Teacher agency within the context of formative teacher assessment: an in-depth analysis

Teachers’ agency has an effect on their own learning process at the workplace. In this study we explored the extent to which teachers participating in a formative teacher assessment procedure developed a sense of agency. We investigated not only whether teachers participating in a such an assessment procedure experienced agency and thus felt in control of the learning process and able to pursue their learning objectives, but also whether agency was visible, by looking at decision-making in real time: did teachers take an active role in their own assessment, especially regarding the learning objectives to be pursued, during the assessment meetings? We found that teachers experienced a high level of agency while participating in the assessment procedure, but did not consistently show this during the assessment procedure.     

Teacher agency,positioning, and English language learners: Voices of pre-service classroom teachers

This study explores the identity (re)negotiations and agency of three pre-service classroom teachers who received their ESL (English as a Second Language) endorsement at a research university in the United States. An analysis of interview data and teachers' journal entries, from a narrative positioning perspective, indicates that the teachers took on various, and sometimes conflicting, positional identities in relation to their social context (e.g., mentor teachers, ELLs, etc.). The findings further indicate that those positional identities have shaped teachers' agency and self-reported classroom practices. The analysis presented provides implications for teachers of ELLs and teacher educators.     

Teacher agency in the Canadian context: linking the how and the what

Even though there is no common conceptual basis guiding teacher education in Canada, over the past two decades teacher educators both in Canada and around the world have called for teacher candidates to become agents of change. While researchers across Canada strive to demonstrate how to prepare pre- and in-service teachers to be agents of change, few scholars have examined in detail what teacher agency might mean in the Canadian context. This paper reviews the conceptualisation of agency from five theoretical perspectives (psychology, sociology, critical theory, historical studies, and post-structuralism) and examines how empirical studies in the Canadian contexts align with these perspectives. This paper makes explicit the connections between the how and the what of agency, and as such informs current approaches to preparing pre- and in-service teachers and their potential role as agents of change, and maps out how the notion of agency is taken up in a particular jurisdiction.     

I,Teacher: re‐territorialization of teachers’ multi‐faceted agency in globalized education

Analysis of teachers’ agency as multifarious change, embedded in educational reform in the global era, stands largely unexamined in educational policy. Although the concept of teachers as agents has political implications, beyond this, examining teachers’ agency offers ways of describing and reviewing changes to teachers’ work and relations within evolving education systems. Local systems draw from globally orientated education policies, which continue to influence to the way that local systems redesign education. In the global context, education systems are complex interactions between structure and agency, evidenced as ‘multiplicity undergoing change’. In other words, there is dynamic and dialectic interplay between structure and agency. Teachers’ agency, germane to dynamic interplay, means that teachers are not only engaging in the reproduction of structural change aligning globalization‐driven reforms to their work and practice, but also, in adapting and reacting to new structural conditions, they are transformed through their actions. In this paper, the focus becomes teachers’ agency as a framework for understanding how teachers are redesigned and reassembled to do things differently within restructured education systems. Finally, the discussion considers the possible consequences of teachers work and practice, given teachers’ agency relative to the macro policy of superfigures and the transitional national/global structures.     

Reading gender: a feminist,queer approach to children's literature and children's discursive agency

Children's literature helps young people make sense of gender. However, while books offer children the imaginative ability to create their own worlds, normative gender can manifest in characters and stories. The study described in this article draws upon ‘disruptive’ storytimes with 114 preschool children, interviews with 20 parents and staff, and observations at 20 preschools. Employing a feminist, queer approach, I develop two derivative books that switch a boy-hero for a girl and vice versa. These books are read to children in educational settings. This method interrogates gendered characters and stories’ attachments to such concepts as love, acceptance, bodily agency, and adventure. Results show how children interact with these characters and stories and how they use categorisation and narrative construction to make sense of gender. I focus on the gender discourses at play and moments of childhood discursive agency. Themes include literature, doing and being, positioning, bodies, and feminist tales.     

Scenarios for Dutch Teacher Education. A Trip to Rome: Coach bus company or travel agency?

In The Netherlands, developments in teacher education are dominated by three issues. Stimulated by a severe shortage of teachers, teacher education is changing towards competence-based teacher education, work-based teacher education and market-oriented teacher education. These developments lead to a dynamic situation in teacher education, where the traditional presuppositions of the curriculum and teacher education itself are questioned. To many teacher educators, the number of changes and new approaches is rather confusing. To make sense out of the turbulent developments, the Dutch association for teacher education VELON started a scenario project in which four scenarios for the future of teacher education in The Netherlands emerge. These scenarios are structured by two variables: the freedom of schools to define the type of teacher education they want and the freedom of students in taking responsibility for their own learning process. Compared to the ATEE-RDC19 scenarios (ATEE-RDC19, 2003) the axis pragmatism-idealism is missing, since each of the VELON scenarios can be motivated both from a pragmatic and an idealistic point of view.