The purpose of this study is to investigate the content and work processes regarding the values written in the curriculum for Swedish high schools and compare it with theories regarding the individualized society and political moralism. After the clarification of the content in the values of Swedish high schools and the work processes that are supposed to give students fundamental understanding about them, I analyze and compere it to the theories that are presented in the study. The main questions of the study are the following: What kinds of values are found in the curriculum for Swedish high schools? In general, how do Swedish high schools work with the written values when focus have gone from education and learning to instrumental knowledge, results, abilities and flexibility? The result showed that the content and work processes regarding the values in Swedish high schools are purely instrumental and moralistic. Due to the fact, that the individualized society and the neoliberal ideology do not require reflection and real understanding regarding the values. Therefore are the schools now more focused instrumental knowledge rather than universal knowledge based on understanding. This is not a surprising result, due to the fact that the public and the political discourse are colonized by moralism. This is the reaction individuals have to the fragmented society, where an alternative to the neoliberal ideology is nonexistent. The only kind of criticism in today’s society is based on moralism, which is affecting the work processes regarding the values in Swedish high schools.

This thesis is located within the discourse of contemporary, participatory performance. It offers a cultural materialist reading of the relationship between neoliberal capitalism and identity, and its adjunct community, to consider the extent to which participatory performance might challenge the individualistic aspects of the neoliberal ideology. The thesis questions what it means to participate in capitalist democracy in the contemporary moment, interrogates how one might exercise participatory agency both within and outside the theatre space and contemplates the function of participatory performance in a period of democratic discontent. I argue that the case-studies contribute to creating communities of individuals thinking about how to develop capitalist democracy in a more egalitarian direction. The thesis primarily employs close performance analysis of nine case-studies that all occurred in the period 2013-2014. These analyses occur across three chapters that each address a differing form of participation. Chapter One considers the significance of the re-presentation of performer acts of participation within demarcated theatre spaces, challenging the concept of the successfully, aspiring neoliberal identity. Chapter Two focuses on acts of audience participation invited within conventional theatre auditoriums to defamiliarise one’s motivations for acting or not. And Chapter Three centres on immersive performance experiences in which the audience member becomes the art object, inviting them to recognise their indebtedness to others. The thread that coheres this broad cross-section of participatory performance practices is their desire to use the act of participation and the platform of performance to reconceive of what it means to do politics by using artistic and cultural means. Collectively, the case-studies advocate the need for continued co-operation with others and the on-going co-creation of meaning, which eliminates knowing, outcome and end-result, to challenge instrumental understandings of political progress. The thesis conclusion asserts this point by considering the shared theatrical techniques employed across the case-studies that destabilise binary modes of thinking to enhance their ethico-political potential. It also reflects on this argument in light of the election of a majority Conservative (neoliberal) government in 2015.

Teachers’ voices have been largely excluded from the academic and political debates regarding the aims and merits of financial literacy education. Through case study research, this project examined the beliefs, practices, and lives of 10 teachers in Québec and Ontario who teach financial literacy at the intermediate and senior levels. Specifically, the teachers in this study report taking a critical approach to financial literacy education–a subject that tends to be framed in simplistic and individualistic terms as mere personal financial decision-making. In an analysis of in-depth interviews and deliberative inquiry focus groups with self-identifying critical teachers and investigation into various documentary sources, I detail the ways in which some of these teachers adhere to mainstream understandings of financial literacy education while others work to reframe it towards more critical and economically just ends. This research results in the development of a framework for critical economic literacy education, documenting the intellectually demanding set of skills, knowledge, and pedagogical strategies a critical economic literacy requires of students and teachers. Findings also bring forth distinctions in teachers’ ideas about criticality, revealing that teachers navigate between common, critical, and transformative sense orientations in sophisticated ways to achieve their pedagogical aims. Last, I investigate how criticality emerges in teachers, narrating the ways in which their personal biographies, professional and political activities, and intellectual pursuits inform their critical teaching in relation to financial literacy. This case study is further contextualized by the current political moment in which escalating economic inequality and the widening racial wealth gap, the current financial crisis, impending climate disasters, and antidemocratic politics worldwide convey a sense of urgency and a timely relevance for a more critical and transformative financial literacy education.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T20:57:10Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Erika P Oliveira.pdf: 955790 bytes, checksum: 0db8c32d830ee4aec2ea9ab73537b0f1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007-04-26 / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / This work intended to apprehend the presence of the neoliberal ideology in the sense and meanings of labour in a 3rd year high-school student of the Youngster and Adult Educational Program (EJA). This moment of the educational process was chosen as a methodological resource. The theoretical perspective used in the research understands the EJA student according to the Socio-Historical Psychology principles, whose system of methodological and epistemological references sees man as built through social productions relations. The economy globalization along with the conditions of work progressively more flexible and precarious leverages the diffusion of the neoliberal ideology. To this research, countersigned by the qualitative approach, a group with ten students with that profile was formed in a state public school in São Paulo, and then the research subject was chosen. During the group session, the choice of the subject was based in the following criteria: involvement with the theme, absorption and pertinence, and personal availableness. Once the only subject was established, two half-structured interviews were made to investigate her professional and personal life, with the purpose of uncovering the senses and meanings of labour to the subject.The analysis procedure occurred through the agglutination of pre-indicators, later organized in indicators. Once articulated and systematized these indicators showed three signification nucleus. The organized nucleus were: The labour world and consumption and life project , Personal efforts today and forever , World vision and television mass media . The scenery of maintenance of the neoliberal ideology guides the ways of insertion of men in the world of labour, in such a way that it was possible to identify, in the student speech, the personal effort as key to the success and an emphasis on the individuality encapsulated in the family cell. Besides that, the television mass media constituted the responsible for knowledge transmission, and school education as the space of care and reassertion of family values; aspects which affects her ways to criticise, feel and act in the world. Thus, as a conclusion, it is possible to say that the ideology, and, more specifically as one of its elements, the personal effort notion, constitutes a decisive element, marking the process of insertion of the student in the labour world as something ideological, deprived of a process of appropriation of its constitutive mediations / Este trabalho buscou apreender a presença do ideário neoliberal nos sentidos e significados sobre trabalho em uma estudante do 3o ano Ensino Médio da Educação de Jovens e Adultos (EJA); momento este, do processo educativo, escolhido como recurso metodológico. A perspectiva teórica utilizada ao longo da pesquisa entende o estudante de EJA a partir dos pressupostos da Psicologia Sócio-Histórica, cujo referencial epistemológico e metodológico compreende o homem como ser histórico e constituído nas e pelas relações sociais de produção. A globalização da economia e a flexibilização e precarização do trabalho são os aportes para a difusão do ideário neoliberal. Para esta pesquisa, referendada pela abordagem qualitativa, formou-se um grupo com 10 alunos com esse perfil, em uma escola estadual de São Paulo, para, a partir daí, escolher-se o sujeito de pesquisa. No espaço grupal, a escolha do sujeito baseou-se nos seguintes critérios: envolvimento com o tema, aprofundamento e pertinência, e disponibilidade pessoal. Determinado o único sujeito, foram realizadas duas entrevistas semi-estruturadas, que recuperaram sua história de vida e profissional, objetivando aproximar-se dos sentidos e significados sobre trabalho. O procedimento de análise ocorreu por meio da aglutinação de pré-indicadores nos relatos da estudante, que foram organizados em indicadores, os quais articulados e sistematizados evidenciaram três núcleos de significação. Os núcleos organizados foram: O mundo do trabalho e projeto de vida e de consumo , Esforço Pessoal hoje e sempre e Visão de mundo e a mídia televisiva . O cenário de manutenção do ideário neoliberal orienta as formas de inserção dos homens no mundo do trabalho, de forma que foi possível identificar, nas falas da estudante, o esforço pessoal como chave para o sucesso e a ênfase na individualidade encapsulada na célula familiar. Além disso, a mídia televisiva constituiu-se como a responsável pela transmissão de conhecimentos, e a educação escolar como o lugar do cuidado e reafirmação de valores familiares aspectos que afetam suas formas de criticar, sentir e agir sobre o mundo. Assim, concluiu-se que o ideário e, mais especificamente, como um de seus elementos, a noção de esforço pessoal, constitui-se em um determinante fundamental, marcando o processo de colocação da estudante no mundo do trabalho, como algo ideologizado, desprovido de um processo de apropriação das mediações constitutivas