Reclaiming Teachers’ Agency in this Political Moment

This issue of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor is the second of two issues in a special series exploring the theme of teachers’ work in contentious political times. This series has been assembled by leaders of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Special Interest Group (SIG)–Teachers’ Work/Teacher Unions–to bring together critical scholarship on current issues impacting the work of educators in this politically contentious moment. The second issue extends our understanding of teachers’ work in these times with a series of astute empirical and conceptual studies, an interview, and a book review that, collectively, underscore the significance of reclaiming teachers’ collective agency in the face of the intensified forces of authoritarian political clampdowns and critical pedagogical disempowerment.