Rebecca Tarlau is an Associate Professor of Education and of Labor and Employment Relations at the Pennsylvania State University. Her ethnographic research agenda has three broad areas of focus: (1) theories of the state and state-society relations; (2) social movements and critical pedagogy; (3) Latin American education and development. She is the author of Occupying School, Occupying Land: How the Landless Workers Movement Transformed Brazilian Education (2019, Oxford University Press).
Globally, teachers are at the forefront of both national labor movements and broader struggles for economic and social justice. Drawing on more than fifteen months of ethnographic research in Brazil, Mexico, and the United States, Dr. Tarlau will analyze how legacies of state-labor relations have shaped teachers’ choices about their unions’ goals and political engagements. Theoretically, the presentation puts labor relations and social movement scholars into conversation, examining how labor movements are shaped by activism and vice versa. The presentation will also illustrate why the political and educational strategies of teacher unions diverge across national contexts and how these differences matter for schools and society.
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