New Urban Teachers Transcending Neoliberal Educational Reforms: Embracing Aesthetic Education as a Curriculum of Political Action

This article presents 7 years of qualitative research into the emerging understandings of a population of 456 beginning 7 to 12 urban teachers who supplied 130 participants who were enrolled in a total of 26 MSEd English Language Arts courses over 7 years. These were interviewed while teaching in urban schools focused primarily on testing and accountability systems, and their class writings were used to present seven of their voices in this study. The study investigates participant engagement in two theoretical frame-works emphasized in the courses: first, the neoliberal ideology of testing and accountability; second, the transactional tradition of aesthetic education. The study finds that education students need not passively acquiesce to neo-liberal reforms, but can reclaim a culturally critical stance in their teaching