Agency as polyphony: Student and primary teachers' narration embedded in theory and practice
Year: 2022
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This dissertation examines student and primary teachers' agency in integrating theory and practice. To educate future citizens who act in a complex world of global challenges, primary teachers must learn to integrate research-generated knowledge taught in teacher education and their practical work in schools. Hence, more research-based teacher education programmes have been developed and learning research skills has been emphasised. However, the role of agency in this regard has remained understudied. Previous research has indicated that agency, referring to the power to act and choose one's actions, is important in learning and well-being in general. In this dissertation, a narrative approach to agency is used to examine how different linguistic expressions become used and selected in student and primary teachers' narration in their written texts and interviews. The dissertation consists of three sub-studies in the context of Finnish researchbased teacher education. These sub-studies utilised student teachers' study reports where student teachers reflected on the significance of research skills in their teaching practice period (studies I–II) and primary teachers' interviews on their teacher education and work (study III). Study I examined student teachers' agency when research skill studies and a teaching practice period were integrated. The study utilised a linguistic method to interpret expectations from text and the metaphor of voice by Bakhtin, bringing forth various voices. The study revealed that the student teachers utilised contradictory voices to make sense of research skills. The findings illustrated voices of enthusiasm, uncertainty, rejection, and anticipation, which implied enacted, limited, opposing, and open qualities of agency. Study II utilised the concept of epistemic agency to examine how student teachers oriented themselves towards knowledge when engaging with research skills. The analysis was performed from the perspective of small stories, which also grasps the parts of narration that may not conventionally be understood as narratives. Student teachers were found to orient their epistemic agency to their own professional development, towards understanding the pupils and their backgrounds, to the educational research literature, and to the everyday life of school. The study revealed the multiple ways student teachers can utilise research skills and highlightedthe need to make epistemic agency and relationships to knowledge visible for student teachers in research courses. Study III examined primary teachers' agency through relational sociology by exploring agency through relationships. The study analysed master- and counternarratives to reveal how agency arouses from taking a stand on prevailing narratives. The study illustrated three relational aspects of agency: political, cultural, and epistemic. Finnish teachers have been claimed to be autonomous, but the study illuminated how their agency is not self-evident but forms through relationships with the prevailing circumstances. The dissertation provides a theoretical contribution by conceptualising agency as a polyphony of multiple voices implying diverse qualities of action. This conceptualisation is especially needed in the development of Finnish primary teacher education. The programmes are popular, and only the most suitable candidates are chosen whence follows that all of them have good opportunities to succeed in teachers' work. Acknowledging that agency includes tensions and is always incomplete enables the analysis of issues that require development. In addition, the dissertation develops post-structuralist methodologies to examine agency in narration by bringing forth that teachers use various linguistic expressions that are not inherently personal but entwined with cultural narratives. The dissertation illustrates the knowledge work that student and primary teachers do as they tailor knowledge for their own purposes and apply it from one institutional context to another. In conclusion, integrating theory and practice in teacher education requires taking into account student teachers' agency. In the integration, learning research skills plays a strong role because research skills help in understanding how research-generated knowledge is borne, what it signifies, and how it can be applied in teachers' work. In this sense, integrating theory and practice also enables agency.
Source: UTUPub (University of Turku)
Author: Heikkilä, Mirva
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
Funder: Jyväskylän Yliopisto
OpenAlex ID: W7063879253