The Grammar of Agency: Studying Possibilities for Student Agency in Science Classroom Discourse

• In Event: 68.026 - Researching Student Agency in Educational Interactions: Sociocultural Approaches and Methodological Insights

Abstract

A core dilemma for educators and science teachers is that many capable students, especially girls, learn to do school well by being compliant, rather than doing science well and being agentic. Addressing the balance of agency in classrooms is seen as a fruitful approach for reform (Kalantzis & Cope, 2012).This study investigates opportunities for students to position themselves as agentic in the everyday discourses of a science classroom. The results provide better understanding of the challenges related to engaging students in science and the study’s contribution to education and social research more generally is an operationalisation of “agency” in discursive terms using positioning theory (Davis & Harre, 1990).

Agency is operationalised in discursive psychological terms as positioning as responsible in social acts. Participating students’ social acts are coded using the grammar of agency, a system developed by the author from indexical features of the English language for assigning and claiming responsibility to persons in a conversation. These indexical features include pronouns, sentence modality and tense. The data for the study are comprehensive, high quality recordings of classroom discourse in a secondary school in Melbourne, Australia. Supplementary data included field notes from classroom observations; the teacher’s planning documentation, student work for the entire unit and post-lesson, video-stimulated interviews with the focus students and the teacher. Twelve lessons were filmed comprising an entire unit of work using four cameras and seven audio tracks. Focus students and the teacher wore microphones on lanyards.

Focus students were selected upon recommendation by the teacher and after preliminary observations during familiarisation lessons (Clarke, 2006). Their teacher identified groups of students as capable and engaged in science and observations of these students participating well in classroom activity concurred with the teacher’s recommendation. The inquiry emerged as the analysis of social acts involving a small group of three capable students, girls, in their science classroom and their relative positioning as agentic. Contrary to what one would expect of students identified as capable and engaged, the analysis reveals social acts in which the girls’ positioning as agentic, for example, by asking questions, making observations and putting forward ideas that contribute to ongoing classroom conversations, were limited. The micro analysis reveals otherwise hidden moments of positioning where these girls act as responsible and inquiring. However, compliance and the maintenance of social identities as good students is jointly realised, limiting their agentic participation. The small group is shown to operate like a sub-community of practise, implying the need to better understand joint activity in small groups in science. The presentation illustrates the potential of the discursive psychological approach for research concerned with human agency.

Author

• Jennifer Lynne Martin, The Australian Catholic University