The purpose of this conceptual paper is to explore and map the "espoused theories" (Argyris and Schön 1978) of agency used in educational contexts. More precisely, we limit the focus on the normative view of student agency assumed within dominant school practices, desired by educational practitioners, leaving out non-normative emerging agencies such as student agency of resistance. Agency is a "tricky" concept, and often scholars who use the concept of agency do not define or operationalize it (e.g., Archer 2000). One reason is that there is no consensus among scholars about the notion of agency, especially when applied to educational contexts (Hitlin and Elder Sociological Theory, 25 (2), 170-191, 2007). Moreover, the recent neoliberal framing of individuals' agency as fully autonomous, flexible, and self-entrepreneur is adding the dilemma of agency manipulation in the sphere of education (Gershon 2011; Sidorkin 2004). To tackle this dilemma in educational contexts, we suggest to further interrogating the normative notion of agency in all its modes and develop a more nuanced conceptualization. We hope that such conceptualization would produce an understanding of the diverse manifestations and definitions of agency within a human ideal, educational content, behaviors, and social settings. We observed diverse uses of the normative term "agency" in educational discourse. We examined the term as used by researchers and practitioners. We also looked at the different ways it has been used in philosophical discussions of education, political framing of the civic role of schooling, disciplinary policy statements, school mission statements, and in everyday common use. It is worthy to note that our categorization of the use and meaning of the normative term "agency" depends on the scholars' epistemological paradigmatic assumptions, socio-political and historical situatedness, and ontological projects being translated into diverse scholarships of education. As a result of our research, we suggest four major normative conceptual frameworks related to agency mainly being adopted in educational contexts that we labeled as: 1) instrumental, 2) effortful, 3) dynamically emergent, and 4) authorial. In this paper, we discuss these normative approaches to agency as we compare and contrast the assumptions and their consequences for the current field of education, mostly from a point of view of authorial definition of agency (our bias).

In this paper, we extend Bakhtin's ethical philosophical ideas to education and introduce a dialogic authorial agency espoused approach. We then consider this approach in opposition to the mainstream technological espoused approach, while focusing our contrasting analysis on student's authorial agency and critical dialogue. We argue that the technological approach assumes that the "skills" or "knowledge" are garnered in pursuit of preset curricular endpoints (i.e., curricular standards). Since the goals of the technological approach are divorced from the students ' personal goals, values, and interests, they are incompatible and irreconcilable with what we idealize as the true goal of education, education for agency.The authorial agency approach to education (Dialogic Education For and From Authorial Agency) emphasizes the unpredictable, improvisational, eventful, dialogic, personal, relational, transcending, and ontological nature of education. The authorial agency of the student and of the teacher are valued and recognized by all participants as the primary goal of education -supported by the school system and broader society. The approach defines education as a learner's leisurely pursuit of critical examination of the self, the life, and the world in critical dialogue. The purpose of authorial agency pedagogy is to facilitate this process by promoting students' agency and unique critical voices in socially desired practices -critical voices, recognized by the students themselves and others relevant to the particular practice(s). Ultimately, in the authorial education for and from authorial agency, students are led into investigating and testing their ideas and desires, assuming new responsibilities and developing new questions and concerns.Finally, we describe and analyze the first author's partially successful and partially failing attempt to enact a dialogic authorial approach. It will allow the reader to both visualize and problematize a dialogic authorial approach. We will consider a case with a rich "e-paper trail" written by 11 undergraduate, pre-service teacher education students (mostly sophomores), and the instructor (Peter, the first author, pseudonym) in a course on cultural diversity. ISSN: 2325-3290 (online)Dialogic Education for and from Authorial Agency Eugene Matusov, Mark Smith, Elizabeth A163 The case focuses on the university students (future teachers) and their professor discussing several occasions that involved interactions between Peter and one minority child in an afterschool center. Our research questions in this empirical study were aimed at determining the successes, challenges, and failures of the dialogic authorial pedagogical approach and conditions for them.Eugene Matusov is a Professor of Education at the University of Delaware. He studied developmental psychology with Soviet researchers working in the Vygotskian paradigm and worked as a schoolteacher before immigrating to the United States. He uses sociocultural and Bakhtinian dialogic approaches to education. ...

The practice of a dialogic pedagogy inspired by the writings of Bakhtin is increasingly popular in different parts of the world. This article is an account produced in the spirit of such pedagogy. Two professors (one from Brazil, the other from the United States), both members of an international dialogic pedagogy study group, write together to discuss the work they developed in partnership under this educational paradigm when teaching a course on “Diversity in secondary education” in the School of Education of the College of Education and Human Development of the University of Delaware, USA. After presenting brief introductory information on who they are, how they met and how they happened to work together, the two scholars present classroom interaction data followed by reflections on to what extent certain forms of classroom interaction they identified in the data promote or inhibit the practice of a truly Bakhtinian Dialogic Pedagogy. In other words, what the readers will find in this article is not a traditional empirical study, but a telling case of two educators learning from one another about what counts as dialogic in the classroom, while at the same time using the aforementioned course as an anchor for multiple discussions.

In our judgment, Cresswell's theoretical discussion of the two main concerns with CDA methodology and the conceptual ways to deal with them is most interesting and promising. However, we found his empirical illustration of how to deal with these two concerns unconvincing, problematic, and apparently contradicting of his overall theoretical framework, but also instructional and thought-provoking. We see the main shortcoming of Cresswell's application of his theoretical ideas to empirical research in his technism, a belief that there are methodological techniques detached from investigators' research goals and subjectivity -a belief likely rooted in positivism. In our commentary, we want to justify our judgment and offer our own illustrations of his fruitful theoretical and methodological ideas. KeywordsBroader outside social discourses, communal practices, embodiment, technismWe have found deeply thought-provoking and enlightening both the strengths and weaknesses in James Cresswell's critique of conventional critical discourse analysis (CDA) methodology (Cresswell, this issue). Grounded mostly in the work of Garfinkel and Bakhtin, Cresswell revealed two major concerns with CDA methodology that we call 'the breadth concern' and 'the depth concern'. The breadth concern with CDA methodology is about the localism of discourse analysis; it is too locally focused on what goes on

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