Teacher union involvement in the English for the Children ballot initiative campaigns

Zeiter, Seth Bradley

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/125527 Copy

Description

Title

Teacher union involvement in the English for the Children ballot initiative campaigns

Author(s)

Zeiter, Seth Bradley

Issue Date

2024-07-10

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Kalantzis, Mary

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Kalantzis, Mary

Committee Member(s)

• Cope, Bill
• Davila, Liv T
• Kang, Hyun-Sook

Department of Study

Educ Policy, Orgzn & Leadrshp

Discipline

Educ Policy, Orgzn & Leadrshp

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ed.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• social movement unionism
• teacher unions
• critical discourse analysis
• interpretive methods
• resource mobilization theory

Abstract

This study examined and provided an account of teacher unions’ involvement in the English for the Children movement’s ballot initiative campaigns in California (Proposition 227), Arizona (Proposition 203), Colorado (Amendment 31), and Massachusetts (Question 2), with additional focus on a failed campaign in New York. The objectives of this interpretive research study were to a) provide a descriptive account of teacher unions’ involvement in these ballot initiative campaigns; and b) analyze teacher unions’ priorities during these ballot initiative campaigns. This research used an interpretive design, specifically critical discourse analysis in the discourse-historical approach, in conjunction with resource mobilization theory and social movement unionism to analyze secondary documents, such as news reports and broadcasts. News articles and broadcasts from online archives were collected into an untagged corpus for quantitative corpus analysis to gain insight into relevant linguistic features (i.e., keywords, word frequencies, collocations, and n-grams) to inform the contextual text coding process, which guided the analysis. The study found that teacher unions were not concerned with the English for the Children ballot initiative campaigns likely due to two primary reasons: 1) It was not a concern from an industrial perspective; and 2) Other, more existential threats to union power and influence, such as the school choice movement, were more important to union officials. It also found that Latinx voters were highly politicized as a voting bloc for political campaigns in general, which led to a distorted perception of their power that is likely related to the anti-immigrant sentiment expressed by English for the Children. The study concludes by recommending teacher unions use the tenets of social movement unionism to garner more support amongst community members so that teacher unions can both be more effective advocates of reform and better negotiators for their union members.

Graduation Semester

2024-08

Type of Resource

Thesis

Handle URL

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/125527

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2024 Seth Zeiter

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