Abstract:
The UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on the Teaching Profession (2024) refers to the challenge of transforming education to achieve an inclusive and equitable quality education with lifelong learning opportunities for all. Teachers, however, do not work in a vacuum; thus we find ourselves in conservative times, a swing to the right that Ball (2024) reminds us is part of the “story” of education. Even many experienced educators refer to schools as a ‘broken system’, some even suggesting the whole system of schooling needs to be dismantled. Hickel (2021) argues that putting our faith in the mass modern school as a solution to our current crisis is misguided and dangerous if the epistemology of the school remains unchanged. While often drowned out, resistance to conservative policies such as standardised curriculum and accountability measures appear to be seeping through the cracks in unexpected ways. Enrolments at flexible learning centres are at an all-time high, with long waiting lists of young people leaving mainstream schools. While historical advocates for the dismantling of schools, such as Holt, Illitch or Freire, took an overt political stance, there is a new turn towards the dismantling of what to some seem like an outdated even damaging system. This paper draws on our research both with mainstream teachers and teachers in flexischools to explore how this conservative moment in time might produce new ways of thinking about schooling. Imagining crisis as opportunity, we ask, what pedagogies of hope can be ignited and how can school now be reimagined?