Teachers as agents of change: An exploration of the concept of teacher agency Working paper no. 1, Teacher Agency and Curriculum Change
نویسندگان
چکیده
The project comprises a number of in-depth ethnographic case studies in three Scottish schools (primary and secondary). The immediate context for the research is the implementation of Scotland’s new Curriculum for Excellence, a policy that aims to change the structure, content and method of Scottish education, and which is an example of modern curricular reform in which teachers are explicitly positioned as agents of change. The project focuses on the ways in which and the extent to which experienced teachers achieve agency in their day to day working contexts, against the background of the introduction of the new curriculum, and on the factors that promote or inhibit such agency. The project has two key aims:
منابع مشابه
Teacher agency: what is it and why does it matter?
The concept of teacher agency has emerged in recent literature as an alternative means of understanding how teachers might enact practice and engage with policy (e.g. Lasky, 2005; Leander & Osbourne, 2008; Ketelaar et al., 2012; Priestley, Biesta & Robinson, 2013). But what is agency? Agency remains an inexact and poorly conceptualised construct in much of the literature, where it is often not ...
متن کاملTeacher Agency in Curriculum Making: Agents of Change and Spaces for Manoeuvre
In the wake of new forms of curricular policy in many parts of the world, teachers are increasingly required to act as agents of change. And yet, teacher agency is under-theorised and often misconstrued in the educational change literature, wherein agency and change are seen as synonymous and positive. This paper addresses the issue of teacher agency in the context of an empirical study of curr...
متن کاملPre-service Language Teachers’ Cognitions about Language Learning/teaching and Cognition Refinements through a Reflection-oriented Practicum
Pre-service teacher cognition literature abounds with the concept of change as well as proposals regarding desirable conceptual changes to be undertaken so that teacher candidates can set out their path of professional development with right beliefs. Yet, such changes would seem less likely to occur if the trainees’ thoughts, beliefs, and cognitions are not identified in the f...
متن کاملMaking sense of EFL teacher agency: Insights from an Iran case study
This investigation set out to look into the issue of teachers’ exercise of agency in the Iranian EFL context. More specifically, as part of a larger study, it reports on the ways two Iranian Ministry of Education teachers make sense of and operate in the country’s educational setting under the demands of a centralist system of education. Priestley, Biesta, & Robinson’s (2013) framework of teach...
متن کاملThe teacher and the curriculum: exploring teacher agency
A key debate in the curriculum field has centred on the extent to which teachers should or could achieve agency over the curriculum they enact. Threats to teacher agency have come from top-down control of curricula, either through input regulation (prescription of content, methods and/or teaching materials) or output regulation (steering through outcomes). Drawing upon an ecological model to ex...
متن کامل