Elena Aydarova – författare

An ethnography of Russian teacher education reforms as scripted performances of political theater.Winner of the 2021 Outstanding Book Award presented by the Society of Professors of Education Winner of the 2020 Critics Choice Award presented by the American Educational Studies Association (AESA) Winner of the 2020 Outstanding Book Award presented by the Council on Anthropology and Education Around the world, countries undertake teacher education reforms in response to international norms and assessments. Russia has been no exception. Elena Aydarova develops a unique theatrical framework to tell the story of a small group of reformers who enacted a major reform to modernize teacher education in Russia. Based on scripts circulated in global policy networks and ideologies of national development, this reform was implemented despite great opposition-but how? Drawing on extensive ethnographic material, Aydarova teases out the contradictions in this process. Teacher Education Reform as Political Theater reveals how the official story of improving education obscured dramatic and, ultimately, socially conservative changes in the purposes of schooling, the nature and perception of teachers' work, and the design of teacher education. Despite the official rhetoric, Aydarova argues, modernization reforms such as we see in the Russian context normalize social inequality and put educational systems at the service of global corporations. As similar dramas unfold around the world, this book considers how members of scholarly communities and the broader public can respond to reformers' stories of crises and urgent calls for reform on other national stages.

A powerful and urgently needed examination of the Conservative Industrial Complex (CIC)'s attack on public education, with practical strategies to push back and uphold education as a democratic, public goodPublic education is under attack. At school board meetings, in the media, and in the political sphere, there is a growing wave of anti-public education sentiment and a tendency to twist such concepts as Critical Race Theory, multiculturalism, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) into dog whistles for the supposed brainwashing of students. In Manufactured Outrage, the authors provide an overview of the CIC—a coordinated network of conservative groups that seeks to dismantle our public education system—and explore how educators can push back against harmful education policy agendas.The past few years have seen an avalanche of conservative education bills across the country. Dozens of states have rolled back protections for minoritized students, implemented book bans and instituted universal school choice, and promoted anti-DEI bills in the name of parents' rights. These sweeping changes during such a short span of time are no accident. Using original research, including documents and observations obtained from behind the CIC's closed doors, the authors reveal that these policies could only proceed through highly coordinated campaigns.In this book, readers will learn who the key CIC players are, how the CIC advances its education policy agendas through webs of network organizations to become blueprints for educational reform, and finally, how activists are organizing to resist assaults on our democracy through public and policy advocacy. District leaders, school leaders, education policymakers, activists, and community members will find the guidance invaluable as they navigate the current fraught educational landscape.