Dialectical Reflective Processes for Enactment of Transformative Agency With Teacher Candidates

• In Event: Cultural Historical Perspectives on Identity: A Tool for Dismantling Inequality and Promoting Just Educational Possibilities

Abstract

1. Objectives

The relationship between identity and agency in collective activity has not been fully explored (Holland et al., 1998). We aim to better understand how individual reflection can be nurtured at the collective level impacting identity development (Varghese et al., 2005). While engaging in reflection about practice is important as it can facilitate development of social justice perspectives (Gutiérrez-Vossoughi, 2010), individual reflective processes can reinforce teachers’ equivocal beliefs rather than promote transformation (Gomez, 1996). Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) perspectives can help reconcile these views (Varghese et al., 2005).

Employing data from an afterschool project with bilingual children and candidates, we explore:
• The process through which candidates’ identity evolved in a space involving individual and collective reflection, and
• The theoretical and practical relationship between agency and identity

2. Frameworks

It is important to go beyond structure, realizing the role of agency and identity in the development of activity (Roth, 2007). Discourse conveys a sense of agency and thus identity, so it can be analyzed to elucidate these complex relationships (Sannino et al., 2021). Participants experience identity shifts (i.e., disidentification and reidentification) as they act, moving along zones of proximal development (Edwards & Mackenzie, 2009). Teachers collectively expand resources and “reposition themselves as capable actors” following quadrant-based trajectories (Edwards & Mackenzie, 2009, 165; Figure 1). Conflicts surface engaging teachers in double stimulation, the process through which humans deploy artifacts to mediate learning. Vygotsky’s double stimulation and transformative agency are connected through TADS four-step approach (Sannino et al., 2021; Figure 2).

3. Methods and Data

This qualitative study employed data from a three-year afterschool project where 15 bilingual teacher candidates and 22 bilingual immigrant children with a disability, learned.

Data included candidates’ weekly reflective notes (individual reflection), transcribed audio-taped meetings with candidates and the two first authors/professors (collective reflection). The data were analyzed as follows, (1) searched for overlapping themes; (2) identified the four phases of TADS, and (3) coded for evidence of emergent identity.

5. Results

We found that the candidates’ individual efforts were propelled by the group discussions at a collective level along four contradictions. For instance, when a candidate expressed concern for one child who, despite having Spanish speaking parents and attending a dual language bilingual school since kindergarten, spoke minimal Spanish by third grade, others questioned the usefulness of continuing to foster his Spanish. After collective reflection, the candidates enacted volitional actions pulling on novel artifacts expanding from a limiting view of the bilingual potential of children with a disability to designing ways to promote their bilingualism. Our theorization of the relationship between agency and identity eventually evolved into a cycle model (Figure 3).

6. Significance

Our presentation will illustrate four main historical contradictions that surfaced across the data, manifesting their relevance for preparing bilingual teachers. The cycle model illuminates the relationship between agency and identity and can be used for future teacher preparation work. This paper provides, as called for by AERA, a “course forward” in research addressing aspects of identity and agency for teacher preparation.

Authors

• Belinda Arana, Teachers College, Columbia University
  Presenting Author

• Patricia Martínez-Álvarez, Teachers College, Columbia University
  Presenting Author

• Andrea Montero-De-Howitt, Teachers College, Columbia University
  Presenting Author

• Laura Itzzel Carbajal-Montalvo, Teachers College, Columbia University
  Presenting Author