A sociocultural approach to understanding teacher identity, agency and professional vulnerability in a context of secondary school reform

Abstract

This paper uses a sociocultural theoretical lens, incorporating mediated agency [Wertsch et al. (1993). A sociocultural approach to agency. In A. Forman, N. Minick, & A. Stone (Eds.), Contexts for learning sociocultural dynamics in children's development (pp. 336–357). New York: Oxford University Press] to examine the dynamic interplay among teacher identity, agency, and context as these affect how secondary teachers report experiencing professional vulnerability, particularly in terms of their abilities to achieve their primary purposes in teaching students. Two mediational systems that shape teacher agency and their professional vulnerability are addressed. These are: (a) the early influences on teacher identity; and (b) the current reform context. Interview data revealed that the political and social context along with early teacher development shaped teachers’ sense of identity and sense of purpose as a teacher. Survey and interview data indicate that there was a disjuncture between teacher identity and expectations of the new reform mandates. Teacher agency was clearly constrained in the new reform context. Teachers struggled to remain openly vulnerable with their students, and to create trusting learning environments in what they described as a more managerial profession with increased accountability pressures. Directions for future research are also discussed.

Introduction

Little is understood about the ways in which teacher identity interacts with reform mandates to affect teachers’ experiences of professional vulnerability, particularly when policies are accompanied with new tools (e.g. curricula or accountability practices) and expectations for teaching. A sociocultural theoretical lens incorporating mediated agency (Wertsch, Tulviste, & Hagstrom, 1993) is used to understand the interplay among structure, identity, and agency as they shape teachers’ experiences of professional vulnerability. The concept of mediated agency is especially useful in analyzing whether government mandated school policy mandates create a mediational system with new tools and expectations for teaching; to possibly discern the ways teachers’ sense of professional identity affects how teachers understand and interact with new mandates; and to explore how this dynamic might affect teachers’ experiences of professional vulnerability.

This discussion of agency is not concerned with the larger debate in sociology as to whether or not human beings have agency (e.g., Bandura, 1989; Foucault, 1984). It starts with the belief that human beings have the ability to influence their lives and environment while they are also shaped by social and individual factors (e.g., Bourdieu, 1977; Giddens, 1984). It differs in one primary respect from other approaches to agency such as the social cognitive approach taken by Bandura (1997), the sociological approach taken by Giddens (1984), and the change agent approach held by Fullan (1993), because it places primacy on the ways that cultural tools actually shape human cognitive functioning and the possibilities for action (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988; Wertsch, 1991; Vygotsky, 1978).

A sociocultural approach to agency necessitates examining individual action in such a way that priority is given to the social contexts and cultural tools that shape the development of human beliefs, values, and ways of acting (Wertsch, 1991). Human development occurs on two planes, first on the social plane, and then on the psychological (Rogoff, 1990; Tharp & Gallimore, 1988; Vygotsky, 1962). In short, that which is psychological, is first social (Vygotsky, 1962). What individuals believe, and how individuals think and act is always shaped by cultural, historical, and social structures that are reflected in mediational tools such as literature, art, media, language, technology, and numeracy systems (Wertsch et al., 1993); or more specific to school reform—in such things as policy mandates, curriculum guidelines, and state standards. These tools are products of social, cultural, and historical evolution, and continue to evolve as people use them (Vygotsky, 1962) in their day-to-day and working lives (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988). So, along with being the resources necessary to sustain teaching and learning activities, the stuff of reform also serves as a mediating system that affects teacher identity, while also creating the conditions for the ways teachers can teach in schools. Agency is thus affected by reform in part as it comes into interaction with teacher identity.

In this view, the incorporation of mediational means does not simply facilitate the functioning that could have occurred without them. Instead, “by being included in the process of behavior, the psychological tool alters the entire flow and structure of mental functions. It does this by determining the structure of a new instrumental act, just as a technical tool alters the process of natural adaptation by determining the form of labor operations” (Vygotsky, 1981a, p. 137 taken from Wertsch et al., 1993, p. 341).

The appropriate unit of analysis for understanding human agency thus becomes people doing things together in social settings with the cultural tools available to them (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988). In this model, individual agency to change a context is possible in the ways people act to affect their immediate settings through using resources that are culturally, socially, and historically developed. Seen in this way, agency is always mediated by the interaction between the individual (attributes and inclinations), and the tools and structures of a social setting. Neither can be separated from the other, though both structure and agency can be systematically fore-grounded for purposes of analysis (Lasky, 2004).

Seen this way, teacher agency is part of a complex dynamic; it shapes and is shaped by the structural and cultural features of society and school cultures (Datnow, Hubbard, & Mehen, 2002). In this context, policy mandates are adapted, adopted, or ignored. Each decision teachers make, each action they take, is simultaneously a consequence of past action and present context and a condition shaping the context for further action (Hall & McGinty, 1997). While it is true that teachers are not simply pawns in the reform process—they are active agents, whether they act passively or actively—(Datnow et al., 2002) their actions are mediated by the structural elements of their setting such as the resources available to them, the norms of their school, and externally mandated policies.

The goal of this paper is to use a sociocultural lens to analyze the interplay among teacher identity, agency, and professional vulnerability in a context of large-scale secondary school reform (SSR). To achieve this, two mediational systems that shape teacher agency and their professional vulnerability are addressed. These are: (a) the early influences on teacher identity; and (b) the current reform context. Using the concept of mediated agency facilitates analyzing teacher descriptions of the early influences on their identity formation; whether the new reform context brings with it a new set of norms and tools for teaching; if it does, how teachers understand and experience these new norms and tools through the lens of their professional identity, as well as how their experiences of reform mandates might shape their experiences of vulnerability.