Agency as dynamic and rhizomatic: An exploration of learner identities in two secondary classrooms

This thesis is premised on “a politics of becoming” (Gowlett, 2013, p. 149), a Deleuzo-Guattarian notion which speaks to social justice research. Rather than a focus on reductionist reformist politics, I explore moments of possibility as lines of flight that disrupt dominant discourses. As outlined in the New Zealand Curriculum, New Zealand schools are charged with the task of strengthening students’ key competencies (Ministry of Education, 2007a) to lay a foundation for lifelong learning. Learner agency is embedded in a dispositional view of these competencies but there is a paucity of research from a poststructural perspective in this area from New Zealand. Agency is also fundamental to a sociocultural conception of assessment for learning (AfL) where learners initiate, participate and contribute to learning in their classroom communities. Positioned in theoretical landscapes of socioculturalism and feminist poststructuralism, this study investigates agency through a rhizo-textual analysis in two year nine classrooms. The dynamic poststructural view of agency theorised in this thesis is derived from Judith Butler’s (1993) notion of performativity which precludes any prediscursive autonomous subject. Using data from episodes in two year nine classrooms I explore: how students engage as authoritative, active participants, authoring and directing their own actions in social activity within multiple discourses; how students move themselves from one set of culturally and socially structured subjectivities to another; and how agency can look, sound and feel in the discursive space of the classroom. In keeping with a rhizoanalytic approach, I construct plateaus of discourse based on episodes of classroom activity. These three short episodes of classroom discourse serve to illuminate the subjectivities in play. There are two forms of analysis used to construct these plateaus. Firstly, I conduct a discourse analysis of identity affordances and discourses to examine the nature of learner positioning. I then use rhizo-textual analysis (Honan & Sellers, 2006) to map the students’ and teachers’ moves in discourse and shifting subjectivities. The findings highlight how agency can appear as a rapid series of rhizomatic discourse moves that take place as students and teachers deterritorialize and reterritorialize discourses as they enact specific identities. They resonate with Davies’ (2000) observation that learners can accept, resist, subvert and change or ignore a range of discourse positions. The study also illustrates that what can appear to be ‘off-task’ behaviour can be also read as highly agentic. The dynamic and rhizomatic theory of agency proposed illustrates that learners can inhabit multiple subject positions across discourses as they respond to the interpellations of their teachers and peers. Rather than a performance where individuals act out roles as pre-discursive identities, students exercise performativity within and across classroom discourses as they are constituted agentically through their lines of flight. The research makes a methodological contribution through combining sociocultural and poststructural theories to explore the discursively constructed social and cultural environments of two classrooms. This is a deterritorializing move away from conventional sociocultural learning theory to incorporate an ecological (Boylan, 2010), rhizomatic view of classroom participation. This research has implications for how educators conceptualise learners’ identities and provide affordances for learners to initiate learning and take up agentic positions in classroom discourse. It also has implications for the ways in which the key competencies can be interpreted and strengthened in classrooms. Rather than ‘having’ agency to transfer competencies from one situation to the next, competencies are produced and enacted as learners shift subjectivities within and across discourses. The findings also offer students, teachers and policy makers insight into the learning dynamics of classrooms which embody the ‘spirit’ of AfL (Marshall & Drummond, 2006) where students can be afforded opportunities for lines of flight to initiate learning. Through being aware of learners’ rhizomatic moves, teachers may be able to notice, recognise and respond to learner initiatives more readily, and assist them to develop their capacity to be agentic learners

Professional Learning on Steroids”: Implications for Teacher Learning Through Spatialised Practice in New Generation Learning Environments.

There is growing interest in innovative educational space design and the relationality of spatialised teaching practices. This paper addresses the characteristics of spatialised professional learning in newly redesigned or purpose built new generation learning environments (NGLE). The case study is situated within Aotearoa/New Zealand context, a country where there has been considerable policy focus and investment in NGLE. Data from principals who have established NGLE in their schooling settings is analysed, with consideration given to the preparation of teachers to take up spatialised practices. The study highlights key characteristics of spatialised PLD practice – fostering spatial literacy; professional cross-pollination; co-teaching and peer coaching; deprivatisation and bespoke professional learning design. The value of this research lies in its contribution to researchers and practitioners in the schooling sector as they consider approaches to professional learning in NGLE

Dimensions of Agency in New Generation Learning Spaces: Developing Assessment Capability

In new generation schooling contexts, the interaction of human activity, space, and objects, co- produce spatialised practices. There is the fluid use and continuous re-design of learning spaces, where dynamic socio-material practices support the ongoing and negotiated development of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. Links are forged in this article between spatialised practice and student agency. In Aotearoa/New Zealand there is a national policy impetus for all schools to move towards re-designed learning spaces. School leaders are challenged with a mandate to lead pedagogic change to develop assessment capability, in alignment with the redesign of education facilities. Informed by theories of space, the case study research investigates how school leaders conceptualise student agency within flexible learning spaces. School leader interview data are used to generate dimensions of socio-material agency with consideration given to practice. Assessment practices in flexible learning spaces can enable ‘dialogic’, ‘curriculum’, and ‘spatial’ dimensions of agency. Pedagogical practices that support agency in flexible learning spaces are a focal area for ongoing investigation

\u27Nobody is Watching but Everything I do is Measured\u27: Teacher Accountability, Learner Agency and the Crisis of Control.

It is widely acknowledged that there is systemic pressure on teachers to enact assessment practices that raise student achievement. In this article assessment related discourses that influence teacher and student classroom practices are examined in relation to initial teacher education. In Australia, preservice teachers (PSTs) are required to demonstrate assessment capability, promote student agency and monitor their practice impact on student learning whilst working in schooling ecologies that are marked by high stakes accountability measures. Processes that bridge university and in-school PST teacher preparation are an important consideration in developing assessment capability. It is argued that there are tensions in the current policy environment associated with distributed classroom power relations that are emblematic of student agency in practice. The socially constituted nature of ecological agency that underpins generative assessment for learning practices is an important consideration for judgement about initial teacher assessment capability and associated graduate impact on student learning

Democratic contribution or information for reform? Prevailing and emerging discourses of student voice

While a range of typologies frame and critique the scope, purpose and power relations of different student voice approaches, it is timely to look at the direction that student voice literature has taken in recent years and map dominant discourses in the field. In the article the following questions are addressed: (a) What are the dominant discourses in student voice literature? (b) What are the ways forward, to ensure there is both systemic quality assurance and democratic (if not radical) student participation? The discourses named and interrogated in this article include: governmentality; accountability; institutional transformation and reform; learner agency; personalising learning; radical collegiality; socially critical voice; decolonising voice; and refusal. Consideration is given to the ongoing impetus to position students as consumers and resources for quality control. It is an ongoing concern that student voice projects can miss opportunities for reconfiguring the status of students within democratic schooling partnerships. There is an important role for ongoing and initial teacher education that addresses a politics of voice associated with systemic quality assurance, decolonisation and democracy

Voice, representation and dirty theory

Australian Educational theory has drawn largely from the authoritative metropole described by Connell in Southern Theory (2007). In this article, the perilous nature of global north/south power relations that are embedded in research work is given consideration. Through a collaborative process, the researchers create an assemblage of poems that embody a range of voices from their respective research fields. Drawing from contexts in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand, these examples of southern theory fieldwork are used to problematise the notion that it is possible to simply bring the south to the centre. The geospatial politics inherent in Connell’s attempt to categorise knowledge production is critiqued. The complexity of ‘doing southern theory’ is considered as one of many approaches to working with voices from the south.peer-reviewe

Assessment and student participation: 'choice and voice' in school principal accounts of schooling territories

Schooling territories are bounded spaces where policies, bodies, practices, and discourses meet and collide. It is well documented in assessment literature that students who are active decisionmakers understand their learning processes and have the necessary wherewithal to access support across schooling spaces. These spaces are co-produced through interrelationships, where youth participation is associated with power, voice, democratic citizenship, legal entitlement, empowerment, motivation and self-confidence. Recognising the growing pedagogical emphasis on locating students as responsible for their own learning, we consider how assessment practices constitute enabling and constraining schooling territories. Assessment for learning (AfL) can be linked with emancipatory practices in schooling territories where learner agency is co-produced through socio-material classroom relations. We use principal comments to map a range of interrelated schooling territories as a relational cartography of spatialised practices and student participation in AfL. Mostly, these territories are teacher imagined and defined, constructed through schooling and policy frameworks, and determined through the use of student achievement and student voice data. These conceptualised schooling spaces are interrogated to consider the positionality of students within AfL-related territories. While choice and participation may seem emancipatory, we reveal that AfL practices can serve a rarely acknowledged process of affirming territorial power

'Student voice in learning: instrumentalism and tokenism or opportunity for altering the status and positioning of students?'

Student voice literature has been well mapped with a range of participatory frameworks and typologies over the last three decades. These acknowledge neoliberal uses of voice that reflect a pervasive marketised approach to education, where young people are consumers, teachers surveilled, and leaders are wedged between government and community accountability. We draw upon typologies from the field to investigate Principals’ conceptions of student voice in Aotearoa/New Zealand schools. Practitioner awareness of the instrumentalism of particular voice strategies and associated critiques of their application provides alignment with a conception of education as a mode of making explicit social and political practice. The article highlights tensions where systemic improvement is prioritised over student agency and the right of young people to democratic participation in their schooling

Policy Enactment and Leader Agency: The Discursive Shaping of Political Change

As agents in reform processes, Principals can be pressured to respond to government and private change agendas. Far from merely implementing policy, Principals engage in complex enactments where they demonstrate agency in their interpretations and recontextualisations. Drawing data from Principal interviews, the authors consider leader agency in relation to discourses of economic rationalism, change and change leadership. The operationalisation of schooling reform and the necessity to think critically about policy within limited official consultation frameworks is highlighted. The political control of school clustering can potentially impinge on leader agency, particularly when there are additional hierarchical layers of leadership

Emotions and Casual Teachers: Implications of the Precariat for Initial Teacher Education.

It is the norm for the casual teaching precariat to experience insecure labour conditions requiring an additional skill set to teachers with stable employment. As more beginning teachers than ever before commence work in casual employment – often a tenuous and unsupported transition into the profession - it is beholden on teacher educators to re-think aspects of their preparation. Four teacher educators undertook ‘memory work’ based on their previous experiences as casual teachers. Content analysis of follow up focus group discussions stressed the emotional and challenging nature of casual teaching, for both novice and experienced teachers. Findings from this small study, as well as previous research on casual beginning teachers and casual teachers, provide significant insights that have ramifications for initial teacher education, highlighting the importance of the emotional practices of teachers