Extended critical case studies provide a tangible working expression of the labour process of teaching, showing how teachers are simultaneously experiencing significant changes to their work, as well as responding in ways that actively shape these processes. For teachers and researchers, this book shows what processes are at work in the global economy which impact on, and sometimes control, the role of the teacher. It also reveals how teachers accommodate, resist or redefine their working circumstances, and explores methods researchers might employ in order to increase our understanding and knowledge of the effect of globalization on teaching.

This study locates what is happening to teachers work in the global economy. Within the dramatically changed circumstances of globalization, schools are being required to act as if they were private businesses driven by the quest for efficiency and operating in a supposed atmosphere of marketization and competition with each other for resources, students, reputation, and public support for their continued existence. Meanwhile, this ideology of schools as cost centres has become so pervasive that there has been little public debate on its desirability or its alternatives. This book seeks to addresses this imbalance and provides a major renovation of labour process theory in an educational context. Two case studies provide a tangible working expression of the labour process of teaching, showing how teachers are simultaneously experiencing significant changes to their work, as well as responding in ways that actively shape these processes.