Philanthropic neoliberalization and new forms of educational privatization: The global network Teach For All in Spain

Abstract

This paper explores the emergence of philanthropic neoliberalization in the Spanish education policy through the case of “Empieza por Educar” (ExE), subsidiary of “Teach For All” (TFA). I examine some aspects of the “new philanthropy”, “philanthrocapitalism” and the concept of neoliberalism from Foucauldian and neo-Marxist perspectives. The research is based on the “Network Ethnography” (Howard, 2002). Under this methodological framework I built the “ExE policy network” constituted between governments, businesses and philanthropy, to examine new forms of governance and “network capital” and explain discourses of ExE in order to demonstrate how the “policy network” aspires to change teachers  into leaders.