The significance of critical incidents and voice to identity and agency

Human agency is significant to the understanding of professional identities and actions. It is through human agency that individuals can become powerful in changing or authoring their own identities. Stemming from a larger narrative inquiry focused on understanding the professional identities of public preschool teachers, this paper draws on cultural models theory to explore identity, agency and professional practice through the lived stories of CeCe, an African-American public preschool teacher from the United States. Findings demonstrate the influence of CeCe’s lived experiences to her developing sense of human agency and highlight the importance of critical incidents and voice to identity and human agency.     

Youth science expertise,environmental identity,and agency in climate action filmmaking

Abstract

The Green Ninja Film Academy (GENIE) is an interdisciplinary curriculum development project that examines the efficacy of combining climate science concepts and practices with digital storytelling for middle school youth. We present findings from iterative enactments of this design-based research project in 2017 (N?=?296) and 2018 (N?=?539). On average, youth increased scores on assessments of science content and practices while demonstrating competencies in filmmaking and science explanations. Further, an inverse correlation was seen between initial identification with the environment and change in environmental identification throughout the unit. Results suggest that integration of creative filmmaking into a climate science curriculum aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards can increase engagement and science proficiency particularly for youth who initially show less engagement in environmental science.     

Structure and agency in learning: a critical realist theory of the development of capacity to reflect on academic practice

Theories of learning typically downplay the interplay between social structure and student agency. In this article, we adapt a causal hypothesis from realist social theory and draw on wider perspectives from critical realism to account for the development of capacity to engage in reflection on professional practice in academic roles. We thereby offer a theory of professional learning that explores how social and cultural structures and personal emergent powers combine to ensure variation in the emergence of such reflective capacity. The influence of these factors on professional learning is mediated through reflexive deliberation and social interaction, with the exercise of one's personal powers specifically identified as a stratum of social reality. We consider further the role of concerns, intention and attention in professional learning, drawing together issues that are rarely considered within the same theory. We thus offer a comprehensive account of professional learning, showing how a focus on structure and agency increases the explanatory power of learning theory.     

Developing identity and agency as an early career academic: lessons from Alice

This paper draws on Lewis Carroll’s character of Alice as a metaphor for interrogating identity construction and agency amongst early career academics, a process which can seem like Alice’s pursuit of the White Rabbit in a strange land. Keeping in mind the effects of neoliberalism on the tertiary sector, we recognise the centrality of personal lives in decision-making about academic careers and the shaping of professional identities. We also foreground how communities of practice not only build agency amongst ECAs but can also be supported by academic developers.     

Identity and agency: pleasures and collegiality among the challenges of the doctoral journey

How do doctoral students develop their identities as academics? In this analysis, we explore identity from the perspective of agency – humans as active agents. The analysis was based on the collective data from three earlier studies in different contexts. Embedded in the data were expressions of agency linked to affect – both positive and negative – in which doctoral students were acting to shape and not just be shaped by their experiences. Key findings were evidence of collective student identity as well as supervisors modeling and affirming student agency. Both these findings are pertinent in rethinking doctoral pedagogies: the latter provides a model for supervisors to explicitly model student agency, and the former suggests the value of creating opportunities for collective identity in which students act as positive agents in improving their own doctoral experiences.     

Elaborating the communication theory of identity: Identity gaps and communication outcomes

The Communication Theory of Identity identifies four frames of identity and their interpenetration. This article articulates identity gaps as a way to study interpenetration and selected two of the gaps, between personal and relational frames and between personal and enacted identities, for the study. A survey was administered and, as hypothesized, significant negative correlations were observed between the identity gaps and three communication outcomes. Possible causal directions were suggested by post hoc analyses. The results support the theory and suggest the utility of identity gaps as a means for understanding the role of identity in social relationships.     

Using communities of practice as a tool to analyse developing identity in online discussion

In this article, we address the methodological implications of analysing online discussion boards with a focus on participants' changing identities. More specifically, we propose the use of a Communities of Practice framework as a heuristic method for considering how participants' contributions to online discussion play a role in changing who they become, as opposed to what they learn. We argue that many analyses of online communication fail to take account of learning as a change in identity – what/who the learner is (becoming) – and focus mainly on the opportunity for cognitive development – what they know. In doing so, we use a single case study from a discussion board for secondary-aged students of mathematics which acts as a ‘telling case’ before demonstrating what this might say about other contexts for online learning. We argue that this has important implications for both research into, and the design of, online education.     

Teacher facilitating of group learning in science with digital technology and insights into students’ agency in learning to learn

ABSTRACT

The study provides an insight into how teachers may facilitate students’ group learning in science with digital technology, which was examined when Norwegian lower secondary school students engaged in learning concepts of mitosis and meiosis. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of the teacher’s assistance draw on Galperin’s conceptualisation of learning.

Findings reveal patterns in the teacher’s guidance: the teacher fulfilled the orienting, executive and controlling functions while assisting students in identifying the key features of mitosis and meiosis and solving the compare and contrast task. The teacher relied on and interplayed with the available mediational resources: compare and contrast task, digital animations, and collaborating peers. However, it was the compare and contrast task that demonstrated an approach to study scientific concepts which may have contributed to the development of learners’ understanding about to engage in learning in science. By adopting such an approach, learning activity has the potential to not only help students to achieve learning outcomes but it acquires a functional significance, becoming a tool in the learning process aimed at the development of students’ as learners. The digital animations, in turn, demonstrated scientific processes that were otherwise invisible for students and triggered group discussions. The study, therefore, raises questions about the need for practitioners’ awareness of the type of support the technology and other resources provide to assist both conceptual learning and enhancing students’ agency in learning to learn.     

I just do not have time for new ideas: resistance,resonance and micro-mobilisation in a teaching community of practice

There is growing interest in the role Communities of Practice (CoPs) play in continuing professional development of academics. However, very little research has explored how CoP theory is applied in practice in academic settings. Using the concepts of resonance and micro-mobilisation from social movement theory, we explore academic engagement (and disengagement) in the online aspects of a CoP in a large, multi-campus, multi-disciplinary university business school. Our findings demonstrate that while some found this environment useful and minor patterns of micro-mobilisation emerged, there were challenges in developing resonance using online technologies. Difficulties in finding technologies fit for purpose, concerns about confidentiality online and time jealousy were key issues that need further exploration.     

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.     

The role of action research in transforming teacher identity: modes of belonging and ecological perspectives

While teacher identity has been conceptualized in different ways, research in teacher education has shown that the development of self‐understanding about being a teacher is critical to learning how to teach and can be shaped in multiple ways. Etienne Wenger argues that the formation of communities of practice is influenced strongly by the negotiation of identity and thus, to understand learning in relation to identity formation and communities of practice, three modes of belonging should be considered. Using data from a three‐year action research project, the author examines how modes of belonging (engagement, alignment, and imagination) were enacted in teacher‐centred action research communities of practice. As well, an ecological perspective is adopted to provide insight into how teachers' identities are formed and reformed in the context of teacher‐centred action research.     

On personal and collective dimensions of agency in doctoral training: medicine and natural science programs

The purpose of the present study was to investigate knowledge-creating agency by examining doctoral students' accounts of their pursuits, using structured interviews. We examined all of the talk apparently related to agency of 13 doctoral students taking part in collective doctoral training in two, highly regarded Finnish research communities (natural science and medicine). The doctoral process involved the participants pursuing article-based theses based on collectively shared research problems and journal articles co-authored with the supervisor and other senior researchers. Based on the qualitative analysis of the interviews, three categories of agentic talk were identified, respectively, for three proposed types of knowledge-creating agency: personal, distributed, and ‘object-related’. Personal agency involved participants' reflection on their academic competence, self-efficacy, and personal strengths and weaknesses. Distributed agency played an important role in assisting these participants overcoming challenges; this includes sharing of expertise, receiving social support, and having a sense of collective efficacy. Object-related agency, in turn, represented integration of a doctoral student's efforts with those of her immediate research community while pursuing shared research objects (e.g., co-authored articles). Apart from issues of agency which, the authors propose, are raised in the interviews, the data provide content-rich accounts of the collective nature of doctoral experiences.     

Qualitatively recognizing the dimensions of student environmental identity development within the classroom context

This study qualitatively explored the process of student environmental identity development (sEID) within the highly social and structured context of elementary school science. Social practice theory was used as the lens to distinguish the dimensions of sEID that were visible during a curriculum-based, in-school program focused on the issue of pollution. Student narratives, collected from small group interviews and reflective journals, were prioritized to capture the process of students in context identifying as “being for the environment.” Data collected from 35 grade six students were qualitatively coded, a network diagram was used to visualize the relationships in the data, and a research vignette was constructed. Eight dimensions were recognized as contributing to sEID; the opportunity to be an environmental actor with peers, increased awareness of environmental threat, emotional responses, self-recognition for environmental action, perceived agency, changed behavior across social contexts, social recognition for identity actions, and personal meaning. While many of these dimensions have been directly or indirectly discussed in the research on adult environmentalists, shifting the emphasis from group membership to the individual student in context led to the addition of two dimensions—personal meaning and emotional responses. Recognizing the eight dimensions of sEID is an important contribution to the literature as students engaging in environmental action as a requirement of school is distinct from the existing research. Identifying the dimensions of sEID can support the intentional design of learning sequences that foster environmental identities in school and beyond.     

A social realist perspective on student learning in higher education: the morphogenesis of agency

Contemporary critiques of student learning research call for new theoretical and methodological approaches. This article proposes a social realist approach to this research, using the morphogenetic theory of sociologist Margaret Archer. The applicability of this approach is demonstrated by reference to an empirical study of engineering students at a South African university, using narrative analysis. In the article itself, two narratives are given in some detail, illustrating the key outlines of the analysis. Students’ emerging personal identities are shown to be highly dependent on their social backgrounds, yet when in the university the possibilities for the morphogenesis of student agency are very constrained. A critical interrogation of these findings proposes that a true higher education should facilitate the development of an enlarged sense of agency for students.     

中国留澳学生语言实践与身份认同的关系研究

本文将Norton关于"身份认同"的定义及"二语投资理论"作为理论基础,以Miller的"语言使用-社会成员关系-社会环境"图表为分析工具,来阐述在动态多元的社会情境下,悉尼大学中国留学生中的CETers和non-CETers的语言实践与他们的身份认同之间的关系。通过分析比较这两类学生的语言实践情况的相似性和差异性,来研究社会背景是如何影响他们语言实践以及身份认同的。     

Learner agency in language learning: the story of a distance learner of EFL in China

Learner agency plays a key role in self-regulated learning. Yet, there is a paucity of research into its role in the distance learning context. Using reflective narratives written by a distance learner of English in China, this longitudinal case study aims to investigate the ways in which learner agency mediates the language learning in the distance mode. Findings from the study suggest that agency has a major impact on learners’ self-efficacy, identity, motivation, and metacognition—four constructs which are instrumental in determining language learning success, in particular in the distance learning context. Analysis of the data indicates that positive changes in these four constructs, in turn, lead to further agentic engagement, hence forming a virtuous circle of mutual enhancement. Implications are discussed in relation to fostering distance learners’ goal awareness, enhancing their self-efficacy, maintaining their motivation, and encouraging metacognitive efforts.     

A mixed methods exploration of the relationships between the racial identity,science identity,science self-efficacy,and science achievement of African American students at HBCUs

Utilizing a Critical Race Mixed Methodology framework, the purpose of this concurrent (QUANT +qual) mixed methods study was to investigate the relationships between the racial identity, science identity, science self-efficacy beliefs, and science achievement of 347 African American college students who attend historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). The quantitative data identified several statistically significant relationships between science identity, racial identity, science self-efficacy, and science achievement. The results of a path analysis suggested that college science achievement is significantly explained by science identity (indirect effect = 0.09, p < 0.01), and marginally by racial identity measures (centrality, nationalist, and public regard), with science self-efficacy serving as a mediator. In the qualitative strand, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 students from the quantitative strand in order to corroborate the findings between the two methods. The qualitative data revealed that HBCUs facilitate the development of the constructs of interest by establishing Black racial cohesion and Black science cohesion, as well as by building students’ science cultural capital. Overall the qualitative findings corroborated several key quantitative findings.