Paradoxes of Agency and Leadership in a Research-Practice Partnership

• In Event: Understanding the Transformative Power of Teacher and Student Agency in Changing Educational Contexts

Abstract

Objectives
This paper explores the paradox of agency in a research-practice partnership (RPP) designed to cultivate teacher leadership and foster district ownership. Developing agency is central to the concept of leadership. Calls to "empower" teacher leadership reflect concerns that teachers are often positioned as "the objects of reform, not its participants" (Hargreaves & Shirley, 2011, p. 1). However, developing someone else's agency is both logically problematic and difficult to do. Moreover, practitioners' exercise of agency can undermine the intervention and its coherence. This study explores this challenge and how it is negotiated between researcher-practitioner partners.

Theoretical perspectives
We build on Calhoun's (2002) definition of agency as "actors’ ability to operate somewhat independently of the determining constraints of social structure" (Battilana & D'Aunno, 2009, p. 45). We adapt a dialectic perspective according to which agency shapes and is shaped by structure (Gutiérrez & Barton, 2015), including our intervention's structures (e.g., its goals, principles, regularities and tools as well as its hierarchies, positions and roles). We additionally draw upon frameworks of: (1) distributed leadership (Spillane, 2012); (2) research as partnership (Coburn & Penuel, 2016) and (3) social action as co-constructed (Erickson, 2004).

Methods
We investigate 12 cases in which our practitioner partners (leading teachers, coaches and district administrators): (a) did not exercise their authority to shape the intervention structures, (b) acted in ways that deviated from it, (c) asserted their will in shaping it, and (d) independently shaped structures (Table 1). We use linguistic ethnographic methods (Rampton et al., 2015) and analysis of textual trajectories (Maybin, 2017) to study the dynamic interplay between structure, agency and authority, and manifestations of intrapersonal and interpersonal conflicts at both micro (in moment–to-moment negotiation) and macro (in broad framing and enactments) levels.

Data sources
Data were collected during the first three years of a large RPP (150 participating leading teachers), including (participant) observations, audio-recordings and field notes of: (1) 415 in-school teacher meetings facilitated by leading teachers; (2) 105 professional development workshops for leading teachers and coaches; (3) formal meetings and informal conversations with district administrators; and (4) 60 interviews and further consultations with partners regarding this paper, incorporating their voices .

Results
Agency emerges as a site of intrapersonal and interpersonal struggle: researchers struggle with the (often) conflicting goals of enhancing practitioners' agency while safeguarding the intervention’s core structures; practitioners struggle with the conflict between aspiring to own and master the intervention and fearing uncertainty (desiring greater guidance and affirmation). These dynamic conflicts may result in: (1) the strengthening of the partnership, promoting both the intervention and each partner; or (2) a clash undermining the partnership and the intervention. The findings illustrate how micro and the macro processes illuminate each other.

Scholarly significance
This study deepens our understanding of the various manifestations of agency in fostering leadership in general and in RPP in particular. It advances the knowledge of researchers and practitioners alike regarding the challenges of establishing successful and sustainable intervention partnerships and possible ways to manage these challenges.

Authors

• Dana Vedder-Weiss, Ben Gurion University of the Negev

• Adam Lefstein, Ben Gurion University of the Negev

• Itay Pollak, Ben Gurion University of the Negev

• Aliza Segal, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev