Teaching and Resistance at a Neo-Liberalised University: A Teacher’s Critical Reflection and Calling for Praxis Actors in the Post-Modern Professional Age

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.