Abstract
This book is a case study in how a union of teachers partly succeeded and partly failed at leading resistance against the neoliberal education policy of a labour government. It resisted an agenda to audit the competitiveness of students, teachers, and schools. This introduction specifies what I mean by, first, ‘resistance’ within the ideas, interests, and language of ideological battles; second, ‘social’ neoliberalism as a descriptor for a post-financial crisis-phase in the history of neoliberalism; and third, ‘auditing’ to describe the way numeracy and literacy tests have become central to the way transnational bodies, corporations, and national governments both monitor teachers’ work and hinder effective teaching and learning. The alternative is to test intelligently and trust teachers to perform according to their own professional standards.
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Vandenberg, A. (2018). Introduction. In: Education Policy and the Australian Education Union. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68047-7_1
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