ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a critical analysis of neoliberal “keywords” (Williams, 1985) as a tool to examine neoliberal ideologies represented in outcome-based curriculum design in Canada. We highlight the elusiveness of neoliberal language to illustrate how language is a crucial pivot for the working of neoliberalism in education (Shin & Park, 2016). Drawing on examples from our own contexts as a university-based teacher educator and a secondary school teacher in a Canadian prairie province, we situate our analysis within a larger social, political economic context of late capitalism and evidence-based policy discourses in education across the globe. We then consider the mismatches between the expectations set out by the official curriculum and the needs of the youth-at-risk of academic failure in an alternative secondary school in rural Saskatchewan who are from Indigenous or low socio-economic communities. We conclude with suggestions for possible policy and pedagogical intervention to ensure increased teacher autonomy and equal access to learning by all students.
