Mapping Concepts of Agency in Educational Contexts

Abstract

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).

Addressing the epistemic elephant in the room: Epistemic agency and the next generation science standards

“…We use the construct of “epistemic agency” to explore the ways that students are able to meaningfully contribute to the knowledge and practices of a classroom community. Historically, the concept of agency is tied to a concept of “free will,” coming out of a “legal, ethical, moral and practical” need to assign responsibility for actions outside of contextual constraints (c.f., Matusov, von Duyke, & Kayumova, , p. 422). More specifically, the term epistemic agency was introduced into education literature in relation to the research on knowledge‐building communities conducted by Scardamalia and Bereiter ().…”

Pattern-recognition, intersubjectivity, and dialogic meaning-making in education

“…The alienated pattern-recognition of conventional school approaches this task by chunking the ready-made culture into self-contained basic skills (e.g., reading, writing, calculating), basic prescribed knowledge, and basic dispositions. The students' authorial agency is postponed until their education is "completed" (Matusov, von Duyke, & Kayumova, 2016). Some educators call this type of education -"training" (e.g., Dearden, 1984).…”

Beyond equality and inequality in education: Bakhtinian dialogic ethics approach of human uniqueness to educational justice

“…A Bakhtinian approach to the justice self-contradiction is based on the uniqueness (i.e., ultimate diversity) of people, education, circumstances; authorial agency (Matusov, von Duyke, & Kayumova, 2016); responsibility; and dialogicity. In education, we argue that the core problem of educational justice lays in the notion of student authorship, on which genuine education is based (Matusov, 2011a).…”