Teacher agency: what is it … and [importantly] how do we develop it?

2. Teacher agency: what is it … and [importantly] how do we develop it? Professor Mark Priestley University of Stirling

3. Curriculum development? • Teacher agency? • Empowerment? • Professional judgment?

4. The curriculum • A product? • Glossy booklets • Lists of content • Everything planned in schools? • ‘the totality of all that is planned for children and young people throughout their education’ (Scottish Government, 2008). • Or practices? • ‘The multi-layered social practices, including infrastructure, pedagogy and assessment, through which education is structured, enacted and evaluated’ (Priestley, 2019).

5. Curriculum making • Curriculum not a product which needs to be delivered or implemented. • Instead, something that happens – or which is done – differentially across different layers of the education system, as the curriculum is [re]madein different institutional settings. • ‘Building the curriculum’

6. Need to consider • Questions relating to curriculum for what, by whom … and for whom? • The necessity of considering context, including the ‘hidden curriculum’, when engaging in local curriculum making. • The importance of teacher professional development – no curriculum development without teacher development (Stenhouse, 1975). • The role of system dynamics as barriers to and drivers of curriculum making. • The perspectives and experiences of traditionally marginalised groups.

7. Current Educational discourses • Teachers matter • Curriculum policy – teachers as ‘agents of change’ • School autonomy • Teacher empowerment – the empowered school/system • Teacher agency • But what does it all mean? • Are we also witnessing a changing practice? • From de-professionalisation to re-professionalisation? • A genuine enhancement of teacher agency?

8. A changing landscape • Emerging curricular models: • From the teacher as deliverer to the teacher as agent of change • Permissive policy – teacher autonomy Scotland’s curriculum “aims to engage teachers in thinking from first principles about their educational aims and values and their classroom practice. The process is based upon evidence of how change can be brought about successfully - through a climate in which reflective practitioners share and develop ideas.” (Scottish Executive, 2006: 4)

9. Teachers matter • A focus on the ‘excellent’ teacher • Lifelong professional learning (Master’s degrees) • Professional update • Teacher learning communities “The most successful education systems invest in developing their teachers as reflective, accomplished and enquiring professionals who are able to teach successfully in relation to current expectations, but who have the capacity to engage fully with the complexities of education and to be key actors in shaping and leading educational change.” (Donaldson, 2011: 14)

10. empowerment • Devolution of power, or just responsibility? • Just another slogan, or a clear concept? Is empowerment about: • Neo-liberal conceptions – governance from a distance, outcomes steering, personal responsibility and self-regulation? • Subsidiarity – delegation of authority, decision making where it makes most sense? • If the latter, how do we promote/support it?

11. But….. • A ‘giving with one hand and taking away with the other’ (Leat, 2014). • Reduction in input regulation accompanied by increasing output regulation: • External inspections, local authority audits. • Frameworks of performance indicators. • Measurement of performance by attainment data. • Potential for perverse incentives: • ‘Play the game’ (Gleeson & Gunter, 2001). • Fabrication of the school’s image (Keddie et al., 2011). • Concealing ‘dirty laundry’ (Cowie et al., 2007). • Tactical and even cynical compliance

12. Teacher agency • A new term/concept: • In scholarly writing • In policy • But how do we prevent it becoming another slogan: • Obsession of the year, 2017 • Need for clear conceptualisation • What is it? • How do we develop/support it?

13. Teacher agency • Requires teachers who: • Think educationally • Can take the initiative – the activist professional • Have expansive aspirations for education • Are able to work collegially • Teachers as active agents, not just agents of change • Teacher capacity is important • But we also need to address the cultural and structural domains of teaching • A context for teaching that does not disable excellent teachers

14. But: Are these the right attributes? What is missing? What is wrong with this? What resources do teachers need? What support/protection to teachers need?

15. What is agency? • Agency: the ability to critically shapes one’s responses to complex situations • Decision and judgement • Manoeuvre between repertoires • The ability to do otherwise • An ecological view of agency • not something people have, but something that people do; • outcome of the interaction of individual and social/material environment The question is therefore: • Not: What is an agentic individual? • But: How is agency achieved?

16. A temporal/relational view of agency • A dynamic interplay between routine, purpose, and judgement • three dimensions: the iterational, the projective and the practical-evaluative • a “chordal triad of agency within which all three dimensions resonate as separate but not always harmonious tones.” (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998: 972) “the temporally constructed engagement by actors of different structural environments – the temporal-relational contexts of action – which, through the interplay of habit, imagination, and judgement, both reproduces and transforms those structures in interactive response to the problems posed by changing historical situations.” (ibid.: 970)

17. Teacher agency model

18. The iterational dimension of agency “the agentic reactivation of schemes inculcated through past experience.” (ibid: 971) • Not necessarily routinised: • Selective reactivation • Manoeuvre among repertoires • Foundations of teacher agency • Skills and knowledge • Beliefs (personal and professional) • Life and professional experience

19. The projective dimension of agency “the imaginative generation by actors of possible future trajectories of action, in which received structures of thought and action may be creatively reconfigured in relation to actors’ hopes, fears, and desires for the future” (ibid: 971) • Rooted in beliefs and values. • Short- and long-term aspirations: • Creative or protective or subversive mediation (Osborn et al., 1997). • Instrumental, strategic or ‘educational’ engagement with policy.

20. The practical-evaluative dimension of agency “the capacity of actors to make practical and normative judgements among alternative possible trajectories of action, in response to the emerging demands, dilemmas, and ambiguities of presently evolving situations’ (ibid.: 971) • Constraints and resources: • Material • Structural • Cultural • Practical and evaluative • Tensions within and between policies • The quality of relationships (e.g. tie strength, span) – relational resources

21. Why does teacher agency matter? • The importance of context: • Over-emphasis on the individual • More attention needed on cultural and structural domains for action • Agency is more than going with the flow – e.g. to be a change agent in line with prevailing orthodoxies. • Autonomy is not the same as agency: • Prescription (output or input) can reduce agency • So can a laissez-faire environment • Well-constructed policy can offer affordances for teacher agency – through impetus, permissions, cultural/cognitive resources etc.

22. How do we boost teacher agency? • Individual/cultural • Sense-making opportunities • Technical skills (e.g. teaching methodologies) • Developing a language for critical engagement • Future orientation • Structural/cultural • Auditing the school context • Relational resources, spaces for generative dialogue • Clear processes for innovation and engagement – collaborative professional enquiry • Good leadership – approachable, facilitative, protective, trusting

23. [collective] SENSE-MAKING • New curricula are different • New terminology – learning outcomes/intentions, success criteria • New concepts – active learning, IDL, etc. • New theories of knowledge – constructivist rather than transmissionist • Potential for misconception – skills/knowledge; ‘we are already doing this’, etc. • Educational change is complex – and often superficial and/or unsuccessful • ‘Schools change reforms as much as reforms change schools’ (Cuban 1998) – teachers mediate change • Need to build understanding of concepts and purposes, and clear vision

24. Technical skills • Teaching methods • Cooperative learning • Formative assessment • Inquiry-based learning • Important, but: • Understood? Or box-ticking? • Fit-for -purpose? Or off-the-shelf, one-size-fits-all approaches • Tools to be selected from the toolkit to address big ideas

25. A language for critical engagement Educational concepts Educational values Framed in educational language Developed through reading, study and dialogue • Applying the language of new policy to existing practice • Partial understandings of new terms – active learning, formative assessment • Policy-speak rather than educational language

26. Future orientation • High levels of professionalism and technical expertise in schools • But the orientation tends to be short term: • Getting through the day • Raising attainment • Limited future imaginary • 3 levels of professional responsibility (Salomon, 1992) • A proper carrying out of role as teacher • Responsibility for learning processes and outcomes. • Selection of method and content in the light of normative and moral criteria. This responsibility is about ‘giving serious consideration to the desirable and less desirable long-term effects of the constantly improvised learning environment’ (p46).

27. Potential Barriers • Material – e.g. classrooms, dept location • Structural – e.g. timetabling, lack of spaces for dialogue, accountability systems • Cultural – e.g. subject imperialism, teacher education, language/discourses, tradition

28. Relational resources • Four teachers working in two secondary schools – remarkably similar. • Largely explained by their common experiences (in terms of their own education, their aspirations and the wider discourses that frame their work). • However, they achieve agency very differently. • Difference lies in characteristics of their working environments, particularly relationships experienced.

29. Hillview High School • Limited aspirations • Projective - seeing potential of new curriculum • Practical-evaluative - evaluating what was actually possible • Limited sense of agency, low confidence • ‘really difficult for the things that people want to know about. Like the Curriculum for Excellence, I can’t think of anybody that’s feeling like they are particularly in a position to be an expert and to help people’. (Teacher interview, Hillview High School)

30. Hillview High School • Relationships limited in nature and scope • Structures tended to be vertical – whole school dissemination and within faculty • Few opportunities for dialogue in meetings • Focus on routine business, not curriculum development • Disappearance of peer-observation • Limited opportunities to work across faculties – tended to be informal and ad hoc

31. Hillview High School • ‘But then it’s now at the point of right, so can we do any of these? And it sort of reached a plateau of trying to implement some of these changes, because us coming up with the idea doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. It’s got to go through a whole process of the senior management team …. and getting the okay from that. So we’re at a frustrating stage where we’ve got lots of things we’d like to do.’ • ‘It has not been something that we have discussed in faculty. And I don’t know if that is just us. I don’t think it is. It’s everybody. We are all in the same boat. The faculty meeting ends up being taken up with things that are important but not big important things. Like little important things that we need to know about stuff going on in school. So it is giving us information, rather than talking at a higher level.’

32. Lakeside High School • Strong sense of teacher agency • ‘That’s partly why CfE could be a really positive thing, because we are constantly looking at what we are doing. And that we also share our ideas across the faculty’. • ‘That is why I am not scared about the future with Curriculum for Excellence, because I made those decisions when it started three, four years ago. And I am feeling fairly secure. But I can totally understand why other people are not.’

33. Lakeside High School • Strong collegial culture • Managers supportive of risk taking • High levels of trust – reciprocal • Informal relationships across faculties • Formal relational structures across faculties (peer observation) • ‘Some have just come about accidentally. But some have come about because of those meetings that we had.’ • External links

34. Relationships • Dimensions to relationships which impact on teachers’ achievement of agency • Orientation – i.e. horizontal or vertical • Symmetry • Reciprocity • Formality • Strength • Frequency • Span • At Lakeside, the existence of relatively reciprocal, symmetrical relationships with a horizontal orientation seemed to generate a collaborative culture where strong, frequent, and informal teacher working was able to flourish.

35. Critical Collaborative Professional Enquiry • University/Local Authority partnership (Priestley & Drew, 2019). • Making sense of the big ideas of new curriculum policy. • Consideration of fit-for-purpose practices. • Input of cultural resources (research literature, etc.). • Peer support/mentors. • Critical Collaborative Professional Enquiry (CCPE). • Teacher-led innovation. • Capacity development (EAS SE Wales) for future CCPE leadership

37. CCPE and teacher agency • Individual • Enhanced professional knowledge • Changed dispositions to practice • Professional confidence • More expansive and varied aspirations • Cultural/structural • Less hierarchical ways of working • Mitigation of risk • Enhanced relational resources • Sustainable engagement with curriculum policy and emerging changes to school practices

38. Developing teacher agency • Government • Formulation of policy that facilitates and provides resources • Avoidance of conflicting demands on school leaders and practitioners • Identification of processes • Agencies • High quality CPD – participative, not something done to teachers • Provision of leadership and expertise • An infrastructure for curriculum making – spaces, connections, resources • School leaders • Creating and sustaining a vision • Creating dialogic spaces and communication channels • Provision of external resources – research, visiting speakers, external links • Encouragement of risk-taking and innovation – support, permission, protection • Minimising bureaucracy

39. m.r.priestley@stir.ac.uk https://www.stir.ac.uk/people/255862 http://mrpriestley.wordpress.com https://twitter.com/MarkRPriestley