The Teacher and the Curriculum: Exploring Teacher Agency (original) (raw)
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12 The Teacher and the Curriculum: Exploring Teacher Agency
The SAGE Handbook of Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment: Two Volume Set
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 explore the concept of teacher agency, this chapter will illustrate through empirical research conducted in Scotland and Cyprus, how it manifests in various ways through teachers' work. The chapter concludes with a discussion of why it is important to understand and take into account teacher agency when formulating and developing curriculum policy.
Teacher Agency in Curriculum Making: Agents of Change and Spaces for Manoeuvre
Curriculum Inquiry, 2012
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 curriculum making in schooling. Drawing upon the existing literature, we outline an ecological view of agency as an effect. These insights frame the analysis of a set of empirical data, derived from a research project about curriculum-making in a school and further education college in Scotland. Based upon the evidence, we argue that the extent to which teachers are able to achieve agency varies from context to context based upon certain environmental conditions of possibility and constraint, and that an important factor in this lies in the beliefs, values and attributes that teachers mobilise in relation to particular situations.
Shifts in curriculum control: contesting ideas of teacher autonomy
Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy, 2015
This article addresses how the introduction of a more product-oriented curriculum in Norway has challenged and altered more traditional ideas of teacher autonomy. Based on interview data, the study investigates prominent perspectives on autonomy through an analysis of how teachers, principals, a district superintendent and educational administrators perceive the current steering and control through the national curriculum. The findings show three main perspectives on teacher autonomy as (1) pedagogical freedom and absence of control, (2) the will and capacity to justify practices and (3) a local responsibility. However, these varying viewpoints are contested and highlight the multidimensionality of teacher autonomy. These should be discussed in relation to one another for an increased understanding of the associated and current dilemmas arising in the teaching profession with the shifts in curriculum control. The findings also shed light on how an increase in local responsibilities related to student outcomes and school development interferes in the unofficial contract that has historically existed between teachers and the state.
Teachers as agents of curriculum change: closing the gap between purpose and practice
2016
Curriculum policy in many countries has been subject to a distinct shift in emphasis in recent years (Priestley & Biesta, 2013). Following two decades of centralised direction of the content (and even the methods) of the curriculum, there has been a shift to curricular models which emphasis local flexibility in curriculum-making, positioning teachers as autonomous developers of the curriculum. Yet, arguably, teachers in many countries have lost much of the craft knowledge necessary for school-based curriculum development, attributable to prescriptive teacher proof curricula (input regulation), and heavy-duty accountability mechanisms (output regulation) (Kuiper & Berkvens, 2013; Kneyber & Evers, 2015). This paper focuses on an initiative in Scotland, which sought to enhance teachers’ capacity for curriculum-making through the methodology of Critical Collaborative Professional Enquiry. This process explicitly engaged teachers with the big ideas of the Scottish Curriculum for Excellen...
Pioneer teachers: How far can individual teachers achieve agency within curriculum development?
Journal of Educational Change, 2021
Education reform requires the commitment and investment of teachers if it is to succeed. Recognising the importance of teacher engagement, some countries have made teacher agency a feature of their curricula. Wales has embraced the notion of teacher agency within the building of its new curriculum by creating a body of Pioneer teachers to shape its new curriculum framework. This paper considers the nature of teacher agency experienced by a group of these Pioneers working on the expressive arts area of the curriculum. It does so through an exploration of the ecological nature of teacher agency, as theorised by Emirbayer and Mische (1998), and it considers agency through a framework of different levels: the micro-level focuses on the individuals and their personal contributions; the macro-level considers Pioneers’ work at national level, liaising with teachers from across the country and taking responsibilityfor creating the curriculum; the meso-level refers to where the two former le...
Exploring teacher mediation in curriculum making: Scotland and Wales
2018
New forms of curriculum, which demand greater input from teachers, are emerging internationally (Priestley & Biesta, 2013). Teachers are seen as agents of change in many contexts and are expected to engage with curriculum making more actively than previously to shape their practices. Scotland and Wales are good examples of this new approach. Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence gives an explicitly strong emphasis on the teacher’s role as an active curriculum maker, by stating that the intention is to create teacher-led system (Scottish Government, 2017) where teachers and schools are empowered to make their own school-based curriculum. In Wales, where the current curriculum development process is still ongoing, direct engagement of teachers to generate ideas for the new curriculum is one of the main aspirations (Welsh Government, 2017).
Teachers’ curriculum agency in teaching a standards-based curriculum
The Curriculum Journal
In 2011, Sweden introduced explicit standards for the curriculum used in compulsory schooling through the implementation of 'knowledge requirements' that align content, abilities and assessment criteria. This article explores and analyses social science teachers' curriculum agency through a theoretical framework comprised of 'teacher agency' and Bernstein's concepts of 'pedagogic device', 'hierarchical knowledge structure' and 'horizontal knowledge structure'. Teachers' curriculum agency, in recontextualisation of the curriculum, is described and understood through three different 'spaces': a collective space, an individual space and an interactive space in the classroom. The curriculum and time are important for the possibilities of agencythe teachers state that the new knowledge requirements compel them to include and assess a lot of content in each 'curriculum task'. It is possible to identify a recontextualisation process of 'borrowing' and combining content from curriculum tasks across the different subjects. This process is explained by the horizontal knowledge structure and 'weak grammar' of the social sciences. Abilities, on the other hand, stand out as elements of a hierarchical knowledge structure in which a discursive space is opened for knowledge to transcend contexts and provides opportunities for meaning-making. The space gives teachers room for action and for integrating disciplinary content.
Voice and Agency of teachers: Missing link in national Curriculum Framework 2005
Economic and Political Weekly, 2005
The National Curriculum Framework 2005 articulates a new vision of the school curriculum as an inclusive space that extends beyond the conventional textbooks into the realm of teaching-learning processes. While this vision has the potential to enable education to become a critical catalyst in the process of social transformation, it fails to engage enough with a most crucial link -the agency of the teacher. The proactive engagement of the schoolteacher with processes of curriculum redesign is a necessary condition to ensure the success of the NCF. However, as this paper argues, radical change in the school curriculum without changing the central reality of teachers in Indian classrooms can do little to alter educational processes and outcomes. The exercise of curriculum renewal must attend to the equally vital need of transforming the state of teacher education in India, if the NCF's vision of schools as sites of social transformation leading to an egalitarian and just social order in the near future, is to ever become a reality.
Constructing teacher agency in response to the constraints of education policy
Drawing on agency literature this paper demonstrates how teachers’ professional agency emerged when seemingly conflicting strategies were imposed on them in policy reform. Policy discourse is often linked to performance and accountability measures that teachers respond to in a number of ways. Some education researchers identify tensions caused by such strategies others warn that if outcomes are defined by mechanical techniques that are practiced and imposed rather than constructed and negotiated then there is a danger that teachers will be re-shaped as technicians. A number of debates discuss de-professionalism, the erosion of status and new definitions of the role of the teacher. This ethnographic study examines how the implementation of policy requirements for writing student reports stipulated by two levels of government emerged through the practices of the teachers in an Australian non-government school. The analysis of the data is located within the policy in/as practice literature. The evidence illustrates that, despite the strategies of performance, accountability and control mechanisms in policy text, the presence of strong collegial relationships enabled the teachers construct their professional agency by adaptation and adoption of policy requirements to fit some practices and reshape others.
Curriculum Journal, 2012
Drawing on agency literature, this paper demonstrates how teachers' professional agency emerged when seemingly conflicting strategies were imposed on them in policy reform. Policy discourse is often linked to performance and accountability measures, which teachers respond to in a number of ways. Some education researchers identify tensions caused by such strategies; others warn that if outcomes are defined by mechanical techniques that are practised and imposed rather than constructed and negotiated then there is a danger that teachers will be reshaped as technicians. A number of debates discuss de-professionalism, the erosion of status and new definitions of the role of the teacher. This ethnographic study examines how the implementation of policy requirements for writing student reports, stipulated by two levels of government, emerged through the practices of the teachers in an Australian non-government school. The analysis of the data is located within the policy in/as practice literature. The evidence illustrates that, despite the strategies of performance, accountability and control mechanisms in policy text, the presence of strong collegial relationships enabled the teachers to construct their professional agency by adaptation and adoption of policy requirements to fit some practices and reshape others.