmann
Article

Abstract

North American teacher unions’ positive contributions to educational change have historically flown under the radar of educational policy makers, a situation that has been reified by recent attacks on public sector unions. In this article, I draw on social movement theory and an institutional case study of a self described social justice union to analyze teacher unions’ unique contributions to educational improvement. The primary product of this analysis is a cyclical model of union-supported, teacher-initiated educational change that codifies 40 years of social justice activism incubated, supported and catalyzed by a Canadian teacher union.

Keywords

Social justice Teacher unions Social movement organizations Educational change Teacher activism 

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of Educational Administration, Foundations and Psychology, Faculty of EducationUniversity of ManitobaWinnipegCanada

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