The educational dynamics of populism: schooling, teacher expertise and popular claims to knowledge

ABSTRACT In response to the contemporary problematic of populism and associated reactionary right-wing politics, this paper argues for a greater analytic focus on the role of schools and teacher expertise in understanding the social relations of populism. This conceptual paper builds a conjunctural conceptualisation of populism that understands it as an invariable political modality of modern democracies, mobilised to different political ends. Extending this analysis, I explore the ways in which schools and teacher expertise lie at the heart of the populist tension between the ‘expert’ and the ‘layperson’. The social relationships to knowledge and knowledge-making institutions are fundamental to populism as well as the hierarchies of being understood (or not) as a ‘knower’ capable of truth-claims in modern liberal democracies. I conclude by arguing the need to engage in the social relations of ‘popular’ and ‘expert’ knowledge claims and the politics that underlie them.