The importance of teacher agency has been cited in relation to school reform, professionalism, teacher retention and addressing contemporary ethical issues. However, teacher agency is often referred to without explicit definition, and different framings appear in the research literature. By exploring the ontological underpinnings of key theorizations, I highlight the need for greater clarity around what constitutes teacher agency and where it is situated. Relational accounts of agency highlight a dialectic of the individual and social in teacher action. This limits (...) analysis and fails to account for how individual action and institutional practice is co-constituted. Indeed, the issue of situating individual judgement within social norms can be traced back to the Enlightenment. Recent attempts to overcome inherent dualisms in describing agency have drawn on pragmatist philosophy, introducing a spatiotemporal dimension to describe the co-evolution of individual action and social norms. The ecological model, drawing on pragmatist foundations, provides analytical power and ontological clarity by characterizing teacher agency as emergent phenomena. Nevertheless, the model retains the centrality of rational human judgement, and I take up the suggestion that teacher agency can be further understood by drawing on new materialist accounts, which decentre the human. Working with Deleuze’s immanent philosophy, I show how situating human thought and action as aspects of an event, opens up consideration of the emergent patterning of educational practice. Attention to immanent difference and repetition provides new ways to consider teacher agency, which do not place the responsibility for change solely on the rational judgement of teachers. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

In recent years, researchers within science education have started to consider the impact of narrative upon teaching and learning in science. This article investigates the possibilities of interactive fiction as a means by which students can be provided with feedback on their understanding in science, and explores the mechanisms which might allow learning from this. Through a review of literature around the use of narrative in science education, we have produced a list of recommendations that might guide the development of (...) interactive fiction within science education. These recommendations are tested through a small-scale study in which an interactive fiction book was written around Newton’s laws, and then tested with 27, 16- and 17-year-old chemistry students, eight of whom also study post-compulsory physics. The interactive fiction developed is based upon the well-established Force Concept Inventory and this allowed the analysis of the progression of student understanding. We found that, upon reading the book, there was a significant positive effect size on the understanding of students who do not study advanced physics. The gains for those who do study post-compulsory physics were not statistically significant. The participants’ report of enjoyment is also discussed. (shrink)