What If Expertise Were Fluid? Embracing a Dynamic Model of Learner Agency in Class Discussions

• In Event: Fostering Learning, Agency, and Empowered Identities Through Dialogic and Multimodal Language Pedagogies

Abstract

Classrooms represent unique figured worlds characterized by power inequities, socialization into certain cultural practices, and learner identity development. In this work, we argue that teachers possess the capacity to reduce power inequities by supporting students—especially students from historically-marginalized backgrounds—in developing identities as agentic learners. In this work, we explore a classroom where students and teacher work to co-construct fluid expert and learner identities for students during student-centered talk practices. In doing so, they create conditions that support students’ sense of agency both as competent experts able to add value to others’ learning and as competent learners able to grow from the expertise of others.

Authors

• Heather M Meston, Vanderbilt University

• Emily Phillips Galloway, Vanderbilt University

• K. Addison Barrack