TITLE:
Teaching and Resistance at a Neo-Liberalised University: A Teacher’s Critical Reflection and Calling for Praxis Actors in the Post-Modern Professional Age
AUTHORS:
Yulong Li, Xiaojing Liu
KEYWORDS:
Neo-Liberalism, Post-Modern Professionalism, Teacher Resistance, Praxis
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.8 No.12,
December
1,
2020
ABSTRACT: Under the neo-liberalism attack, many universities across the world have
resorted to a centralised curriculum, streamlined assessment, commercialised
management and a de-professionalisation and exploitation of teachers, as a
means to maximise profits as a result of the capitalist hegemony. Teachers’
professionalism is facing a severe challenge. This critical review starts by discussing a university teacher’s experience of
overwork at a neo-liberalized university in Hong Kong, and then a theoretical
analysis and critique of the spread of neoliberalism is delivered. In order to
provide a possible solution to such phenomenon, this essay stresses the
importance of a resistance culture, particularly teachers becoming actors of
praxis to use their moral commitments to decide what is right for students,
society, and humanity, so as to mediate or change the status quo of the
endangered professionalism in such post-modern age of neo-liberalisation.